Uncharted (Jersey Girls Book 3)
Uncharted
Lisa-Marie Cabrelli
Contents
1. Nandita - Bad News
2. Nandita – The Green Mile
3. Claire – The Stalker
4. Claire – The Secret
5. Nandita – The Solution
6. Ravi – The Letter
7. Nandita – The Bestie
8. Claire – The Dress
9. Sally – The Fight
10. Claire – The Apartment
11. Nandita – The Fair
12. Ravi – The Mistake
13. Ravi – The Job
14. Nandita – The Plan B
15. Claire – The Confession
16. Nandita – The Interview
17. Ravi – The Beginning
18. Claire – The Gang
19. Sally – The Eavesdropper
20. Ravi – The Coffee Date
21. Nandita – The Traitor
22. Ravi – The Decision
23. Nandita – The Gamechanger
24. Claire – The Plan B
25. Ravi – The Pickup
26. Nandita – The Picnic
27. Claire – The Glimpse
28. Sally – The Gift
29. Nandita – The Fiancée
30. Claire – The Announcement
31. Nandita – The Announcement
32. Nandita – The Door
33. Ravi – The Email
34. Nandita – The Realization
35. Ravi – The Mistake
36. Claire – The Collision
37. Nandita – The Departure
38. Claire – The Conspiracy
39. Nandita – The Bottom
40. Nandita – The Ally
41. Ravi – Again
42. Nandita – The Photo
43. Claire – The Past
44. Ravi – The Test
45. Ravi – The Quest
46. Nandita – The News
47. Nandita – The Wedding
48. Nandita – The Reception
49. Ravi – The Homecoming
50. Nandita – The Dream
51. Claire – The Ever After
52. The Lit Chicks
Also by Lisa-Marie Cabrelli
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Nandita - Bad News
The envelope shook in Nandita’s hand. This was the moment she had waited weeks for. She turned the envelope over in her hands, admiring the creamy, expensive stationery, and stroked her thumb over the return address: Princeton University.
The walls in this tiny bathroom loomed as if they, too, were standing by to watch her future appear before her in glorious technicolor. Finally, her acceptance letter was here. This envelope was her destiny—the future she alone had engineered—and there was no plan B.
She tucked her finger under the flap and tugged when there was suddenly a thundering knock on the door.
Sally’s muffled voice reached her ears, “Oh no, you don’t! Let me in!”
Nandita sighed. Her friend couldn’t stand being left out of anything. As she eased the bathroom door open a few inches, Sally forced herself through the narrow gap, giving Nandita the chance to catch a quick glimpse of the eager and anxious faces in the living room.
Today she had graduated from Rutgers, and her family and friends had gathered for a small celebratory dinner in the Hoboken loft where Sally lived with her husband, Tod. The celebrations had come to a jarring halt, however, when her older brother, Satish, had arrived clutching this very envelope.
“My apologies, Nandita—I opened the mailbox by accident,” he’d said. Both Satish and his fiancée, Claire, had been under strict instruction not to check the mailbox at their cozy townhouse where they lived together. Nandita had wanted to be the first to have this door to her future in her dainty hands. When Satish had passed her the envelope, she had fled to the bathroom.
Now she slammed the bathroom door shut and turned to Sally, who had perched on the edge of the closed toilet seat.
“Well?” she asked.
“How am I supposed to know? I haven’t opened it yet.” The shake in her voice irritated her; she was as confident and in control as always, wasn’t she?
“What are you waiting for, Nan? Let’s go!” Sally grinned and reached out to grip her forearm, making her wince.
“I need the functionality of my arms to open this envelope, Sally. That’s not helping.”
“Sorry,” Sally withdrew her hand, “I’m just so excited for you!” She didn’t look excited, though—she looked petrified.
Nandita surprised herself as tears rushed to her eyes. “I wasn’t even nervous until now, Sal. I just assumed I would get in. What if I don’t? What then?”
“You will. Just open it.”
Sally was Claire’s best friend, but over the last four years, she had become Nandita's rock. After a tumultuous "escape" from her home country and a disastrous first year in the United States, she realized that, if she wanted to reach her goals, she had to renew her focus. She had sworn off friends, men, and fun so she could dedicate herself to her dreams and plans. It was Sally who had stepped in to fill the gap; if you were in her company, it was impossible to be sad or lonely.
Shaking thoughts of the past from her head, she decided she would focus on the future, and the future was here, in her hands. She had spent her undergraduate years at Rutgers preparing for this moment, taking the right classes, going to the right lectures, and working her backside off in the right internships. A master’s degree in architecture from Princeton was her dream.
The loud tapping of Sally's foot brought Nandita back into the present. One glance at her strained face and she could tell her friend was as scared as she was.
