For Real (18 page)

“Um, thanks anyway, Troy, but I really don’t want to talk about this.”

He shrugs. “Whatever. But this is a game, girl. He’s playin’ it. You gotta play it, too.” He shoves his earbuds in and turns toward the window.

Troy and I don’t whisper secrets in the dark. We don’t
snuggle close together under our airline blankets. Even as we change money, buy a New Delhi map, and eat breakfast during our layover in Singapore, we barely speak. We’re like strangers who happen to be near each other for eleven hours, and by the time we get to India, I’m incredibly lonely.

The moment we disembark onto the burning hot tarmac, I jog to catch up with Will, leaving Troy behind. “How’d you do?” I ask him.

Philadelphia shoots me a dirty look. “How’d we do with
what
?”

For a second, Will looks confused, but then he shoots me a small smile. “Pretty good, thanks to you,” he says, dropping his voice so Philadelphia can’t hear. I struggle to suppress the goofy grin that wants to explode all over my face—he didn’t even tell her. She can flirt with him all she wants, but she can’t make him open up to her like he did to me.

“Don’t you have your
own
partner to bother?” Philadelphia links her arm through Will’s and pulls him ahead, and he turns around and mouths “Later” to me.

The cabs in front of the airport are black with yellow tops and green stripes on the sides, and we pile into one with our crew. Troy makes no effort to tell the driver where we’re going, so I lean forward and say, “Lodhi Gardens?”

I have no idea how many people speak English here, and I’m incredibly relieved when he says, “Okay.”

“We gotta get there fast fast fast,” Troy chimes in.
“Rápido!”

I stare at him. “Seriously? Did you just say that?”

“What? It’s a race.”

“
Rápido
is Spanish, Troy. We’re in
India
. That is so ridiculously offensive.”

He shrugs. “Whatever.
You
talked English to him. I don’t get how that’s different.”

We pull into traffic, and just like that, I forget all about Troy. I’ve never gotten carsick easily, but driving in India tries even my high tolerance. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to be on the left side of the road, but we weave back and forth so much that I’m not entirely sure which side the cabbie’s driving on. He leans on the horn constantly, and we whip around mopeds, jeeps, motorized rickshaws, children, and stray dogs like we’re in some sort of horrible race-car video game. Skinny white cows with horns and humps appear out of nowhere and wander across the road, and we nearly plow right into them a couple times. I grip the strap above the door with both white-knuckled hands and stare at the road in front of us, thinking
Stop!
and
Move over!
as loudly as I can, as if I can control the driver with my mind. “He took your
‘rápido’
to heart,” I mutter to Troy.

“Told you he’d know what I meant,” he says, completely missing the point.

In the few brief moments I’m not terrified, I try to take in our surroundings, which are noisier and more colorful than anyplace I’ve ever seen. Women in bright saris fly by on the backs of motorcycles, the jewel-toned fabric whipping in the wind. Merchants line the roadsides in front of crumbling storefronts, peddling everything from vegetables to electronics. I see one man prostrate on a prayer mat in the middle of a traffic island and another having his beard shaved on a
street corner. Monkeys climb around on the telephone poles and nobody pays them any attention, as if they’re as ubiquitous as the squirrels back home. I ache to have someone next to me whose hand I can grab as I shout,
Look at that, and that, and that!

By the time we get to the Lodhi Gardens, I’m so grateful to stop moving that I want to kiss the filthy ground. I hold out a handful of rupees so the driver can extract what we owe, and he takes a couple of bills, which bear Gandhi’s face. Then we put on our packs and sprint through the gate and into the gardens. My shoulders are killing me from yesterday, and my pack feels heavier than ever. For a second, I wonder if I should’ve taken Troy up on his inappropriate offer of a massage.

As soon as we step inside the gardens, it’s like we’ve passed through an invisible force field that repels the Delhi chaos. Everything inside the park is gorgeous and serene and neatly manicured, and the traffic noises fade away under the sounds of chirping birds and rustling branches. The heat even seems a little less oppressive in here. I finally feel like I can breathe, and as I stand still for a minute in the middle of a stone walkway, my shoulders start to relax.

