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said Cat, “I think we’re going out for Indian.”
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    The Brown house was larger than Sejal expected. She glanced around it cautiously while Cat and Mr. Brown shouted at each other.
    â€œWhat were you thinking ?” Mr. Brown shouted. “Were you thinking at all? What is Sejal going to wear?”
    â€œIt isn’t my fault they sent her bag to the wrong city!” Cat answered. “Why don’t you call up those asswipe…”
    â€œCatherine!” Mrs. Brown gasped.
    â€œâ€¦airport…bag…people and yell at them?” finished Cat.
    â€œI will call them, but you should have stayed and talked to someone! If you don’t get them looking for a lost bag right away, they’ll never find it!”
    â€œ I didn’t know! ” Cat moaned. “Call them then, and stop yelling at me!” She tore out of the room and up the stairs. Mr. Brown stomped into the kitchen. There came from above a whuffing noise, the sound of a door that was too light to slam.
    Mrs. Brown was wearing two different kinds of orange. Her small, quiet smile seemed at odds with her outfit, which announced CAUTION : ROADWORK AHEAD . “How was your flight?” she asked.
    â€œIt was my fault about the luggage,” said Sejal. “I told Cat I wanted to go.”
    â€œYou couldn’t know,” said Mrs. Brown, patting at her curly hair. “But in America we get our bags. They’re not supposed to get lost.”
    When she’d first arrived, Sejal had deliberated overwhether to bend down and touch the Brown parents’ feet. She considered how it might look in a nation of firm handshakes and high fives, and let the moment pass. Now Sejal could only smile reflexively and glance around the room again. She was finding it difficult to look directly at Mrs. Brown, a condition for which she blamed her father. The woman looked, at the moment, not so much like a gum ball as a goldfish. One of those very round goldfish with the cauliflower heads.
    Mr. Brown emerged suddenly with a cordless phone. “I don’t know how to spell your name,” he told Sejal. “Could you speak to this person a moment?”
    Sejal got on the phone. “Namaste.”
    â€œYes, Ms. Namastay,” said a dull voice. “Can you spell that?”
    â€œNo, I was merely saying hello. My name is Ganguly.”
    â€œPlease spell it, Ms. Namastay.”
    Sejal thickened her accent to molasses as she tried to spell as swiftly and unhelpfully as possible. She hoped each odd stress and pause would string out an uncrackable code between her and the bag she did not want. Then, pleased with herself, she said her good-byes and returned the phone to Mr. Brown.
    â€œAre you feeling hungry?” asked Mrs. Brown. “We should leave soon to beat the dinner rush.”
    â€œI’ll go tell Cat,” Sejal answered.
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    â€œYou see what I have to put up with?” Cat said immediately upon opening her door. Behind her, on walls the color of eggplant, were black posters and clippings from magazines. Many photos of girls looking morose in cemeteries. People incomplicated outfits; black and red and white material laced up backs; arms and legs waffled by fishnet. A chunky laptop and a cherub-shaped lamp with a counterproductively black lamp-shade stood on a desk so haphazardly piled with CD cases it appeared to be molting. “Sorry your room isn’t cool like mine. I’ll show you.”
    Sejal’s room was through the next door down the hall. It was stupefyingly beige. It had a beige computer in it and an off-white bed.
    Neither this computer nor Cat’s antique laptop had stirred more than the slightest pang in Sejal. If she were an alcoholic, these machines would have been weak lemonade shandy. She felt intellectually safe but oddly claustrophobic.
    â€œYour mom wants to leave soon,” said Sejal.
    â€œTo ‘beat the rush,’ right?” said Cat in an