“Okay.” She again slid her finger under the flap of the envelope and pulled, and there was a loud rip. Nandita panicked and dropped the open envelope into her lap, where they both gawked at it.
“Well, come on, Nan. You’re killing me.” There was a second of hesitation, and then Sally grabbed the envelope. She unfolded the single sheet of paper with care, gave the girl a reassuring smile, and read, “‘Thank you for your application to the Princeton University School of Architecture. We regret to inform you…’”
She stuttered to a stop as Nandita felt her heart seize up in her chest. The bathroom went deadly silent until she found her voice, which came out in a strangled whisper. “What?”
Her friend looked up from the letter with panic in her eyes. “Oh, Nan. I’m so sorry.”
Sally moved toward her and wrapped her in her arms, but she didn’t even register the hug.
This could not be happening. Sally had misunderstood. “Wait, what? What does it say?”
“You didn’t get in, Nan. It says they've rejected your application.”
She shook her head firmly. “This is not a funny joke, Sal!”
Nandita snatched the letter and glanced down. The words “we cannot accept you at this time” leapt from the page. She looked up at a tearful Sally and asked, “But how?” When she looked down at the letter again, she hoped she had read it wrong, but there it was. “How can this be? I did everything right!”
They heard a soft knock, and a smiling Claire poked her head in the door. “Can I join the celebra…” Her sentence trailed away as she caught sight of Sally, who, with a complete lack of subtlety, shook her head vigorously.
“Oh, Nandita.”
Claire’s soft, sweet voice was the last straw, and Nandita burst into tears. Her brother’s fiancée squeezed into the room and pulled her into a hug as Sally stood and reached her arms wide around both of them. Sally sent her best friend frantic what-do
-we do-now looks and then there was another timid knock on the door.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Maureen, come in!” Nandita couldn’t help the giggle that escaped through her tears. It was such a farce, all of them crammed into this tiny powder room.
Maureen, another of Claire’s best friends, squeezed in and stretched her arms as wide as she could around the group. “I’m assuming we're not celebrating,” she said as she reached awkwardly to wipe tears from Nandita’s face.
“No, we are not,” Nandita said. The mob had pushed her against the porcelain sink, and she felt a stab of pain in her hip, but dismissed it—she had bigger problems to deal with. Through her tears, she could just make out three pairs of concerned eyes staring at her. “What did I do it all for?" she asked them. "This past four years, I’ve had no friends, no men, no parties, and no life.”
“You have a life, Nan, and you have friends. You have us!” Sally tried to reach over to pat her shoulder, but ended up whacking Claire in the nose.
“Ouch!” As Claire raised her hand to rub her nose, she poked Maureen in the eye.
“Sally!” Maureen said, bringing the heel of her hand to her watering eye.
“Me?” Sally asked. “That was Claire!” She tried to step back from the group hug, but slammed her calf into the toilet seat. “Fudge!” she shouted while hopping on her other leg and gripping the shoulders of Maureen and Claire, who both yelled and tried to push her off.
Nandita’s tears didn’t stop, but she couldn’t help chuckling. These were her big sisters—her family. What would she do without them? “I think we should leave this bathroom before someone gets killed.”
Maureen leaned on the door handle and the group tumbled out of the cramped space, stumbling over each other and swearing. The graduate waited until they were all out before grabbing the bathroom door and swinging it closed.
She picked up the letter, which shook in her hands, from where it had fallen to the floor. How was it possible that ten lines of text could change a person’s life in an instant? Where did she go from here? She was unmoored without the satisfying sense of control that had become her trademark. Nandita decided she would do something, and then she made it happen—she was in control—but not anymore.
After crumpling up the letter, she dropped it into the wastebasket at her feet. She stared at it for a few more moments and then gave the basket a swift and violent kick. This was the single most horrible moment of her entire life. Well, at least she knew what rock-bottom looked like. It couldn’t get any worse than this, could it?
2
Nandita – The Green Mile
Nandita emerged from the bathroom shocked and silenced. When she lifted her gaze to the room, she found herself looking into the kind and worried eyes of her older brother, and she lost it. Satish grabbed her in a bear hug and walked her to the couch, where he carefully sat her down and presented her with a fat box of Kleenex. Her darling big brother was always prepared.
The party had fallen silent, the celebration sucked from the room. Now, they all hovered around the couch, exchanging troubled glances as she sobbed.
“I’m so sorry, Nandita,” Stephen, Maureen’s boyfriend, stepped forward and crouched, resting his hand on the girl’s knee.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Bad luck.”
“Sucks.”
“Thanks, guys.” She couldn’t look up at their distressed faces—it made her feel worse, like she had let them all down.
She leaned her head further into the crook of Satish’s shoulder, and he squeezed his arms tighter. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “We’ll sort it all out.”
“You could just say ‘I told you so,’” she sniffled.
