Song attached: Matt Defreitas cover of Heathens // Ride by Twenty one pilots (Thanks Evie EvelynMysteryScott for introducing me to this amazing boy :'))
Dedication to the new reigning queen of Humour genre and a sweet girl at heart, Sou ( soumya_agrawal ). She's a complete darling, seriously x
t e n
[ s u r p r i s e ]
"I see that you've stopped being a clumsy klutz."
Kiranya glanced at me with a raised eyebrow, her hands continued cleaning the blackboard with the duster.
"You haven't got any bruises lately," I pointed out as I rocked on the balls of my feet.
She didn't say anything but her grip on the duster faltered for a second. "And your updates have become less frequent," I continued and this time she shot me a seething glare.
"Writer's block."
I shut my mouth knowing very well that she'd burst if I pushed her buttons too much. It's been a few days after my surprise meeting with Kiranya's dad. And though I've been hanging around at her place most of the time, I hadn't seen him yet. I could very well ask Kiranya herself but then minding that she isn't exactly the most friendly person out there, I resisted my growing urge to know her more.
"Why don't you ever use my name?" I asked when the silence stretched uncomfortably, making me feel like a third wheel while Kiranya caressed and fondled that ugly board.
"Why don't you ever shut up?" she asked instead and I stuck my tongue out.
She gave me a sly sideways look and I noticed the small tugging of the corners of her lips, amusement clearly colouring her eyes making it look like a black stormy cloud.
"Real mature, helium."
And you guessed it right. I just smiled back like an utter idiot still unsure why I felt like something heavy was lifted from my heart every time Kiranya so much as gave me a small — a very, very, small smile.
When her job was done, she gathered her things and her backpack and I got mine. She excused herself to report to our class teacher to inform that she had done her duties. Seriously, class duties were a pain in the rear. I've only had class duties once in these few days but heck, the loneliness of cleaning the classroom all alone wasn't exactly my cup of tea. I'm the 'life of the party' kind. Not the 'I wipe the board with a toothbrush lookalike duster in utter silence' kind.
It was surprising how Kiranya actually let me stay there—annoy in her language but let's sugarcoat it—as she completed her job.
"Are you free today?" I asked once she returned.
"Why?" she mumbled as we walked across the school ground.
Pumping my fist in my mind for getting a decent answer from Miss Tight lipped, I continued. "I've got to show you something."
"And that is?" She hitched her bag a little higher and continued walking, her steps not slowing down even a little. The school gates were on sight and I chastised myself to hurry since I only had till the gate to explain myself.
"It's a surprise!"
Shit! It is something really lame and now you just heightened her expectations!
Kiranya perked a little up at the sound of 'surprise' and I internally groaned. Great.
A distant memory of me leading Kiranya to the shady corner of the sand box that was hidden behind the series of slides flashed in my mind. I was covering her eyes with my pudgy hands as she giggled about how she liked surprises and how the rush it gave her was thrilling while in reality all I wanted to 'surprise' her with was a half destroyed sand castle which was too hard to built on my own. She still gave a squeal as she jumped up and down screaming how beautiful that piece of crap looked.
I glanced at Kiranya and though she wasn't squealing let alone hopping in excitement, her eyes betrayed it.
She still loved surprises.
"Does it involve dying?" she breathed out and guilt slapped me when faint excitement leaked out of the crack in her stoic walls.
I tried to give her my happy grin. Key word: tried. "Nope."
She looked deep in thought as she seemed to contemplate the pros and cons of saying a simple 'yes' during school night in the orthodoxy society of India to a teenage boy whose heart was overwhelmed with happiness when she smiled and got heavy when she so much as frowned a little but still had no clue as to why he was behaving like a preteen fangirl whenever he simply thought of her.
I'm rambling, right?
Kindly ignore me.
"How long will it take?"
"Two hours max..?"
She went back to her complex mathematical calculations in her pretty head as I waited patiently (not exactly).
"I'll ask uncle if that's what you're worried ab—"
"No!" she shouted interrupting me, sounding almost strangled. She coughed a little and this time talked back in her normal emotionless voice. "I can ask him myself."
