01| Aashi
"Let me leave."
"No, I won't."
Words die on the back of my soft palate, and I try to sputter lines but then, that is a hoax. I wanted him to stop me and hold me more as long as eternity takes.
"This is wrong. So, so wrong."
"It's right. Things never felt so right."
I push him away, hold him at arm's length and gaze at him with crazy eyes (eyes that hold the fire and passion of all the past years) and try to choke back my vile words that will taint every beautiful, fleeting memory that I can take back with me at this very moment.
"Leave me alone.
"I have to go," finally his arms droop to the sides of his torso and for a hasty second there, I see the same warmth his eyes had held for so many years. The same warmth that made me tell him everything.
He looked at me like a toddler who has been denied his favorite toy. And that's all I was to him. A toy to be toyed with.
I mentally kick myself for drowning in them once again.
You deserve better, Aashi. You know that, right! Right?
I walk away from him. Something, that I should've done so many months ago. Before all those threads that disentangled.
Boy, I've held on to those flickering moments of the past for this, this long that it makes me so sick to my stomach.
I feel the bile rise but I push it down my chest by my resilience. I still hurry to the nearest girls' washroom. Once in, I ignore the questioning glares of girls talking about their momentary love interests and periods and lock the gate to my stall. I close the toilet's seat and sit on it.
I take out my cell phone from my skirt's pocket and text my best friend.
"I'm bunking the next period. I'll see you at lunch."
She responds almost immediately.
"Where are ya?"
I ignore her message because I really needed some peace and quiet. I'm not ready to antagonize under her "I told you so" stare or answer any of her reluctant questions. But then again, she won't ever exactly say that to me, even when I know how she feels about our arrangement.
To digress to the present moment, a girl's washroom is not a place to find the peace I needed. All the hiding places in this school are either confiscated by lovers doing their thing or the others were enveloped by smokers and porn addicts doing their thing. I didn't know where to go.
All I knew was to leave the girls' washroom this minute because the stench is slowly, burning holes into my lungs.
Again, I push the stall gate open and rush from the school corridor to the music room.
I know what I need right now.
I knock at the music room's door to check if there's any teacher because they'll need to see a permission slip. Conveniently, I keep my all- the- time( because it had no dates on it) signed slip from my music teacher in my breast pocket so, I can formerly bunk because escapades with Rohit always seemed to take a period or two.
Luckily, there is no one. And the door is also unlocked. Must be scheduled for a junior's class in a period or something.
I'll definitely be done by then. I walk with clammy hands to the piano and sit on the stool. I run my fingers over the keyboard and start reminding myself my redundant routine.
Somehow, I subconsciously tend to add more keys according my mood and a new angsty, melodramatic tune comes out. I am totally engrossed in my practise, when a slow shoulder tap breaks me out of my reverie.
I see Neel standing right beside me, cocking an eyebrow to the side. Looking detached and superior like always. And as usual, he is not alone. He has his next kill with him. A girl a grade below us, whom I know because she volunteered for the science camp last year.
She is a blushing freshman next to him, eyes dreamy and fuzzy, fingers intertwined with his. He clears his throat and hastily asks me to leave by the show of his hands.
No words, even. What happened to saying 'please'?
Then, the freshman smells my detxerity towards Neel and smile at me.
"Please, Aashi di (sister)."
"Okay," I sigh and almost roll my eyes, throwing a deathly glare at Neel's direction.
"Kids these days," I mutter, walking off and pushing the door closed with some extra force.
I push my back on the outside walls of the music room, well knowing that the sweet freshman is being deflowered at this very moment by the cruel, vindictive Neel who'll discard her like every other girl he lays his hands upon in this school.
I cross my hands on my chest, getting madder than before at everything.
How am I any different from her?
We were both in the same dooming predicament, our hearts setting for boys that can never belong to us. It's like setting ourselves for failure even before the game has really begun.
I start breathing heavily, as if the corridor was closing in on me. I start hyperventilating so I walk away to the stairs where the half of the ground was visible and the air hit my face in full force, cooling me and blowing my skirt and my hair in all the places.
I take in deep breaths, feeling thankful for the nature, when tragically, a teacher catches me.
"You girl, which grade do you belong?"
I turn around to see, my face half perplexed, half - red, and some parts equally bewildered to face her. She stares me down like the next perjuror in a murder case. Then, I recall the fact that I have my permission slip on me just to show her in case she decides to send me to the principal's office.
"Grade 10, ma'am."
"Why aren't you in class?"
"I had permission to practise piano in the music room. I was going back to class but suddenly, I started feeling claustrophobic."
She seeing my half- red face, decides to believe my story. Nonetheless, she asks for my permission slip and I reach in my breast pocket and hand it to her.
"It's okay," she says, then pauses," if you're not feeling well, get a quick check in the infirmary, then, back to class."
"Okay, ma'am." I sigh. And the blue shirt wearing, inquisitive teacher descends the stairs.
Today's not a good day for me, it would've been better, only if she went to check the music room. I chastise myself as immediately realise that I could be condemning the poor freshmen, feeling sorry for her.
I decide to go the infirmary and lay down for the rest of the remaining period.
****
"Where were you? I looked for you everywhere." My best friend is on a roll, seriously on a chicken roll, throwing questions at me when she isn't taking a bite.
"I seriously got mad at you."
"You were worried about me?" I quirk my eyebrow to factor in her question.
"Of course," she chews and narrows her eyes at me, " then I thought not to."
"Because you knew where I would be." I finish her mid - sentence and she looks sadly at me, stopping her munching, which was loud to be honest.
"It's not like that, Ashu."
"I know, I know," I interject, "you don't approve of my relationship. "
"How could I? When I clearly know that he's a jerk. And," she stops and I see my protective side of my best friend which she hides so well, "when it's breaking you so much. "
For the first time, I don't get offended when she calls Rohit a 'jerk' and squeeze her fingers, because I know, all she is thinking about is well, happiness for me. I deserve better. And that's a thing, everyone else can see. Albeit me.
But I couldn't. Could I?
****
Home is a different story. "Home" is torrid, silent and alone. People are homesick and I am sick of my home. I do everything I can to not come back to it; to the pale yellow walls that screamed anew attachment to its former residents.
And the sad thing is that no one waits for me.
Dad is seldom home and he is always busy. Ria drives me home like every other day and sneaks glances at me when she thinks I am not looking.
She gives me the peace and quiet that I so desired for the whole day. She knows better than to make small- talk and ask all those questions that I would rather not answer to. She knows I will come to her by myself when I can't bear my feelings no longer. She knows me like that.
A meaningful silence settles between us and no one tries to disrupt it. I watch all the trees passing in the scenic route to our way home. She lives two blocks away from me.
She knows that I need to be left alone.
A loneliness that I long for now, what better place to get it rather than at home.