Till The Count Of Five ✓

Chapter 21 (Part 2)

Chapter 21 (Part 2)

Kiara

1st May 2019, Wednesday
13:55

I found absolutely nothing. The replay button might be broken by now but there was nothing. I watched it the tenth time as if it would change and I would see something. It was the same. Kids got on the bus. Conductor cracked some jokes. Somebody took her hand out of the window. All the windows were already open and it was likely that the leaf flew in. And settled just above the note? Before the bus stopped at my house, a third grader got up and sat at the seat I sat on. Then, he got up and got back to the last seat.

I paused the video and tried hard to figure out what happened. Did the kid place something there?

"Are you done?" Nidhi Ma'am asked.

I hummed but did not budge. Her heels clicked against the floor and the screen went black. I looked over it at her. She held the wire in one hand. I had a strong urge to plug her finger inside the socket, maybe all the fingers.

"I need to go back. You need to go too. Now shoo," she said, her bright nails pointed at me and the door.

"We both leave together." This woman knew I was the support she was standing on. I stepped in any one direction and the rope around her neck would choke that sweet voice of hers. I had openly threatened her authority by resigning. This could be her game too, just the note. The warm welcome in the washroom was a beginning of something entirely new. Or maybe the continuation.

We walked to the door and changed our paths, her gaze making sure I didn't go back, mine staying at her face until she was in the lift. I was too busy and failed to notice the mat near the stairs had been folded by a herd of students. My foot entangled in the folds, too close to the stairs to step back. I tried to grab the railing, my heart a beating drum, sweaty hands a reminder of the humiliation they had on them in the cubicle, eyes wide like an owl whose wings - my specs - had been chopped off. First, the edge of one of the steps hit my head, then it poked me in the back and when I thought I was going to die, my wrist twisted and I yelped in pain.

I lay motionless in a corner, wincing at the slightest movement of my fingers which I couldn't stop. I tried to get up but my back did not support the idea.

"Shit," I said.

"Well, shit."

Tushar stood near the mat, his feet well aware of the folds. He picked up my specs and adjusted the mat back to its original, less harmful position. I watched him come down from the same floor I was on moment ago, in a room that was beyond our limits, with the teacher he warned me about. Shit, indeed.

He handed me my specs. "Are you okay?"

"More than okay," I said. "What were you doing u-"

"Kiara?" Nolan emerged, climbing up the stairs, his shirt clinging to his body, greasy hair swept at a side. He had the worst timing in this world.

"Are you okay?" he said.

I groaned in response. "I'm not breathing. I'm dead. Dead."

Both of them scrutinized my head. "She's hurt pretty badly. Must've hit her head."

I pushed their faces away. "I'm fine. You people are exaggerating."

Tushar stepped back. "I should go now. School got over five minutes ago. Get that bump examined by a doctor."

I touched it and winced. But I was thankful that he hadn't see anything, if he had, then at least he didn't mention it.

"-not that bad," Nolan said.