Chapter 14:

It took me a week to realise that I should have seen it coming. A week full of stolen glances and pregnant silences and tension filled pauses. Salma had been either unusually quiet or overly enthusiastic. Ian and I still hadn't said a word to each other. Nadia, too, barely said a word to me and Art class was awkward and sad and I wanted to just turn to her and grab her by the hand and just run away. 

I knew silence. I knew it meant something was coming.

Near the end of the week, I came home exhausted and stressed out. Salma was being uncharacteristically chatty again and talking my ear off about the new movie that she was going to see with her friend. I nodded and yawned, and flipped on the kettle. When the little red light did not immediately glow, I stepped back in confusion. I fiddled around with it, wondering if the kettle was broken. It was when Salma complained about her phone charger not working when I realised what had happened.

When my mother got home that night, I told her.

"The electricity isn't working."

"Oh, no..." My mother. "That was today...?"

"Huh?"

"I haven't been able to pay the bill, lately." She explained and sighed, hanging her coat and rubbing at her eyes. "The company sent a notice but I thought I could pay it off before they cut off the electricity."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry, habibi." My mom apologised. "I know you have to study online."

"It's okay, mum." I mumbled. "I can go to the library."

I looked away, biting my lip. I wished I could help my mother.

"Mum...I can look for a job." I started. "I can try to-"

"No, habibi." She shook her head. "You have to focus on school."

"But, what's the point?" I complained. "What's the point of school when we're struggling to pay for food and electricity?"

"Abdullah, please try to understand." My mother sighed. "You and your sister need to focus on your education. That's what food and electricity is for. It's my responsibility to give you these things. "

"Mum." I groaned. "It's not just your responsibility. It's dad's. It's ours, too."

"Your father isn't here...right now. So it's mine."

"And what about us? We can help."

"But you shouldn't have to."

- --

"My phone battery is at, like, 6%." Salma loudly whined, the next morning.

Last night we'd ordered pizza and today my mother had given us money to buy breakfast because the stove wasn't working. I still hadn't had a drop of caffeine in my body and I was beginning to moan like a zombie. Never before had I realised how important electricity was in my life. Today, my mother planned to talk to the electric company to make an agreement and I prayed they would go easy on us.

"Charge it at school." I grumbled.

"Oh no!" Salma ignored me. "Now it's at 5%!"

"Maybe you should get off of it, then?" I rolled my eyes, and wished for coffee and silence.

Salma, meanwhile, complained that she couldn't curl her hair today. We walked to school, and I noticed that it had been getting colder, and that it might snow soon. Frost covered the trees that stood out, dark against the pale sky. My breath fogged in front of me and I pulled up the collar of my jacket.

It was Friday, and I was looking forward to a lazy weekend. We stopped by a convenience store to grab breakfast. At school, Nadia was already in the Art room when I came in with a runny nose and a coffee cup. She was texting on her phone, with her legs propped up on her desk. I was almost getting used to not hearing her greet me with a silly grin.

But today, she unexpectedly turned to me as I sat down.

"That day," she began, not specifying which day, "you knew it was me."

It took me a moment to realise what she meant. "Oh...yeah."

"How?"

"Uh....I dunno." I almost blushed. It would be awkward to admit that I recognised her because I spent so much time watching her.

"And you knew I was hiding too..." She said in a small voice.

"Well, no one just covers their head and curls up on the floor for fun." I shrugged.

"I wasn't curled up."

"Like a baaaaaby." I sung.

"Shut up." She laughed, and then she deflated, dropping her laugh like she was dropping an act. She covered her face and mumbled: "I wish I didn't exist."

I was silent for a long moment. And then, because I was intellectually capable, I asked: "Why?"

For a few seconds she didn't seem to have heard me. She kept her hands covering her face, her eyes closed behind long fingers. Students shuffled into the classroom and flipped open drawers and clicked their nails on their desks. I waited, while Nadia slowly peeled her hands off her face and raised her eyes to meet mine.

"Because I don't like hiding."

