Count Me In

The start of the novel introduces the main characters, Karina Chopra and Chris Daniels, and sets up the unexpected experiences, conflicts, and relationships they will have to confront in seventh grade. One key relationship is the one between Karina and Chris. They begin the novel as adversaries, allowing Bajaj to chronicle their growing closeness and eventual friendship. Therefore, the start of the school year acts as the novel’s inciting incident and instigates the narrative tension and action. Although Karina and Chris have been “next-door neighbors” and classmates “since [Karina] moved to the neighborhood” (1), they have never been close. One reason Karina and Chris see one another as strangers is that they have different interests, and are in different friend groups and social spheres. While Karina reads books, gets along with her teachers, and takes photos as a hobby, Chris struggles with his classwork, plays basketball, and hangs out with a group of unfriendly boys. They may ride the same bus and share a backyard fence, but Karina and Chris are, as Karina describes, “like separate planets orbiting in the same galaxy” (1). This metaphor illustrates how different the two protagonists seem to one another and how little involvement they have in one another’s lives. They may exist in the same setting, but their paths do not cross or overlap. Most importantly, Karina sees Chris as a threat to her identity, safety, and comfort because of his involvement in a bullying incident that took place at the start of sixth grade. Chris failed to stand up for Karina when his friends teased her about her appearance and parts of her cultural identity: They made fun of the hair on her arms and the smell of the food that she ate. In the present, Karina continues to be angry and disappointed with Chris for being a part of this clique, while Chris feels guilty about going along with his friends and embarrassed for not apologizing.

The tension between Karina and Chris introduces important thematic explorations. As a young Indian American girl and a third-generation immigrant, Karina is familiar with the way that other white Americans have mistreated, prejudiced, and harmed South Asian immigrants since “the Twin Towers tumbled and terror came to [American] shores” (6). However, until the sixth grade, these upsetting stories were not a part of Karina’s immediate experience. Thus, the immediacy of Chris’s friend group’s bullying makes Karina question who she is in fear that she is too different from her classmates to belong. In the narrative present, although a year has passed since Chris’s friends criticized Karina’s arm hair and Quinn wrote her the bullying note, Karina is still worrying about these verbal attacks. Her continued upset over these dynamics illustrates the ways in which racism and prejudice impact their targets.

Karina’s first-person point-of-view narration reveals her determined spirit and resilient state of mind. She acknowledges the pain that Chris and his friends have caused her. However, she refuses to let their unkindness bring her down. Karina attempts to rely on self-talk, her family, and hobbies to minimize the adversity she is facing at school, showing different versions of Self-Advocacy and Resilience. At the end of Chapter 1, Karina tries to dismiss her ongoing worries about Chris by telling herself that she is not going to let herself “be distracted by Chris Daniels,” that “tomorrow will be different” and that she is “determined to have a good year and to do well” (7). This strategy redirects her anxious inner monologue into something more productive. Karina also reminds herself that her grandfather is coming to live with her and that she has a photography hobby that she cares about, calling on her art and her grandfather’s wisdom to improve her mood and outlook. In these ways, the narrative establishes Karina as a hard-working, persistent, and strong-willed character.

When Karina’s grandfather starts tutoring Chris, their worlds increasingly intersect. The more time the characters end up spending together, the more curious they become about each other, though as yet they remain unsure how to make up for the conflicts that happened between them in the past. At the same time, the novel’s structure allows readers to make connections between Karina and Chris that the characters haven’t yet discovered. Chris’s first-person narration provides a window into his mind and heart, revealing his vulnerabilities in ways that complicate Karina’s wholly negative perspective. Karina may see him as a stranger and a bully, but Chris’s first-person perspective shows that he is sensitive, too: He regrets his unkindness to Karina enough to have stood up for her to his friends; he also has fears, hopes, and worries of his own, such as a difficult dynamic with his father and sadness over his brother moving out. These parallels between the characters foreshadow their eventual coming together, as the novel begins to explore the Power of Friendship and Community.