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Today is my stop on the Kaleidoscopic Blog Tour for The Girl Who Couldn't Lie by Radhika Sanghani.Here is the synopsis:
Priya Shah lies. A lot. She pretends everything in her life
is perfect, so she doesn't disappoint anyone.
I am thrilled to be sharing an extract of the book with you today
Priya Shah jolted awake. She was
having a terrible day. But that wasn’t really a surprise because lately, all
her days were slightly terrible. They had been ever since that day. The
13th of August. Almost a year ago. The most terrible of all the days. She felt a lump rising in her throat at the
thought, but she forced it down with a heavy swallow. Now was not the time to
think about the worst day of her life. She had enough problems happening this
very second.
“Excuse me. Earth to Priya!” Mrs
Lufthausen glared at Priya over the tops of her gold-rimmed spectacles. “For
the last time, please can you explain to me why you thought that double maths
was an appropriate time for a morning nap?”
Priya gulped. She felt a soft,
cool hand slip into her right hand. Mei. Her best friend was telling her she
had her back. She smiled.
“Do you think this is FUNNY?”
demanded Mrs Lufthausen. “This is the
third time that you have been caught napping in my lessons this term!”
“Of course she doesn’t think it’s
funny!” cried a voice to her left. “She has a weird thing where her apologetic
face looks like her happy face. It’s, like, genetic. Right, Priya?” Sami. Her
other best friend. Standing up for Priya like she always did. “And she wasn’t asleep! She was thinking,
obviously. Everyone knows you do the best thinking with your eyes closed. It’s
the only way to solve a quadratic equation, in my humble opinion.”
“Samantha Levin, does it look
like I was speaking to you?” thundered
Mrs Lufthausen. “Get back to your equations. And Priya, it is completely
unacceptable for you to keep falling asleep while I try to teach you basic
mathematics. If you don’t explain yourself now, I’m going to have to ask you to
leave and wait outside.”
Priya’s cheeks burned with
humiliation. She was a good student. She didn’t get sent out of lessons! That
was the kind of thing that happened to Katie and Angela. Not top students like
her. But now she was going to get sent out for the first time in her entire
school history and there was nothing she could do to stop it. It wasn’t like
she could tell Mrs Lufthausen the truth – that she was exhausted because,
unlike her younger sister Pinkie, she was physically unable to fall asleep
while her parents were shouting, and that when she finally did get to
sleep after they’d stopped arguing, it was time to wake up for gymnastics
practice. Of course she was tired – she’d slept less than a gamer who stayed up
all night playing people in Korea.
But Priya knew exactly what would
happen if she said all that out loud. Mrs Lufthausen would tell the school
counsellor, who would tell her parents, and Priya would end up in big trouble.
Because her parents’ golden rule was Don’t Air Your Dirty Laundry in Public,
which basically translated to: pretend everything is perfect at all times. And
if Priya admitted that her gymnastics practice was affecting her schoolwork,
her teachers would want her to quit – especially because gymnastics was totally
separate to school. Her parents would feel shamed into making Priya quit the
team, which meant her chances at getting into the Teen Olympics would be over
for ever, even though she’d been training for it her whole life. And worst of all, it would mean she’d never
get to watch Dan Zhang do pull-ups ever again.
Priya looked up at Mrs Lufthausen
and took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry,
Mrs Lufthausen. I guess I stayed up too late watching videos of dancing baby
goats. It’s my fault.”
The teacher shook her head. “I’m
disappointed in you, Priya. Please go outside for the rest of the lesson. And
next time you want to watch a goat dance, try to think about the consequences.”
Priya got up and left the
classroom. She stood outside feeling a burning mix of shame and anger. It
wasn’t her fault any of this had happened. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She
knew Mrs Lufthausen took it personally, but if anything, it was a big
compliment that it was only in her lessons that Priya fell asleep. It was just
so warm and cosy in that classroom, with the sun streaming in from outside, Mei
and Sami sitting on either side of her, and Mrs Lufthausen’s monotonous voice
explaining the wonderfully stable predictability of algebraic equations. It was
a complete contrast to Priya’s morning – her parents arguing as per always,
Pinkie making everyone late, and Priya panicking because she couldn’t find her
brand new trainers. It turned out Pinkie had decided to “decorate” them with a
permanent black marker and when Priya had shouted at her, their mum had rushed
in to console Pinkie, not Priya. If that wasn’t bad enough, she’d then
told Priya off for “upsetting her younger sister”. The unfairness of it all had
left Priya speechless, and by the time she’d found her voice again, nobody had
time to listen to her. They were late to drop her off for gymnastics. Which
meant that when she arrived, her coach Olaf had told her off for her poor
punctuality in front of everyone. In front of Dan Zhang.
Priya thought that would be the
most humiliating moment of her day – until she was kicked out of maths. How was
Dan ever going to realize he was the love of her life when the only time he saw
her she was being told off like a schoolgirl? Okay, she was technically a
schoolgirl – and he was also a schoolboy, at the boys’ school next door to hers
– but that wasn’t the point. Dan was in Year Nine – a whole year above Priya –
and everyone knew boys liked sophisticated girls. Priya was going to have to
try extra hard to prove her maturity if he was ever going to fall for her. She
looked forlornly down at her bright purple and white New Balances, which were
now decorated with wobbly smiley faces. This was not a good start.
Radhika writes regularly for the Daily
Telegraph, Daily Mail, Elle, Guardian, Grazia, Glamour and Cosmopolitan; was
recently featured in Italian Vogue as well as BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour and is a
regular guest on Sky News and Good Morning Britain. She is also a TedX speaker
on body positivity, a yoga teacher and runs a charity initiative with AgeUK
fighting loneliness in older women.
