Five Times Shiva Met Harry
The first time Shiva met Harry, they reached for the same book about the Russian Revolution on the library shelf. They did the awkward laugh thing people do, and Shiva had time to notice that he had very, very nice green eyes, and then he said, “You go ahead; there’s another one down here,” and that should have been the end of it.
—
The second time she saw him, he was walking out of the library. She could see him from across the small cobblestone square between them and was about to look away when he spotted her and waved. She waved back and he crossed the square toward her. His shirt was untucked and he had his school sweater on this time, rumpled from the day, and the jade green did fairy-tale things to his eyes.
She tried to picture what he must be seeing. A girl sitting on the ground of the park on the other side of the square, legs outstretched, school shirt and skirt stained with damp grass, schoolbag next to her, and a bottle of cream soda in one hand. With not much left in it.
“This isn’t as sad as it looks,” she said.
He laughed.
“My friends just left.”
On impulse, she held the bottle out to him. He shrugged, sat down on the grass beside her, and took it. “I’m Harry.”
“I’m Shiva.”
“That’s a cool name.”
“Thanks.” Some girls were called Juno, or Athena, or Freyja. She got Shiva. She liked it.
He handed the cream soda back to her, and she took another swig. He squinted at her. “There’s a beetle in your hair.”
“It’s the latest in hair fashion. Didn’t you know that?”
His eyes lit up with laughter. “Okay, I’ll just leave it where it is, then.”
“I suppose you can take it out if you must.”
He was still laughing as he coaxed the bug onto his hand. His fingers brushed against her cheek, and she had to remind herself to breathe. Be still, my wayward heart. She watched him deposit the beetle carefully onto the grass.
The intense concentration with which he did it made her think that he was either very passionate about insect welfare, or he had also felt whatever it was she had felt when he had touched her.
—
The third time, she spotted him at a desk in the library, biting on the end of his pen as he stared at the page in front of him, and she went over to say hi.
They had barely swapped two sentences before a familiar figure appeared. “There you are!” It was her father, his hair a mess and his glasses more taped together than Harry Potter’s. It was anyone’s guess how his patients trusted him. “Shall we pop to the library café for a few minutes before we go home? You’re welcome to come too,” he said cheerfully to Harry. “I like judging my kids’ boyfriends’ characters based on the coffee they drink.”
“Well, I — ”
“Dad, he’s not my — ”
“They’d better not sell out of fruit scones before we get there,” Dad went on, as if neither of them had started speaking. “Come on, kids, shift a bit!”
And he was off, leaving them behind. “Sorry,” Shiva said to Harry. “He’s always like that. You don’t have to come.”
“And disappoint him? I would never.”
And so they went to find her father in the library café, a small hole in the wall that had the best fruit scones in the city. Dad was already at the counter. “What’ll it be?”
“Coconut frappé with extra whipped cream, please,” Shiva said to the girl behind the counter. “And a scone if Dad hasn’t ordered them all already.”
“Um.” Harry paused, obviously aware of how loaded this choice was. “Just a black coffee, please.”
Dad tutted. “Unimaginative,” he informed Harry, and then said to Shiva in a tone of wistful affection, “Jamie never drinks plain black coffee.”
Shiva rolled her eyes. Her brother’s boyfriend, Jamie, was the ideal against which her parents measured all their children’s prospective love interests. And he was admittedly pretty bloody perfect, which made that ideal all the more impossible to live up to.
“So, Harry,” Dad said, once they’d found a free table and he’d extracted Harry’s name out of him, “I see by your uniform that you’re still in school.”
“We’re in the same year, Dad. Not the same school, but the same year.”
“We’re both doing history,” Harry added.
Shiva winced. Here it comes.
Dad peered at Harry over the top of his glasses. “Let me ask you this, Harry. In all the time you’ve studied history in some form or another, over the course of your entire school life, how much time have you spent on the British Empire?”