With that, she quickened her pace and was out of the school gates in a matter of seconds, leaving me burning with more curiosity and just a little bit of hurt that she didn't trust me. I ran after her.
"BookManiac12?" I yelled and she turned around with an eye roll.
She raised her eyebrow and this time I gave her a true happy smile.
"Wear your most comfortable shoes."
*
*
*
Snap out of it.
But I couldn't help myself but stare at Kiranya as she stood in front of me wearing a huge plaid shirt that was big enough to squeeze a Kiranya number two along with her and tight black jeans that the idols of the new age are hell bent on sporting these days. But I couldn't stop my eyes from taking in her full person. The huge shirt made even her possible curves (since I haven't seen her, um, curves yet) disappear but it also made her look thin. Fragile. Breakable.
Snap out of it!
"What did uncle say?" I asked trying to distract myself from depressing, black and white coloured thoughts.
Guys, meet Depression and Heavy heart. They'll be joining our emotion dictionary from this minute onwards.
"He said it was okay," she whispered, her black eyes not meeting mine. They were loosely fixated on the old polaroid camera dangling from my neck.
"He did?" I questioned as I scrutinised her.
Though she was always stoic and had her poker face on, Kiranya was someone who looked into people's eyes when she addressed them. And here she was, averting her gaze as much as possible while whispering answers.
She is lying.
"Kiranya, look at me," I ordered and when she failed to look at me, my hands moved on it's own accord towards her face before I could stop them. She took a startled step back and they dropped to my sides just like that.
"Fine!" she muttered heatedly, "I didn't tell him I was going."
I decided it was best not to reply as I took a step back, my hands in my pocket to show that we weren't leaving anywhere if she wasn't going to call him, expecting very well for her to snap and stomp back inside her house.
But she surprised me by taking her phone out, a hot scorching glare directed at me in full intensity. She dialled some number and waited.
"Hello?" she spoke in the phone, voice a little louder, "uncle, it's me Kiranya. Tell appa I'm visiting a friend, will you? Yeah . . . I'll be back by seven — of course I'll be safe. Yes, please tell him . . . thank you so much, uncle."
She hung up and gave me an exasperated look. "Now can we get going?"
"Who was that?" I asked curiously.
What I was expecting was a reply like 'another homosapien just like us' or 'none of your business' but it was a slap to my mocking mind when she swallowed. "He's the man who manages our farms. More like my dad's personal assistant. Completely trustworthy."
No, son. I was just looking at it so that I could present one to a colleague of mine. His birthday is coming soon, Kiranya's father's words echoed inside my mind.
"Hey Kiranya?" I asked once we started walking towards my house, where my father had assigned the driver to take me 'wherever' I desired. Tough chance he'd say those words if he knew which place I had in my mind. Kiranya who was following my steps without a question, looked up.
"Does this uncle like cake?"
Her eyebrows scrunched and she gave me a weird look before shaking her head. "No."
I simply nodded as I resumed leading the way.
*
*
*
"Are you sure you know the way?" Kiranya asked for the nth time.
I stifled an exasperated groan and shot her a thumbs up. "Double sure."
When I was a kid, after I went to Riverside and after I lost all contacts with Kiranya, whenever I came back home for vacation, I used to venture into the nearby woods with my cousin Nanda anna without our parents' knowledge. Nanda anna was a teenager then, fourteen or something so I trusted him enough to go there. And it wasn't like the outskirts of the woods wasn't inhabited or that it had any wild animals. Brushing off the fact that we could get lost and snakes (which will certainly inhabit woods), it was a pretty safe place. And it was just a twenty minutes walk from our residential area or a really short drive away.
When I saw familiar trees that I've seen for these past ten or so years, I grinned and quickened my pace. Surprisingly Kiranya easily kept up with me. I wasn't expecting her to huff and puff while looking purple with all those semi trekking but I certainly expected her to look tired. Sweat ran down her face but apart from that, she looked fine.
"We're almost there," I announced and the glint she got in her eyes made me smile.
