Gatsby
Hans suspected they preyed on him because of his skin color. “It’s because we’re brown,” he said, in the cafeteria line. “That’s why they hurt us.”
“Real men fight back,” Kanti said. “That’s the rule in this country.”
Hans trusted Kanti knew the traditions better than he did. Kanti had come to Michigan before Hans. He was the first Indian at their high school. Hans was the second. They were the darkest students at school, took the same classes, shared a locker, and ate lunch together every day. Hans relied on Kanti for help with his homework and the unwritten rules of high school. Without Kanti, Hans wouldn’t have known that he couldn’t smoke cigarettes in the hallway, talk to girls who wore cross necklaces—no matter how nice they seemed—or sit in the back of the classroom with the jocks or in the front with the serious students. The middle was invisible in America.
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“Fighting doesn’t solve anything,” Hans said. He sat across from Kanti in a corner of the cafeteria, between the CocaCola and Hershey’s vending machines. The school was full of farmers. Boys tucked their Dickies shirts into their carpenter jeans and wore John Deere hats. Girls tugged at their knee-length floral dresses and tied their hair tightly in buns.
Hans told his classmates that he was a farmer too. His family owned land in a small village in northwest India, close to the Pakistan border. They were connected by agriculture and bonded by knowledge of dairy, wheat, and corn. But Hans didn’t own land in Michigan, so according to his classmates, it didn’t matter what he had left back home.
“What would you do if you were me?” Hans said.
“I wouldn’t have looked at Steve’s girlfriend,” Kanti said.
“Everyone looks at the cheerleaders, even the teachers.”
“I like their miniskirts too.”
Hans poked his cold breadsticks with a plastic fork, jealous of the hot dogs and hamburgers on other plates. His sister, Aarti, took him to an astrologer who advised against eating meat if he wanted success in his new country. Hans could use any help he could get. “They’re nice to look at,” he said.
“Hands”
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“Steve is your problem now, not her,” Kanti said. “You have to fight him.”
Steve was a popular football player. He played a position that never touched the ball but tackled others on every play. Kanti said Steve was good. Hans couldn’t tell the difference between Steve and the other players. He only saw overweight boys hitting each other until the referee blew the whistle. The ball would appear from underneath the pile of bodies. Then half the team would run to the sideline and a new group did it again.
“Will you help me?” Hans said.
“Only bad guys ask for interference,” Kanti said.
“But we’re the good guys.”
“Then why is Steve hunting you?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Come over this afternoon and we’ll practice.”
“Practice what?”
“Wrestling,” Kanti said. “I have some tapes of Gorgeous George that will help you.”
“How is TV wrestling going to help me?” Hans said.
“I’ll be waiting out front.” Kanti threw an empty Skittles wrapper on his tray and left the table.
The cafeteria was nearly empty. Most students, including Steve, had traveled to the neighboring county for an afternoon meet, where boys and girls in tiny shorts ran a few kilometers only to end up where they started. Steve had promised to hurt Hans after the meet because Hans had “looked at his girlfriend funny.” Hans didn’t understand why everything was funny in this country. His skin darkened in the spring. That was hilarious. He got pushed into a locker while changing for gym class and his classmates erupted in laughter. They wrote “Paki” on his locker with red lipstick, even though he was from India, not Pakistan. “Funny” was fuel for the American mob.
Hans accidentally bumped into a few classmates in the hallway illuminated with faint tube lights and the dull shine of cinderblocks. Most students wore school colors on Fridays. Hans didn’t have enough money to purchase the gray hoodie with the red emblem of a knight’s helmet. He still relied on his hand-sewn khaki pants and knitted sweaters from back home. The loose clothing hid his scrawny frame, which could help him escape Steve’s grip.
A voice called to him from the end of the hallway. “Look over here.”
Jessica wore a glittery red cheerleader skirt. Her legs were thin but muscular. A gold necklace hung around her neck and crept into the V-neck of her tank top. There was probably a cross hidden in her chest.
“You just did it again,” she said.
“Did what?” Hans said.
“Looked at me funny.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“But you tried.”
“I have to go,” Hans said. He tried passing her, but she stepped in front of him.
“You shady people come here and think you can take everything from us.”
“I don’t need anything from you.”
“You just did it again. You can’t do that.”
“Did what?”
“Tried to see through my clothes.”
“You’re barely wearing any clothes,” Hans said.
“I’m glad Steve is going to kill you after school,” Jessica said.
