Why did everything seem so demanding, all of a sudden? And why did it seem to be easy for everyone else? Those Shark people were actually laughing at the difficulty level of the test. Was I even made for this? The 1 per cent that I was trying to fit into, how would I ever get there? I could finally feel the dread catching up. The dread that had been following me all throughout tenth grade, and I’d ignored it throughout. The dreadful feeling of knowing that I wasn’t actually smart. Avani, a tenth-grade student, has been living in a bubble—she gets top grades at school, loves to read and spends way too much time on her laptop, despite her mother’s disapproving glares. Her life seems perfect—until she is faced with the consequences of a life-altering decision: she decides to prepare for one of the most competitive entrance exams in the world. Thrust into the cut-throat world of IIT JEE coaching in eleventh grade, she is determined to disprove her mother’s doubts about her abilities, live up to her father’s expectations of being a ‘smart kid’ and be on a par with her peers or even better. Will Avani be able to balance exam stress, her interests, new and old friendships, crushes, her parents’ expectations and still be the ‘best’? About the Author: Ishita Agarwal has spent most of her teenage years in Chandigarh, India. A software engineer by profession, she is passionate about storytelling. She started writing her first novel as a lonely fifth-grader and has been writing thereafter. Her debut novel Lieable was published in 2013. Her hobbies include reading, playing video games (including The Sims 3, of course), watching in-depth fictional character analysis videos on YouTube and baking desserts. She hopes that Indian teenagers will have access to a wider range of books they can identify with in the coming years. Teen Machine is her second published novel.