Such The Liar Painted Me

4. The Party That Was My Last

Such days passed. With each unsteady breath I took, I managed to scare away Matt Jones, my first boyfriend with whom I had spent my senior year, and now again I had to woo him. Talk about double work cut out for you...I mean, I’m so stumped at the ‘how’ that I can’t even focus on the ‘when’ and ‘why’. 

Around me, stares were shifting, hands were being wrung, and every now and then my notebook observed a momentary shadow bob up and down as my classmates tried to duck their desks— to avoid being called to the front of the class and prove the number of radians of a circle is 2π. 

But the devil with his hair dancing like electrodes kept grinning, according to me, while he drawled out random roll calls in a monotonous voice.

I tried to focus myself, recall the page I was practicing the previous evening, frustrated that even while knowing what would happen the whole year, I couldn’t remember any of my tests or the rote-learned syllabus. 

I just couldn’t approve of the whole ‘travelling back in past’ theory, because it felt wrong. Either there was a reality of which everyone together is a part, or the whole time my brain had gone through a premonition phase. But the party at Mads...it was just so real. 

Of course, it was real. I’d for the first time kissed Matt, after waiting the whole damn year. Now how should I react? Believe all of this was just a figment of my imagination? And that how I’m living is real, and my memories are not? 

That suddenly everyone was an inch or two shorter, that I knew everything and things were happening as if I’d been a spectator once too?

The powdered lead of my blunt pencil staining my fingers reminded me of how alone I was in the classroom. I might’ve even interacted with all of these people, but all they were now... spelled strangers to me.

Sitting in the middle row had its benefits, but for now, I didn’t want to be the centre of attention who might be found dead on her desk just because of a silly dream. 

Silly. 

I chuckled. I abandoned any hope of having an answer for the devil and my flux reality, and stretched my legs. I knew how this was gonna go.

Anytime soon, I would hear my roll call like a lucky draw spin, approach the black board mocking me, and be made fun of by the professor, be the reason for the first ripple of laughter through the class. 

Somehow I was able to keep quiet, often accompanied by Vera and Sophie, who unnaturally too didn’t sport a ‘I told you so’ smirk. But this time we were in pumps, mini cut dresses, and solo cups in our hands. We had stepped into the first party of the week, by the looks of which, it was in full swing.

Sophie was fussing over my glasses, but a glare stitched her lips together. Not a word had been exchanged between my brunette friend and her; maybe because Vera had confessed to me she hated Sophie.