“I think we may have done a little bit in junior school, but I can’t remember much.” There was a pause, and then, apparently feeling that more was expected of him, Harry added, “I know we studied Gandhi and I think there was also a lesson about how Christian missionaries would teach English to people in the former colonies.”
“Was that a good thing, do you think?”
“Sure. I mean, it opened a lot of doors.”
Shiva winced again.
Later, after Harry had left, Dad cocked his head at her. “You’re probably annoyed with me, but you know I believe that a boy who can’t pass the British Empire test is not worthy of you.”
“He’s seventeen,” Shiva said. “He has time to figure things out.”
“What if he doesn’t want to figure things out? I know you think I make a big deal out of this, but it matters. And,” he added, because he never could resist, “if you recall, Jamie was sixteen when he passed the test.”
“Jamie’s Black. His grandparents moved here from Zimbabwe. He gets it in a way Harry can’t possibly get it.”
Dad considered her. “Exactly.”
Shiva sighed. “Dad, it doesn’t matter anyway. Harry’s not actually my boyfriend. I barely know him.”
“What?” Her father looked astonished. “Why didn’t you say so?”
—
The fourth time they met, they found a nook in the corner of the library, ignored their homework, and talked about books, movies, and whether or not the other Harry should have ended up with Hermione (obviously, that was a decided yes).
“Oh hey,” Harry said after a minute, and Shiva noticed his ears had gone red again. “I was wondering if, um, if you wanted to go get a takeaway. There’s the Chinese place around the corner? Not today, I mean, not unless you want to. Just... sometime.”
“You’re afraid of going out for coffee again, aren’t you?” she teased him, because she didn’t know how to say yes without squealing.
He grinned. “Guilty. Your dad’s a little intense.”
“I don’t mean it like it’s a bad thing,” Harry said hastily. “Just that it felt like he wanted a certain answer from me and wasn’t happy that he didn’t get it?”
Shiva considered brushing it off like she so often did, but she was tired of dancing around it and she wanted more from Harry. “He wanted to see whether or not you’re capable of recognizing and undoing a lifetime of programming,” she said bluntly.
“What?” He was startled.
“You know there’s more than one side to every story, so why haven’t you ever paid attention to the other side of this one? Why haven’t you ever wondered what they’re not telling us at school? I learned very early that I was not being told the truth. My parents made sure I got my information from more than one place. You told my dad it was a good thing that people in the former colonies were taught English because it opened doors and that’s probably true, but you haven’t considered why it was necessary to open those doors in the first place.”
“Shiva,” he said quietly, “it was one conversation. It doesn’t mean I’ve been programmed.”
What if he doesn’t want to figure things out?
“Of course you have. We all have. You just don’t notice because the program has been meticulously designed to benefit you.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Shiva stood up and started packing up her books. “I didn’t want to have this conversation. I wanted to drink cream soda and not do our homework and go get Chinese food. But I’m not going to not say things either.” She zipped up her schoolbag. “I have to go.”
He didn’t come after her.
—
The fifth time Shiva met Harry, she almost missed him altogether. He wasn’t in any of his usual places in the library. She told herself she wasn’t disappointed.
Then, as she looked for a free table somewhere near the geography section, she bumped into him. He was coming out of the international studies aisle and he had a pile of books in his arms.
He flushed pink at the ears when he saw her and clutched the books tighter, like he hoped they’d disappear, but she could see some of their titles. India in the Twentieth Century. A True History of Colonial India. The Real Legacy of the British Empire.
“I thought about what you said,” he said in a rush, ears even redder now. “And you were right. I don’t know as much as I think I do. So I wanted to learn.”
“Guh?” she said intelligently.
“Sorry, what?”
“Just clearing my throat,” she said.
“Um. Okay.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I’ll see you around.”
She watched him go, a smile edging its way across her face. He’s seventeen, she’d said to her dad that day after coffee. He has time to figure things out. And he wanted to. So she smiled. This time, she had homework. So did he. But next time, maybe, just maybe, they could go get that Chinese takeaway.