Dear Diary,
Change is inevitable. It makes everything vulnerable, gives things a new light to shine in. It makes life... changeable.
Change is what makes us weak, and at the same time, strong. It tests our patience, our endurance to bullshit, our taste for a challenge, us. It makes us realize that nothing stays the same. It makes us smarter, wiser, knowledgeable.
So why do I hate it then, the change? Why can't I stand the sight of him? Why is it that I can't even handle a small move across the country when it's for everything I believe in, everything I'm good at?
Because... it's a change. And probably not for the better.
♬ ♭
Chapter three
Dinner, according to Sakhi, could have been far, far worse. Lily-Anne arrived at the table precisely twenty minutes after everyone had already settled in and proceeded to sit in Sanjay’s chair.
It’s just a chair, Sakhi.
Sakhi felt her fists clench beneath the table top, her eyes threatening to pop out as her father spoke of his day, his work, his archaeology, his life. Francis merely drank her wine as she swatted away Lily-Anne’s hand from the bowl of bread and handed her a fork. For sometime Sakhi wondered if that meant the girl had to get the bread out that way. Then, she watched Lily-Anne sulkily eat away at the salad on her plate. It almost made her snort.
“Which reminds me, Lily,” Francis spoke. “Have you found a suitable cello teacher?”
“You play the cello?” Harold asked with the surprise evident in his voice. “You must play for us.”
Sakhi pretended to play with the chicken on her plate, ignoring how this little fact had indeed surprised her. Maybe the girl wasn’t all stupid.
“I don’t play for people, and no, I didn't find a teacher yet, mother.”
Sakhi told herself it wasn’t her place to call her words in her head, even if it wasn’t to her face. She wasn’t normal, though, this Lily-Anne Campbell. Probably even a little bit of an egotistical retard. Sakhi didn’t know what was worse, that she sat there judging, or that she sat there judging a sixteen year old. What that said about her was something Sakhi didn’t allow herself to dwell on.
“Lily likes to throw her weight around, Harold. You’ll hear her through the not so sound proof door she likes to shut every now and then.”
Francis had a good hand on her daughter, at least. The fact gave Sakhi little or no consolation. Lord knew what the girl would do tomorrow, or the day after, or right this moment, for that matter. It made her want to stand up and lock all the doors and draw the curtains close on all the windows, probably even seal the small openings and cracks here and there shut. Would that prevent the apocalypse from occurring? No. Not really.
“I’ll go play on the streets.” Lily-Anne threatened idly.
“For everyone else to pry? I don’t think so, love. Have a little more of the chicken. Sakhi, this is absolutely lovely. Thank you for dinner.”
Harold smiled at her, while Lily-Anne didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow.
“How was your day, Sakhi?” her father asked as she cleared the dishes.
“The same,” she replied, nonplussed and distracted. It was so silly, obsessing over a sixteen year old living in her (old) bedroom. “I’m very tired though.”
“I can imagine.” Harold patted her head before continuing. “I’m... sorry for this.”
Sakhi looked at him then, between scrubbing the dishes. The sound of the rubber gloves against the used china and froth was rather irritating, but she didn’t dare stop. This looked like one hell of a conversation... and apology.
“I’m sorry... I know everything’s different. I know you’re finding it hard. And...” her father paused to take in the look on his daughter’s face. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Sakhi smiled before giving her father a handless hug, kissing the side of his cheek sloppily before pulling away.
“I’ll always love you, daddy. Now, off to bed. Those people at the museum can’t manage without their curator, I’m sure.”
Sakhi watched Harold nod, as if unconvinced of her smooth, yet clear, lie. He kissed her forehead, ruffled her hair, and then walked away. As he climbed the flight of the stairs from the kitchen, she realized how little she’d taken into account her father’s feelings. Maybe she’d lost a mother, but he’d lost his wife, and that seems to be a whole load harder than anything else.
That doesn’t mean you remarry and move on.
Yes, actually, Sakhi told herself, it means exactly that.