What I was going to 'surprise' her with was pretty much ordinary but it was something close to my heart.
Moving past the final set of trees, I stepped onto the lush green grass. What I had in my mind was to bow dramatically and spread my arms in an exaggerated gesture as I uttered a 'surprise, milady' in a posh British accent.
That was what I had in my mind.
But what actually happened was Kiranya losing her footing by getting mangled up in a huge root of a nearby big tree. She crashed into my back and together we fell forward into the small clearing.
I rolled and bumped into a small rock. Suppressing a painful groan, I got up and examined my polaroid to see if it was broken. Thankfully it wasn't. I turned around to find Kiranya lying on the ground face forward, her jeans clad legs sticking up in the air and hands lying flat on the ground on either side.
And before I could stop it, I was full blown laughing at her.
She glanced up, more like glared, from her comfortable position on the ground, grass sticking out of her mouth and I doubled clutching my stomach laughing. I looked up when I heard a faint chuckle. Kiranya chuckled again when our eyes met. At first it started as small, broken chuckles but soon she was laughing out loud too, uncontrollably and hiccuping. What we were laughing at, was unknown but we laughed together as if there was no tomorrow.
My laughs died as I, for the first time since all these years after I had discovered the account BookManiac12, saw my favourite smile fuse in between the gasped laughs with my own eyes, without from inside a computer or phone screen.
My chest felt like someone had replaced all the gases for vacuum while my heart rate picked up. Subconsciously, my hands went for my polaroid. The sound of the camera made Kiranya glance at me and her eyes widened a fraction when she saw that I had indeed taken a photo of her in her grass mouthed glory.
She sprang up from her position and ran towards me. I laughed as I raced away from her, towards the most familiar tree surrounding the clearing which was what I had previously planned to show her.
"Give me that photo!" Kiranya screamed as she chased after me. I turned back to find that though she was chasing me like a hound, she was grinning.
I accelerated and when I reached the tree, yanked the rope ladder that was tucked in one of its lowest branches and climbed up to my tree house.
Yes, I took her here to show a tree house. What did you expect? A candle lit dinner with an orchestra in the middle of no where? By now you should've become accustomed to my lame self!
Her hands almost got hold of the ladder when I landed on the tree house. I pulled the ladder up and shot her a cheeky grin as she scowled at me.
"Drop the ladder!"
"Sorry BookManiac12, I can't."
I settled snuggly in that dirty place while Kiranya kept shouting to drop the rope ladder.
Slowly I took the photo out and flapped it in the air. It was a simple, silly photo. Kiranya's head was up and turned towards me while she was lying flat on her stomach. Her eyes were so crinkled that it looked like they were closed while her thin lips were stretched wide. Few grass strands were sticking out of her mouth and hair and she looked wild.
And beautiful.
"So beautiful." The words were out of my lips before I could stop them. Kiranya's frozen figure was just another reminder that she had heard me.
I peered down to find her look up at me. We didn't say anything as she looked up at me. The evening sun and the queer greenish darkness the woods radiated, cast on Kiranya making her look like a wild kitten. Huge black eyes stared into me, almost piercing my soul and I swallowed.
So, so beautiful.
"Helium..." Kiranya dragged and I don't know why but my heart skipped a beat.
I looked at the photo and then at Kiranya, and by the way I felt giddy, happy and just wanted to scoop her up in a big hug while burying my face in the crook of her neck as I breathed in her scent, I knew I was in some deep shit.
Some deep, deep shit.
~✩~✩✩~✩~
This chapter wasn't tough to write, but unlike other chapters, I put a lot of thought into it as I wrote it (not that the chapter has lot of thoughts xP). People may notice how I use parks, woods and countryside scenery a lot. It's just because I live in a town surrounded by hills, beautiful nature and fresh air with this calm silence. Sorry if it isn't city enough or really plain for you guys.
Thoughts about this chapter? Things are moving forward from the stagnant spot ;)
If you enjoyed reading this, please drop a vote and comment. It means a lot :')
VOTE. COMMENT. SHARE. LOVE.
With love,
Kavya.