By Maulik Pancholy
Rahul, a gay Indian American boy in a small Indiana town, takes his grandfather's advice to heart and bets his whole seventh-grade year on being the best at one thing.
Rahul Kapoor is starting seventh grade in a small Indiana town, and his grandfather, Bhai, hands him a plan: pick one thing you're good at and be the best at it. Rahul grabs hold of it. If he can top the Mathletes standings, or win at anything, maybe the boy who's been needling him will lay off, maybe he'll stop noticing the way he looks a half-second too long at a boy named Justin, maybe the anxious thoughts that circle his head will finally settle. His fierce best friend Chelsea is all in with him. But being the best doesn't touch the thing he's really scared of, which is working out who he is and being okay with it.
It's funny long before it's anything else, so your child falls for Rahul's voice, sarcastic and anxious and trying way too hard, well before the heavier feelings arrive. Pancholy carries three things at once: Rahul being gay, being the only Indian American boy in most rooms he walks into, and living with OCD. He never turns any of them into a lesson. Rahul is just a person you come to love, fumbling his way toward liking himself. Mine quoted his panicky inner monologue back at me for a week.