♯
A few minutes to eleven, Sakhi finally got on Skype and video-called her best friend. They hadn’t spoken, via text or phone, in days. It wasn’t good for her health not to vent. She’d lost touch with bottling up her emotions and being alone. She did not dare let herself be alone, not under any circumstances. Alone meant...
“Sakhi?” Yasmine’s voice came before the video kicked in. “Just a second.”
Sakhi moved to her new bed, testing the mattress before realizing she’d yet to change out of her work clothes. Instead of doing the smart thing and changing right that second, she waited it out and sat on the bed. A second later, she sank into the pillows behind her, her HP now on her bent knees.
For ten minutes all Sakhi heard were design colours, names of places that sounded awfully French and a lot of cussing. Dear, sweet, Yasmine, her best friend with the perfect long midnight dark hair and perfect peachy and porcelain skin, cussing, on the other side of the world. She’d been absorbed by the dark side, clearly, and Sakhi had never missed her. Some part of her always wished her father married Yasmine’s widowed mother and just gave her the perfect sister. Yasmine was, indeed, more than perfect. She was kind, intelligent and far more than anything anyone pegged her to be.
Just before Sakhi dozed away into oblivion, Yasmine’s nasally voice came into the loudspeakers, and she was definitely being shrill and nasally on purpose.
“That could actually injure someone’s ears.” Sakhi declared as she sat up, not trusting herself to lie down anymore. Lying down on a mattress... hell, just an empty mattress set off the sweet sensation of sleep.
“You’re up, aren’t you? Tell me everything.”
“Well,” Sakhi wanted to trail away, change the topic and forget it ever happened. She didn’t, though. “God awful. Stepsisters are from hell, definitely.”
Yasmine laughed. “I warned you.”
“How did you figure?”
“Sakhi, she’s a teenager. They hate everyone. Add a new stepdad and stepsister to that equation and you do the math.”
Sakhi didn’t bother with that. She sighed and asked about her day instead.
“Oh, it’s all hell. My boss is being the usual bossy devil self and I’m stuck with picking out scarves for the run through tonight. Actually, it’s in the late afternoon, not tonight. I keep saying tonight because I tried to postpone it, but my boss is my boss.”
“Show me some designs.”
“Well,” Yasmine trailed off, pulling the laptop up with her, and Sakhi saw her small studio space, with designer labels and wooden floors. It all looked so chic, with the clothes dangling from every small hook in the room, the belts that appeared every now and then as if from thin air, and the designs that lay forgotten on more than one table across the studio. Sakhi felt envious, and she told Yasmine so on more than one occasion.
“You’re going to find your dream project, and that day you’ll thank God you were ever free.”
“Well, you work for Femme Fatima,” Sakhi told her. “I don’t know how it gets any better than that.”
“When I sign up with Runway, that’s when. Now, look at this.”
Sakhi watched Yasmine go through several dresses of the shades of green and turquoise, netted and laced and skimpy. Sakhi wanted to try all the dresses on and feel marvellous. Yasmine wished she could, too.
“You’re so the perfect size and you wouldn’t bitch around like half the models here do.”
Sakhi tsked her on her cussing and agreed. “I don’t have much of a self esteem to... do what the models do. Hence, I’m a lame old assistant to the book editor.”
“Assistants to book editors are just as sexy as book editors. They’ve got that sexy librarian thing going on. You...” Yasmine looked at what Sakhi was wearing and sighed. “You just hide away your sexy clothes in the closet down the hall. By the way, how’s the guest bedroom working out for you?”
“No comment.” Sakhi mumbled now. She proceeded to take off her glasses then. “Subtext: I hate it here.”
“No kidding. The room’s about half the size of your old one, not to mention the closet and the balcony you've lost for life.”
Sakhi wanted to groan in the shrillest, most nasally voice she could muster up.
“I’m turning in. Unless you’ve got some hot gossip to share, I’ll text you when my so called life-picking-up-moment kicks in.”
Yasmine laughed. “Oh Sakhi, Sakhi... When you say such things, life-picking-up-moments are right around the corner.”
“You’re weird.”
“So are you.”
“I’m in London.”
“Fine, you’re British then.”
“So are you. Good night.”
