Till The Count Of Five ✓

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

I'm a coward, not a drunkard. And I want you back next to me with everyone else, including her. Maybe, this time, we'd all be friends like we never got a chance to be.

Vee

11th May 2019, Saturday
8:00

I had told her that I did not care, that I just wanted her back. Did she not hear? I had asked her if she was alright and she had lied straight at my face. I still did not care. She just had to wake up and I'd forget it all. And I couldn't even say that about Ashiamma. I pinched my wrist and flinched at the sudden reaction of my nerve cells. This was not fair. None of this was.

No one bothered saying me anything. I was only told she had gone far. I didn't understand if they meant far from her house, or gone. My knuckles pressed on the surface of the metallic stool and I dropped my head, telling myself to breathe. Breathe because only then I would be able to see her. Yes, she'd be here soon smiling like an idiot. The beads in my pocket told me so.

Was she right there in front of my house when I called her? I hoped not. It was all my fault. If I had looked out for a moment, a single small moment, I could have pulled her from this madness.

"She jumped."

I did not believe that. I didn't. I had to hear it from her to believe it. Yet, when those words were spoken to her mother, when she had collapsed on the floor and I could not bear to look inside the house that smelled of her, I had seen her mother shake her head with disappointment. She had sat there on the floor, wailing until it had died down and she had whispered those words which everyone missed.

"I should have known."

She should've known. Known what? I saw Shay. I knew her, unlike Ashiamma. I knew she'd never do this. Did I miss a sign? Did she tell me when I was not listening? The scream that built in me found its way out through my fingertips that pulled my hair.

"So, I heard you got your hair done," Shay asked. She laughed at my alarmed eyes. "Ash told me you got some treatment done. Damn, Vicky, I didn't know you knew all this stuff."

"I haven't done anything. It's just a homemade thing Mummy gave the other day because my hair 'has the potential of being the master type'," I said like it was the most normal thing. Ash had told me it wasn't.

Shay's eyes sparkled. "Well, mothers do that. And it's showing off the effect." At least someone thought it was normal.

I let the layers pass through my hand and asked almost spontaneously, "They look good?"

She laughed and touched them. "Amazing."

She had given away nothing, not at the warehouse, not in the school, not when I went to her house, the doe eyes had just stared at me, that quiet mouth which opened only to pass a remark when we worked or those hands that moved animatedly when she said anything. I simply could not comprehend. How? All I remembered was her quiet laugh and wrinkled forehead while she painted. All I remembered was the dragon and the playful smile she had when she took her necklace from me. I remembered her unlike these people here wailing. Her mother cried silently in a corner while her father stood at the door of her room with a grim look, hands thrusted in his pockets.

"Vicky," Mahi Uncle said.

I looked up and asked, "How is she?"

He shook his head. "They're trying. I can't really go and pry much. I checked her previous wounds."