We choose what looks like the main path, and we haven’t been walking long before we see a large domed structure that looks like a temple. It’s made of stone in various shades of red and tan and brown, surrounded by a crumbling protective wall. A smaller, triple-domed building sits off to one side, and people recline on the steps near its arched doorways, basking in the afternoon sunshine. It’s so beautiful
and ancient-looking that it makes me lose my breath. But there’s no sign of a pink flag or a challenge anywhere.

“Maybe we should go around the back?” Troy suggests. “If it’s a jumbo-sized challenge, we’ll need a lot of open space, right?” It’s weird to hear something so logical come out of his mouth, but I follow him.

And there on the lawn behind the building, draped in pink blankets printed with the
Around the World
logo, are seven elephants dressed in decorative headpieces. They’re majestic and wise-looking, and they are definitely jumbo-sized. Childish glee bubbles up in me at the sight of them—I was obsessed with elephants as a kid, and my well-loved stuffed one, Grumby, still sits on my bed at home. I can’t believe I get to hang out with real, live ones up close. Finally, a story I actually
want
to tell my friends.

“Dude, those things better not poop on me,” Troy says, completely ruining the moment.

As we get closer, I see that each elephant has a pattern of flowers stenciled onto its cheeks and the front of its trunk. Samir and Tawny are standing on either side of one of them, filling in the petals with bright neon paints as if their elephant is a coloring book. It’s infuriating that they’ve managed to pull ahead of us even though their flight was later—they must have had a shorter layover. Two of the elephants are already fully decorated, and I’m pretty sure the one with the blue toenails is Miranda’s—that’s the shade she prefers for her own toenails.

We choose a girl elephant with spotted markings on her ears, and her handler gives us our next pink envelope. The instructions inside read:

In India, grooms traditionally ride decorated elephants to their wedding ceremonies. When you have correctly decorated your elephant’s face and painted its toenails, its handler will give you your next instructions
.

I happily gather our paints and brushes and return to Troy. “This is so cool,” I say. “Don’t you think?”

He shrugs. “I guess.”

I decide to ignore him—I won’t let anything ruin my elephant bonding time. “Hi, beautiful girl,” I whisper to her, patting her trunk. She blinks at me slowly with one enormous, thickly lashed eye and flaps an ear in my direction. I decide to name her Aruba, but I don’t say that out loud. I can only imagine how Troy would react.

Will and Philadelphia show up just as I’m starting to apply paint to Aruba’s left cheek, and Philadelphia lets out a piercing squeal. “Oh my God, can you even believe how
adorable
they are?” she gushes, bounding up to the elephant beside ours. I try to catch Will’s gaze so we can share an eye roll, but he’s not paying any attention to me. He just takes the brush and paints Philadelphia offers and gets to work. Maybe he’s too focused on the elephants and didn’t even see me standing here.

I turn my back and try my best to ignore them, but they haven’t been working ten seconds before Will shouts, “Hey! No fair!” When I glance over, there’s a streak of blue paint dripping down his tan forearm.

Philadelphia widens her eyes in mock innocence and giggles. “Oopsie! Sorry, I guess I can’t tell the difference between you and the elephant. Your skin looks so similar.”

I search Will’s face, hoping to find annoyance there, but he just smiles mischievously, dips his brush in pink, and edges closer to her. “You naughty, naughty girl,” he says, and the warmth in his voice stabs me right in the gut. Then he lunges at Philadelphia, and she shrieks with laughter as he swipes a dripping pink line from her shoulder to her elbow.

I hate that he’s touching her on purpose, even with a brush. I hate that he actually seems to be having
fun
with her. For a second I consider ostentatiously flirting with Troy to show Will I don’t care, but there’s no way I could make that look believable. So I just grit my teeth and try to tune them out as best I can. Painting a live animal is harder than it looks, anyway, and I need to concentrate. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure Aruba looks annoyed, too.

Way before I’m finished, Troy abandons Aruba’s right cheek and moves around to start painting her trunk. “You’re not done already, are you?” I snap. “You have to actually paint inside the lines, you know. You can’t just slosh it on like you’re Jackson Pollock or something.” As if Troy would even know who that is.