“That made no sense,” Yasmine told her with a tone of amusement. “But I’ll let it go. You seem to be passing out as we speak. Good night, love. Don't drop your precious HP.”
♯
When Sakhi awoke the next morning, she wondered why she’d fallen asleep in her clothes, the laptop under her pillow, the silence, unnerving. There was only one window in this room, and it was tightly shut and wound up. Sakhi unlocked it, slid it up and stood, looking for some kind of sign, looking for an answer, looking for solace.
Days would pass right in front of her if she stood waiting for such things to happen. Sakhi quietly slid the window shut and pushed the curtains out of the way. Turning around and looking at the room made her realize she needed to get the day started. It may very well be just a little after five, but she had her entire closet to move here and that meant she needed to start now.
Sakhi trotted down the hall to her old bedroom, wondering if Lily-Anne was a light sleeper. She immediately regretted not wearing a pair of socks. The carpeted floor was warm enough, but still cold. The soft creak of the door rang through the air as Sakhi opened it. Then, she stood deathly still.
“What do you want?”
Lily-Anne asked her that as if she wasn’t doing anything silly, which in fact, at the moment, the stupid, stupid girl was. She was doing something silly.
“What are you doing?” Sakhi asked as patiently as possible, trying not to screech or worse, cry.
Lily-Anne had pushed the bed away from the wall and covered the walls with plastic; every wall except the one she was demolishing with a paint brush. Yellow, blue and pink lines were merging messily and rather indelicately, in contrast to the beautiful peach coloured wall she’d left behind less than twenty four hours ago.
“Are you blind?” Lily-Anne stopped to dip the brush in a bucket of pink paint. “I’m redoing your walls.”
Sakhi wanted to ask if she’d asked her father’s permission, or even her mother’s. Lily-Anne didn’t look like the type of girl to ask anyone’s permission, if the truth was told. She looked like she’d run out, tattoo her lower back and run through the town to paint it red with strangers. Deep breaths would solve everything, Sakhi reminded herself. Deep breaths were the secret to life. They would take in the good, and let out the bad. They would let in the positive and take away the negative. They would—
“Your stuff’s in a box. My mum helped me pack it all away.”
Sakhi looked at the box stuffed with all her clothes haphazardly, and while she knew she’d have to redo the laundry on most of them, she still felt the neurotically stupid need to thank the wretched girl who sat killing the walls.
“Just get out, will you.” Lily-Anne flatly responded. It wasn’t even a request. Not that any request out of Lily-Anne’s mouth would have sounded any more polite. Lily-Anne wasn’t capable of politeness.
Sakhi resisted the urge to slam the door shut, closed it in her own quiet, wonderful manner and walked the long walk to the guest room down the hall, already wishing she could sit in the refines of her balcony on a cosy rug with a hot cup of tea.
This was only the second day. Barely twenty four hours had passed since the strange gothic petulant prat of a teenager had moved in with her mum into the house she’d known as home all her life. Change was supposed to be difficult, and as Sakhi put away her clothes into her new, much smaller, closet, she wondered if it was supposed to be impossible. Sakhi arranged her shoes at the end of the closet, admiring how quickly, and efficiently, she’d managed to get the job done. Sakhi then went back to Lily-Anne’s room, which it clearly was now, and got her pictures, photos and posters. The one of team spirit, the one Sanjay had given her for her tenth birthday, was already withering away. Sakhi promised to take a look at it later, rolled it up and put it in the box Lily-Anne had handed her. Now empty, the box would hold all the things that needed to be fixed or be thrown away. The other one was Sanjay's favourite band, The Ramones. With a soft breath, Sakhi put the poster up on a corner by the window, looking rather displeased. She had nothing of her own to put up, other than the photo frames.
Instead of sulking about how easily she lost her identity, she promised to make a quick run to the second hand store before she went into work that day. Sakhi observed the small dressing table, the table by the door and noted how she could fill it with small statues and the like. Maybe she could collect charms and hang them by the curtain hooks.
It was a small reward, but enough to get her started. It was a little after seven, cold and uneasy, but Sakhi knew she had to hold on. She just had to.
♬ ♭