Club You to Death by Anuja Chauhan (books to improve english .TXT) 📕

‘Ah.’ Bambi takes a while to digest this.

‘You don’t think it likely?’ Kashi asks.

Bambi shrugs. ‘He’s an official weirdo. He’s had a bad rep for years, but even then, killing a whole human being and burying them sounds a little too high-energy for him. He’s pretty lethargic. As in, constantly stoned.’

‘Well, he would have had Guppie Ram ji’s help,’ Kashi replies.

She gasps, wide-eyed. ‘What?’

He nods. ‘Yeah, that’s what the ACP said – they’ve found a video recording of Guppie Ram ji talking mysteriously to Leo about a body he helped somebody bury in the kitchen garden.’

‘What? OhmuhGod, Kash! They dug up the kitchen garden because of something Guppie Ram ji said? He was their source?’ She shakes her head. ‘Wow, didn’t you tell them that Guppie Ram just like, made shit up all the time? Remember when he told us a huge-ass cobra bit him, and he sucked out the poison himself, and it turned his tongue blue, when actually he’d just been eating jamuns?’

‘And he said Katrina Kaif and Johnny Lever were sitting in the Rose Garden and we both went running like idiots to see, and it was just gorgeous Urvashi Auntie and ugly Mukki uncle!’ Kashi recalls. ‘Yeah, he always exaggerated the fuck out of stuff.’

She nods. ‘Which is why he was nicknamed Guppie Ram. His real name was Ram Gopal.’

‘But they really did find a dead body there, Bam.’

She shrugs. ‘Even if they did – it doesn’t prove that Guppie Ram’s story of helping somebody bury a murder victim there was true! He could’ve just found a couple of old bones there while he was digging about the garden! And then he made up a whole story just to take the piss out of Leo. I can just see him doing it!’

‘Hey!’ Walli calls plaintively from the front seat. ‘I think we’re circling the same area again and again. Provide some direction, bro!’

They reach the party house fifteen minutes later, guided more by the loud house music than the GPS. It is a poolside rave at Sia Kapoor’s farmhouse in Chhatarpur, a location Bambi and Kashi remember well from a bunch of over-the-top birthday parties Sia had thrown in their childhood.

‘I hate Sia Kapoor,’ Bambi mutters as the guards at the gate wave them through. ‘She hugs me so hard every time she sees me – it’s like she’s trying to stab me to death with her super-pointy boobs.’

‘I like her already,’ Kalra says happily. ‘But this farmhouse is so extra, bro! Is her dad an arms dealer?’

Bambi frowns. ‘He makes steel, I think,’ she says doubtfully. ‘She is so going to pass out when she sees me. I haven’t attended any of her dumb parties for years! Listen, I hope you guys are wearing costumes underneath? These guys just throw you in the pool randomly sometimes. But it’s heated, so that’s okay.’

Saying which, she tugs her dress lower over her luscious little butt, flat palms the massive double doors and walks into a huge lobby.

As anticipated, the Ghia-Laukis do almost pass out at the sight of Bambi Todi entering the party hand in hand with Kashi Dogra. Sia Kapoor, lounging in the lobby on a fibre-glass couch, dressed only in a flame-orange bikini and too many pearls, staggers to her feet, clearing mascara out of her eyes.

‘Ohhhhmyyyygawd!!!’ she screams. ‘I am so dhanya! I am so blessed! I wish I had rose petals to scatter at your feet, ya! Look who’s heeeeere, guys! Bambi Todi and Kashi Dogra and some cute Doscosssssss!’

Slapping palms and kissing cheeks all around, they enter the massive beach-style farmhouse, all hung about with fairy lights and exotic tropical blooms. Bollywood music is pumping on the speakers and there is a huge glass bar where, back in the old days, a bouncy castle used to be.

‘So not my scene, bro,’ Bambi mutters fervently into Kashi’s ear, and he registers the last word with a slight shock. He’s not sure he is spiritually evolved enough to not resent being bro-ed by his ex.

‘Mine neither,’ he whispers back. ‘D’you want a drink?’

She nods. ‘Sprite. Can you bring it to the pool? Where’d your friends go?’

They look around, and realize that Walli and Kalra have already been swept up into the party – one is at the centre of a group of lonely looking girls who are clearly hanging onto his every word, and the other is being applauded for potting a difficult shot by a gang of jocks at the pool table.

‘Hmm, nice,’ Bambi concedes, reluctantly impressed. ‘At least they don’t need babysitting!’

Saying which, she twists her hair into a casual topknot, then reaches down, grabs the edge of her black dress and pulls it up and off in one smooth move. She chucks it on a chair already festooned with assorted garments and walks to the pool dressed in a black-and-pink halter-topped bikini and a slim black anklet.

Kashi stares at the slender, cinnamon body till it dives gracefully into the crowded pool to a chorus of welcoming whoops, then turns around to get his drink. The tips of his ears are flaming red and his throat is dry.

‘Two Sprites, please.’

He walks with the cans to the pool, and looks around for Bambi. She is sitting right across the pool, with her feet dangling in the water in the centre of a gaggle of joint-smokers, giggling and splashing and holding forth in a high-pitched voice that he can immediately tell is not very natural.

‘Shut uppppp!’ she is saying to a muscular man with shiny, emerald-green fingernails. ‘You – and all the other gay guys were the ones with a crush on Jaibeer Kanodia! I just said I was crushing on him out of sheer queer pressure!’

‘Well, we turned out to be right about him, didn’t we?’ the guy retorts. ‘JK was on the spectrum! He came out with a vengeance and is currently the hottest mechanical engineer in the Bay Area!’

‘Bam, your drink!’ Kashi holds it up from across the