“Yeah, I knew,” Troy says. He dips his brush in orange and starts painting.

Maybe he doesn’t understand what “inside the lines” means. I sigh and move around to Aruba’s other side, ready to point out what he’s done wrong. But Troy’s flowers look perfect, way better than mine. He’s even managed to do shading on a few of them. “Whoa,” I say. “You’re really good at this.”

He gives me a sarcastic half smile. “Imagine that. A stripper with actual skills.”

“No, I didn’t mean—I’m just really impressed that—”

“Whatever, Claire. Just keep working.”

We don’t speak again, except to say “pass the pink” or “here’s a clean brush.” When I finally finish my side, I start on Aruba’s feet—her nails are massive and crusty and kind of gross, but they look a little better once I’ve spruced them up with pink and green. Will and Philadelphia are now loudly trying to remember the lyrics to the “Pink Elephants on Parade” song from
Dumbo
, and when our handler forks over our next envelope, I’m not sorry to leave. I hate that their flirting has ruined the one and only chance I’ll probably ever get to touch an elephant.

“Those guys are freaking annoying,” Troy mutters as we move off to the side to open our next instructions, and for the first time, I actually agree with him about something.

Make your way by taxi to Shahwilayat Goat Farms. In some parts of India, it’s thought that any baby girl born with a tooth already protruding through her gums is possessed by a ghost. In order to exorcise that spirit, she must marry a goat in a special ceremony. In homage to that, you must search a herd of goats for the one that has a wedding ring tied around its hoof. Present your ring to the farmer to receive your next instructions
.

Troy wrinkles his nose. “Uh, she has to marry a
goat
? Do you think she’s gotta do
other stuff
with it?”

Leave it to him to go there. “
Ew
, Troy! It’s obviously
symbolic. I can’t believe you even thought of that.” I start heading toward the exit.

He jogs to catch up to me. “How is that not the first thing you thought of?”

“ ’Cause I actually have some respect for other cultures? ’Cause I’m not totally warped? ’Cause I think about other things besides sex?”

“Thinking about sex doesn’t make you warped. Everyone thinks about sex.
Not
thinking about it makes you a prude.”

“Not thinking about sex with
goats
makes me a prude?” A couple of women in saris look up from their conversation and stare at us, and my cheeks heat up. I pray they don’t understand English very well.

Troy rolls his eyes. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. Let’s just find a taxi, okay?”

The goat farm is a fair distance north of the city, which means a long trip on the terrifying Indian roads. The sections of New Delhi we’ve seen so far were crowded and noisy, but as we approach the outskirts of the city, the poverty we start to see is so disturbing it makes my chest ache. We drive down street after street where malnourished kids and bony dogs forage through ten-foot-tall trash heaps for bits of food. There’s a pervasive smell of burning rubber, intensified by the heat. When we stop at an intersection, children swarm around the car and try to cram their stick-thin arms through our barely open windows. I know nothing’s going to happen to us, but I still cringe away from their cupped, begging hands, and then I immediately feel guilty about it. The driver’s
face is totally impassive as he honks to scatter the kids, and they disperse like a flock of mangy pigeons.

When we finally arrive at the goat farm, a boy who looks a few years younger than me leads us into a giant dirt pen. I expected forty or fifty animals, tops, but there must be more than two hundred of them in here. They’re actually pretty cute—small and white, with chocolate-brown faces and droopy ears—but they all look exactly the same, and they’re constantly in motion. I have no idea how we’re going to keep track of which ones we’ve already searched. The air is heavy with the smells of hay and manure, and though it’s nearly seven o’clock in the evening, it must still be ninety degrees. When Troy strips off his shirt, I don’t even blame him. Our sound guy immediately rushes in to give him one of those microphone necklaces.

“What is it with all these stupid animal challenges?” Troy mutters. “I thought this show was supposed to be
sexy
. How am I supposed to be sexy in a field of goat crap?”

Being sexy isn’t exactly our biggest problem right now. “How are we going to find this dumb ring?” I say. “There’s no way to keep track of the goats.”

Troy’s quiet for a minute, running his hand over his closely shaven head, and then he says, “What color is your toothpaste?”