This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Nandini Bajpai
Cover art copyright © 2021 by Sanno Singh. Cover design by Jenny Kimura.
Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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Poppy
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Originally published in 2013 by Scholastic India Pvt. Ltd. in India
First U.S. Edition: May 2021
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bajpai, Nandini, author.
Title: Sister of the Bollywood bride / by Nandini Bajpai.
Description: First U.S. edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. | “Originally published in 2013 by Scholastic India Pvt. Ltd. in India.” | Audience: Ages 12 & up. | Summary: Seventeen-year-old Mini plans a magnificent Indian wedding—from their deceased mother’s jewelry to a white wedding horse—for her older sister Vinnie, a medical resident, but a hurricane threatens to destroy it all.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043604 | ISBN 9780316705424 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316705431 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316705400 (ebook other)
Subjects: CYAC: Weddings—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | East Indian Americans—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B335 Sis 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043604
ISBNs: 978-0-316-70542-4 (pbk.), 978-0-316-70543-1 (ebook)
E3-20210415-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
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Chapter One
The silver key resting on my palm looked pretty ordinary, but what it unlocked was not. I dropped it back into a tiny envelope that read CUSTOMER KEY, BOX NUMBER: 311 and handed it to the teller.
“You’d like to open your safe-deposit box?” The bank teller’s eyebrows shot up at my request—it clearly wasn’t every day a teenager asked for access to the bank vault.
“Yes, thanks.” I tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, acting casual, though my heart was pounding like a Punjabi dhol.
“Follow me, please.”
The teller came around the counter and led the way to the other end of the small lobby.
Who knew our little Bank of America branch in Westbury, Massachusetts, even had a proper bank vault like in a heist movie or something?
She unlocked two massive doors—one with steel bars, the other studded with gears and bolts—and let me into the strong room. It was insanely solid.
“Three-one-one,” she said under her breath, looking for the matching key in a metallic drawer, then read the numbers off the deposit boxes until she found mine. Both keys had to be inserted and turned simultaneously for the box to open. She pulled the box—long, metallic, coffinlike—out of the locker and handed it to me.
“You can open it in there.” The door she pointed to led into a private closet-sized room.
I shut the narrow door, deposit box clutched tight—and took a deep, deep breath in the tiny space. Probably exhausting its entire oxygen supply, for I was suddenly breathless.
I lifted the lid.
Oh. My. Three hundred and thirty million gods.
Jewelry boxes with clear lids stared back at me, the brilliant yellow of Indian gold gleaming richly through them.
Vinnie was never going to believe this!
Vinnie, my older sister, was the reason I was standing in that bank vault. Always the steady, serious type, Vinnie had recently lost her head, had fallen in love, and was getting married this summer. Also, she had just graduated from medical school and was starting a three-year emergency medicine residency at a hospital in Chicago—which meant she had no time to plan her wedding here in Boston.
Add to this the fact that our dad, still in shock over the whole thing, said he was not paying for a big fat wedding. His five-year fiscal plan involved frugal living and aggressive saving in the year between Vinnie’s graduation and me going off to college—spending lavishly on a wedding did not enter into it in any way, shape, or form.
But getting married she was, and whatever the budget, I was going to make sure that my sister looked fabulous—Indian style.
The only problem? There’s one thing an Indian bride can’t do without—gold. Twenty-two-karat gold. And a couple of ounces of that stuff probably cost more than my secondhand car.
Not to worry, Dad said—evidently Mom left us some jewelry, information no one bothered to share with me before—just take the safe-deposit box key and check it out.
I untied the strings of a deep blue velvet pouch and emptied its glittering contents into my cupped hand. More jewelry. I knew this stuff. Some of it was heirloom old—passed down from my nani. Some of it was new. Kind of. Mom had had it made for Vinnie and me.
I opened a box. A note with my name and a date in Mom’s neat handwriting—strange how I recognized it instantly—was tucked under the necklace. I touched the dainty peacock with turquoise feathers and