Why did they want to hurt him? What was he supposed to do, walk around school with his head down? Then they would say it was strange that he didn’t look up while walking or make eye contact with others. “I’m a good guy,” Hans said.
Jessica took a step back. “You’re dead meat, Hands.”
Hans headed for the exit, past lockers decorated with violent monikers calling to “destroy” and “kill” students from the rival school. Violence was an obsession. Each neighboring county in Michigan was like an India versus Pakistan skirmish. They had their own flags, police forces, and hunting lands.
Hans pulled the door handle of the yellow taxi at the roundabout reserved for school buses. It was locked.
“What’s the magic word?” Kanti said, from the driver’s seat.
“Nobody understands that stupid book.”
Kanti lit a cigarette.
“Gatsby,” Hans said.
The lock opened with a loud, echoing click.
“Show me the wrestling tapes,” Hans said.
“What’s gotten into you?” Kanti said, finishing his cigarette while pulling out of the school.
“We deserve to be here as much as they do.”
“Who’s kicking us out?”
“Jessica said I deserve to die.”
“Did you look at her again?”
“Why can’t we look?”
“This is a free country,” Kanti said. “You can look wherever you want.”
Hans hoped to channel his anger into a winning strategy to beat Steve. He wanted Jessica to watch. They always underestimated him and assumed he would run away. This time he would fight back.
“It’s not fair,” Hans said. “These girls throw themselves at guys like Steve and won’t let us even look.”
Kanti leaned over to open the glove compartment. He pulled out a gun. “This is also an option.”
“Put that away,” Hans said, startled.
“It’s my dad’s revolver. He keeps it for protection.”
“Does it work?”
“My dad said it killed three Pakistanis back home.”
“We can’t kill Steve.”
At a stoplight, Kanti rolled down his window and pointed the gun toward the sky. “One look at this thing will scare him off.”
“Don’t shoot,” Hans said.
“Watch this.” Kanti stuck his head out the window. The car drifted into the intersection as his foot slipped off the brake.
“Get back in the car,” Hans said. He covered his ears as multiple loud clicks rang in the empty intersection.
“You’re a chicken,” Kanti said, laughing. He released the empty cylinder and shoved it in Hans’s face. “It’s not loaded.”
Hans grabbed the gun and threw it into the glove compartment. “We’re not murderers.”
“You know we can leave all this,” Kanti said.
“We’re not killing anybody,” Hans said.
“My dad wants me to take over the taxi full-time, day and night.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“Government contracts for trash pickup.”
“There’s money in garbage?”
“The real money is in transporting stuff, not people.”
“What about school?”
“School isn’t for people like us.”
“Because we’re the dark ones here?”
“Because we’re here to make money.”
“How much money?” Hans said.
“Big money,” Kanti said. “Day shift is yours. Nights are mine.”
The thought of a job momentarily numbed Hans’s anger. The money would be nice. He could finally stop eating the free cold meals at the cafeteria and go across the street to Tony and Jim’s, the local pizzeria that sold by the slice.
“Are the taxi customers dangerous?” Hans said.
“You’re not safe at school either,” Kanti said.
They pulled into Kanti’s house, a tiny two-story cube. The gutters above the rusty side panels leaked. Fall leaves smothered the cracked driveway. Soon, snow would suffocate the grass, and Diwali would again be overshadowed by Thanksgiving. His classmates would trade in pencils and jeans for hunting rifles and camo, and Hans would be in remedial classes after another failed semester. The new year would arrive with the same challenges at school.
Hans followed Kanti to the unfinished basement. The furnace hummed amidst open boxes and old furniture. A television with a built-in VCR sat on a lawn chair. The plaid couch facing the television was missing a middle cushion.
“The wrestling tapes are in one of these boxes,” Kanti said.
Hans sifted through a box of turmeric-stained plastic containers, expired bulk bags of lentils and rice, and halfburnt candles. “You really think this is going to work?”
“The first step is thinking like a wrestler,” Kanti said.
“Steve doesn’t want to wrestle. He wants to kill me.”
“Why do you think Steve is so strong?”
“Because he plays sports?”
“Because he watches wrestling.”
“You don’t know anything,” Hans said.
“Steve is in your head,” Kanti said. “Gorgeous George invented ring psychology. He’s the only one who can help you now.”
Pardeep Toor is the winner of the PEN American Dau Prize, and his writing has appeared in the Best Debut Short Stories 2021, Southern Humanities Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and Longreads. His short story collection, “Hands,” (Cornerstone Press) was published in April 2026. He grew up in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, and is currently a librarian in Colorado. More:pardeeptoor.com
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