- cookies & cream ❤ -
chapter 5:
It was Wednesday afternoon, and school had just finished. As usual, we’d all reconvened at our local Starbucks until our parents picked us up, or – like me – until everyone left, so you could start making the bus ride home.
Emily and Sasha were seeing who could do the whole Periodic table song in under a minute, at the forfeit of their macchiatos, and Haydn was painting my fingernails a dark midnight blue. Her parents were going through a messy divorce, and her all-time cure for stress was doing her nails. But hers were proudly sporting the LGBT rainbow in support of her gay brother, Martin, who was coming out this week, so she’d taken to doing mine instead.
I wondered how long the teachers would let me get away with it for.
“One minute over! My macchiato!” Emily hollered, whooping and snatching the prize from the centre of the table.
“NOOO!” Sasha screamed, swiping at her. “You cheated! You cheated! Nula, tell her she cheated!”
“What did she do?” I asked.
“She stopped counting at 59! Swear down – I finished just on the sixty; I was looking at the timer!
“No way, you were just over the sixty mark, my friend. And please, you’re not a chav, your parents are paying for you to go to a private school; please save your ‘swear downs’ for the uncivilised.”
“Ooh. Snobbish much, Emily,” Haydn whistled as she finished my left hand.
Desh said Swear Down. All the time.
“What’s up, Nukie?” Haydn asked. She always called me Nukie; it was a tribute to her first goldfish who died of obesity. Flattering, wasn’t it?
“Nothing,” I said, looking up at her. “Why?”
“You’re very quiet today,” she said, concentrating on my middle finger.
I never understood when people said that. I was always quiet; they never noticed all the other times, and then suddenly they’d pick up on one occasion that was ‘out of the ordinary’. But then again, I was ever-critical of anyone who assumed those kind of things about me. Like they knew me at all.
“Nah,” I said, smiling at her blue eyes. “Just sorting some stuff out in my head.”
It was now the second week into January. Two and a half weeks since our conversation on the couch at Ellorei’s, and the brief goodbye outside my aunt’s. Little had I known then that would be the last time Desh spoke to me.
I’d seen him at least three, four times since then. And each time, Desh was always busy doing something else. Talking to someone else. Tightening his drums, messing about with Leo and Carval, winding up my mum, Sonia, Maya.
Anyone, but me.
Okay, I know it sounds over-egocentric. I mean, who was to say it had anything to do with me?
Because, a little voice in my head said, you saw what happened that Sunday.
That Sunday, after the session at Aunt Fariha’s. It was our official meet of the weeks, and as usual, I lead the chants at the front of the ladies’ side, in my prime position next to the aisle. Desh practically sat next to me, on the other side of the aisle. I’d never made anything big of it before – I hadn’t even started to know Desh in all the six months he’d started attending our group sessions until the Christmas party – and I was determined not to make anything big of it then. Wish I could’ve said the same for Desh.
Every time I turned slightly to his side, he’d be facing the other way. Leaning closer to his drums for close clearing, or distracting himself with the list on the other wall. Coincidental. He wasn’t supposed to me looking at us girls, anyway. But then I’d turned unintentionally – I wanted to check what Leo was going with the PA – and Desh turned his whole body around to face the other way a whole split second after he saw me turning. Then I noticed every time I made the slightest movement towards him, even with my hair, he’d be turning too.
It bothered me, the whole week. I’d asked Kaira about it, one of my closest friends at school, albeit self-centred and eccentric.
“Well, it makes sense,” she’d said. “You caught him at his weakest, and you turned him into something alien – even to himself. You broke his cool exterior; wounded his ego. He’s probably trying to brush it off.”
That made sense, I had to agree … except, then there were the butterflies in my stomach. The cold whirlpool churning anxiety every time I knew I was going to see him again. Submissively ducking my head every time I saw him, because I knew he wouldn’t talk to me. It was a hint of the darkness in my past, eating away at the lining of my mind. And it scared me half to death.
God, I begged inwardly of myself, please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.
Please tell me it’s not coming back.
Or worse.
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