Love in Bombay
- Evie Burns is the love of young Saleem's life. An American with braces, a gun, a bicycle, and a bad attitude, she becomes the leader of Saleem's group of friends. She even becomes friends with the grown-ups!
- The story with Evie starts with Sonny, who's in love with Brass Monkey. Like we said before, she doesn't take too kindly to the whole love thing.
- So she tortures him, and even strips him naked in the middle of the road one day before school. Sonny and Saleem make a trade. Sonny will talk to Evie for Saleem, and Saleem will talk to Brass Monkey for Sonny.
- It's a no go for both sides, though it turns out that Evie has a little crush on Sonny.
- Even though he's been rejected, Saleem still tries to win Evie over. He tries to impress her with his bicycle riding. There's one small problem, though—he doesn't know how to ride a bike.
- So Saleem ends up flying down a hill and hitting his head, unleashing some new level of telepathy that he doesn't have time to explore because now he has to go to a family reunion. Typical.
- One good thing does happen: He learns how to ride a bike. But when he gets back home, no one wants to pay attention to him and his awesome bike skills because the language marchers are protesting in the street below the Estates, and nobody's ever seen something like that before.
- When he realizes that Evie's not going to be impressed by his bike riding, he probes deep into her thoughts, deeper than he's ever gone before. So deep that she can feel him in there.
- Gross.
- When Evie realizes that Saleem's in her head, she pushes him down the hill and he ends up in the middle of the language protest.
- Even though he doesn't get a girlfriend, he gets something else. Saleem now knows how to go deep into someone's thoughts, and he knows that they will know he's there.