“Now, why would I do that?” The tenderness in his voice made her feel guilty. Although he had been arguing with her on the subject of graduate school for almost two years, he would never rub her failure in her face.
Satish didn’t want her to go to another school. Instead, he wanted her to go back to their family in India and mend fences. This seemed unfair to her, since he was unwilling to do the same; their father remained furious with both of them.
“Time for a cup of tea!” Sally said as she pushed past the couch to the kitchen to fill the giant, silver kettle.
Claire moved to the table and cut slices of the white chocolate raspberry graduation cake. “We can have it with cake—that will cheer us up.”
Stephen flopped onto the opposite couch and pulled Maureen onto his lap to wrap his arms around her. “Cake and tea. What could be sweeter?” He winked at her as she smiled and playfully smacked his head.
“Not the time for jokes,” she whispered.
Nandita watched the deflated partygoers sit down around her in a wall of sympathy as Sally and Claire rushed around, preparing tea and cake. She had the best family, but at this moment, even with them around her, she felt awash with loneliness.
When she had first arrived at Rutgers after running away from her home and arranged marriage in India, she had been desperate for American friends. A girl named Misty, who’d been popular, fun, gregarious, and the complete opposite of Nandita, had swept her off of her feet. Misty had been everything Nandita imagined an American girl would be.
She had then met Brad, a wealthy, attractive, and exciting investor friend of Sally’s and Tod’s who was aggressive in his ardor as he begun to woo her. Her nature and upbringing had told her to stay away, but Misty had persuaded her to dive into the adventure. They had run off to meet Brad in the Bahamas, and the entire experience had been a nightmare. Her so-called friend had abandoned her for a big party and a showy playboy and Brad had turned out to be trouble. She had been lucky that Maureen and Stephen had arrived and saved her from any real, lasting effects from her misadventure.
It had ended with the revelation that Misty’s mother had abandoned her, and she’d had nowhere to go. Claire and Satish had kindly taken her in, but it had all been the catalyst for Nandita’s conversion to the person she was now: friendless, sad, and rejected.
During the three weeks Misty had lived with them, Nandita had seen her true colors. She had given her the benefit of the doubt time after time, but it was clear she was a troubled girl. She had led Nandita into more trouble with parties and missed curfews, and her stress and anxiety had exploded as they’d missed classes, failed tests, and generally put school on the back burner. She’d realized Misty was turning her into someone she didn’t wish to be. After a tearful confession to her brother, Satish had intervened and hunted down the girl’s father. Misty was now living in Michigan and attending Michigan State, but they were no longer in touch.
Her involvement with the troubled Misty and the awful trip to the Bahamas had taught Nandita that, if she wanted to realize her goal of becoming an American citizen, she needed to focus. That meant no diversions, including any communication with India, as it made her too sad. She’d decided no men, no friends, and no distractions, and she had lived with that mantra ever since.
Tod’s voice brought her back to the present. “Well, there is one silver lining,” he said as he accepted a piece of cake from Claire.
“Oh yeah? What’s that, babe?” Sally called from across the kitchen. “What could you possibly see as a silver lining in this disaster?” She was clearly kidding, but her words were harsh, and Nandita looked up at Tod in surprise.
He flushed and shrugged. “The wedding is at the end of July. That’s a silver lining, right?”
“That’s true.” Claire had crouched down in front of Nandita to hand her a piece of cake. She smiled. “See? We have the wedding to look forward to, and you will be my most beautiful bridesmaid.”
“Hey!” yelled Sally and Maureen in unison.
“Yeah, it’s something to look forward to, but I really meant the timing,” Tod said through a mouthful of cake.
There was a bang as Sally slammed down the kettle she had been pouring from and bugged her eyes out at Tod. “Shush!” she shouted. “Shush right now!”
Tod stared at her in confusion. “What?” He turned to Nandita. “You only have sixty days left on your visa and you can’t stay without graduate school, right? I thought that's why you were so upset?”
At his words, the room seemed to expand around her. The floor stretched outward to impossible lengths and the walls bulged. She felt herself shrinking and then floating from her body. Now she was watching the scene from above, and she saw herself curled on the couch below while everyone stared at her with frantic eyes.
“Way to stick your foot in it, Tod,” she heard Sally say from far away.
Was she having a panic attack?
“Nandita!” Satish said sharply, and suddenly she was back in her body. The panic didn’t fade though.
She knew about her visa—of course she did—but she had forgotten. It hadn’t been something to worry about, since she’d expected to get into Princeton, extending her visa. What would she do now though? Satish squeezed her arm. He was getting exactly what he wanted: she would have to go back to India.
She pushed him away, her heart pounding. “I guess you’re happy,” she spat.
“Nandita, of course I’m not happy,” he said. “I do believe you should go back to India, at least for a while, but I want you to be happy. This does not please me—please know that.”