"What are you hiding from?" I asked, heart thumping in my ears.

Her face closed, and whatever progress I thought I was making vanished into thin air. She just smiled -- and I was beginning to recognise, beginning to hate, that fake smile -- and shrugged. 

"Life." She laughed, as if it was all just a big, fat joke.

-- -

I wondered why some people got hard lives. I wondered why some people didn't. I wondered why some people had to cry, had to feel pain, had to experience death and poverty and pain and still, still, were expected to behave like everyone else, to be grateful, to be happy. I wondered why we chased this ideal, happiness, when really, no one was actually happy. Everyone had something that made them cry. Everyone had something that kept that up at night. Everyone was in pain.

So why did we still search for something that couldn't, possibly, exist.

Maybe that was why. Maybe we just wanted to prove it's existence. Maybe what we create in movies: this ecstatic, glamorous, flashy feeling known as happiness, maybe we just wanted to make it real. Maybe we just wanted to prove our own way of existence was wrong. That maybe we weren't made to just suffer.

These are the thoughts that plague me after school, as I strolled through a Chinese supermarket. The aisles are packed with packaged food, shiny wrapping gleaming under the harsh hum of the fluorescent lights. I'm looking for canned, instant food, the stuff that could last a few days and I thanked private businesses and their reasonable prices. I was shuffling through a shelf of instant noodles, comparing prices, when a small, surprised sound interrupted me.

I looked back, and saw Ian, looking put off at obviously recognising and stumbling into me. He awkwardly shuffled and looked down at the packages of noodles in my hands.

"That brand isn't good." He said.

"Oh."

"Uh...this one is better." He reached for a yellow packet and I see that it is shrimp-flavoured. It was Ian's favourite flavor.

"I'll get that one then." I told him and dumped ten into my basket.

"Okay."

He looked as if he wanted to say more, and opened his mouth. He suddenly shut it and I moved so he can resume what he came here for which was grabbing no less than twenty packets of instant noodles and placing them in his trolley. He doesn't give me a second glance as he does so, and I watched him push his purchase down the aisle, quickly, as if he wanted nothing more than to just get away from me as fast as possible. I let him, and soon found myself standing in the aisle alone, clutching my basket.

I'd never cared much for friends; I'd always been fine without them. But a soft pang of regret and the unmistakable jab of nostalgia made me cringe. It was like missing the soft afterglow of the sunset as my father read me bedtime stories when I was a kid. It was like hearing the echo of laughter, from a joke my mother cracked, and my father clutching his stomach and my sister hiding giggled behind her hand.

That was what it had felt like: watching Ian walk down the aisle, back facing me, not looking back.

The feeling of something missing.

-- -

The next morning, the feeling hadn't disappeared and is instead replaced by a strange uneasiness. I sat through breakfast with nervousness churning in my stomach. The electricity company had let my mother off with a warning and made a few compromises to help her pay off the electricity bill at her own pace. That means we have a working stove and microwave and Salma had finally shut up about not being able to charge her phone and I should be grateful.

Instead, I felt as if something was very, very wrong.

It was on the news, in fact.

Salma switched channels, complaining about how she had missed watching TV for the last two days -- even though she never watches TV -- and stopped on a news channel. The words 'breaking news' are running along the bottom in capital letters and the news lady is rapidly explaining that a boy had been recovered from the river that cuts through the downtown area. My head throbbed, painfully.

"Oh no." Salma said, sympathetically. "Suicide attempt?"

"Attempt?"

"The kid was pulled out alive."

"Oh."

I was barely paying attention. Nausea made it's way up my throat.

The news lady disappeared and an aerial shot of the scene started playing. The footage was grainy and hard to make out but there were bright police vehicles and flashing lights and a group of emergency officers and paramedics strapping a limp, wet body into a stretcher. The boy was being described as a highschooler of small build. His picture flashed on the screen and Salma lets out a gasp.

Blue eyes and blonde curls. Chubby cheeks. He was smiling in the picture, smiling back at my shocked, open mouthed face.

_________________________________________________________

I had no right but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