tassel

I WAIT FOR KIM to put her books in the locker before I launch my question at her. She does it carefully as always, she's very particular about keeping her books neat and ordered. I'm like that too, but only in the case of books. In my room, you'd see soft toys, lego figures and My Little Pony figurines scattered everywhere, while the books sit comfortably in my large bookshelf.

Kim shuts her locker. I immediately prepare my question. It's been hovering in my head ever since Arashi spoke about his mother's death. "Do you think it's too early for a kid to move somewhere else because their father wanted to, right after two weeks of their mother's death?"

Kim stares. "Why are you asking this suddenly?"

I decide not to tell the exact reason. If Arashi wants her to know, he itself is going to tell her. And I'm not even a close friend of his; what would give me the right to talk about his mother's death to my close friend?

I look at Kim and shake my head. "It's just an anime plot."

"Oh, okay," she says. "Well yeah, I think it is a bit too fast. If it happened to me, I think I'd spend two weeks in the bathroom crying even after the death. I'm not even exaggerating."

In the bathroom, crying, she says. And Arashi was smiling yesterday as if nothing happened. Is it that easy to adjust to a new place after such an incident? Is he somehow happy his mother died?

No way, I say to myself and hit my head lightly. The way he spoke about his mother, it sounded nothing other than love. He sounded happy, but about her life, not her death.

But then again, is there a specific time limit for when you're supposed to move on?

"It must be a really interesting anime if you're talking to someone who's never watched a single anime in their entire life," Kim says, brushing her hair out of her face.

"Yeah," I say, not too awkwardly. "Kinda." 

Kim leaves for Physics class. She bumps into another girl right after she takes few steps and instead of apologizing, Kim playfully punches her in the stomach and walks off with her. I remember the girl's name as Lilly. We had Chemistry together back during Freshman year. I think again. Were Kim and Lilly always this close?

For now, I brush off the thought. Even if they are, it doesn't concern me. Kim can be close to whoever she wants without telling me. 

Going to English class alone feels weird. Normally, Arohi would be complaining about how annoying it is for her to not understand half of Shakespeare's works, about her boyfriend or we might even be fangirling over Harry Potter together.

Walking there without anyone bothering me, especially to English class, feels weird. I smile at this. Who knew I'd miss someone annoying me this much? Suddenly, I regret running away from all the hugs she wanted to give. Maybe, if I just wasn't so awkward to touch, I'd be regretting less.

But then you'd miss her more, says an inner voice. I agree with it for a false sense of reassurance.

When I enter the classroom, her absence hits me. Normally both of us would laugh around with anyone present. But since the last few days, most of them have been acting weird. Every time I try to tell someone hello, they'll look at me all softly and tell it back. I really don't need that, I want to say. It just makes me look like a sorry person who seems dysfunctional without her friend.

I choose a seat on the first row, the one closest to the door. I look at my watch and see that I'm ten minutes early somehow. I sit there awkwardly, waiting for something to happen. Something that's worth wasting my time, that is.

Just then, Arashi enters the class. I internally heave a sigh of relief. Because he doesn't know about the entire Arohi incident, he never gives me any weird look. But honestly, he seems like someone who wouldn't give that look even if he knew something happened. If he's so normal about his mother's death, I doubt my friend going away would affect him in any way at all.

He smiles seeing me. I get out of my head and return it, gesturing him to sit beside me. "Okay," he mumbles, sitting down.

Although I felt it at first, I'm convinced now that Arashi's not a replacement of Arohi for me. He's something completely new and different. So, so different. Except for the fact that both of their names start and end with the same letters, there's literally no other resemblance.

"How's life?" I ask him, like we haven't spent our English and leisure periods together for the past three days.

"Going on," he says.

Again, I'm a little shocked by his tone. He sounds so bland, almost like an under-qualified news reporter. Like it's not his life's that going on, but his existence. He's here just for the sake of being.

While I tell Arashi that I'm interested in anime, Mrs. Bloom enters the class, leaving us to continue our conversation during leisure period. I glance at him a few times during the class. It's almost unsettling to me, how I can't figure out his expressions clearly. He looks so abnormally normal at times and blank during others. He's doing his job of being a storm too well, whirling all his feelings into a haze that's getting hard to decipher.

|| ~~~~~ ||

According to our plans, I wait for Arashi under the mango tree. He's late today.

Mangoes are not commonly grown here, and this tree is a special hybrid of sorts. I have only ever seen one mango on it, and that too was a tiny fruit. That's what makes it special to me, because it's as if I was the only one who ever saw that mango. Like the tree only wanted to share it's sweet little secret with me.

I always spend my time here during leisure periods. Not many people realize it, but this tree lies almost at the centre of the school. From here, you get a view of every building this massive campus consists of. 

Plus, it's right next to the soccer field which lets me look at Lance whenever he practices.

The sun shines brightly today too. Staying under the shade, I receive the perfect amount of warmth I want. 

It's been twenty minutes since the period started. I'm beginning to think that Arashi's not going to show up today. There's no way I can confirm it either. Does he talk to anyone else besides me? I haven't seen him do so. But for all I know, he could pull a Kim and show up hugging Lance in front of me out of nowhere.

I shake my head. Stop being so salty about Kim, I say over and over. She's literally done nothing wrong. But I'm beginning to realize why it's annoying me so much. It's because Kim is acting so normal. As if our friend hadn't transferred somewhere without telling us. As if Arohi was as significant as a movie to her. Appreciate it while it's going on, and then go back to normal when it's over.

What's with people being so normal about the absence of a person? Is that normal or am I being too pathetic?

Frustrated at my own thoughts, I stand up abruptly. I pace around the tree in circles for a while. Hoping to catch a sight of Lance, I turn towards the field, only to remember he practices during lunch and last period. I walk a little faster and a little more.

Forty minutes go by in a flash. The bell rings.

I feel pissed off. At Arashi for not coming, at Kim for hanging out with Lilly and even at Lance for not practicing before lunch. Instead of going to the canteen, I decide to stop walking in the same place and just walk around the entire circumference of the ground.

Once I'm out of the tree's protection, the sunlight hits me at full intensity. I don't mind it though. Today is quite cold, and heating myself up a little will thaw my muscles and patience.

I walk for at least seven hundred metres until I finally feel myself calming down. Stopping for sometime, I give a long sigh.

I'm not the kind of person who loses patience easily. The levels it can reach to even amaze me sometimes. A boy once launched a tennis ball at my stomach at full speed during freshman year. My intestines burned from the impact. But all I did was laugh awkwardly and shout a few slang words at him. I regret it, because even after that he caused a lot of 'accidents' which unless I joked about, would be considered bullying.

 Breaking into a run, I try letting go from that memory which doesn't concern me now. There's clusters of people distributed around the tree, but I'm grateful that no one spares a glance at me while I'm at it. I stop after I've jogged around the entire ground twice, not because I'm tired, but because I find Lance looking at me from under the mango tree. A tall girl stands next to him.

Oh no, I think. I hope he hasn't pulled a Kim.

When I get a closer look at the girl though, I remember everything about her in a flash. A stupid laugh escapes from my lips. How can I forget her?

Deianeira Brown, or Denna as everyone calls her, happened to be my best friend during the first two years of middle school. For some reason still unknown to me, she decided I'm not her best friend anymore and started hanging out with a few other girls. We never really fought about it; we still used to speak to each other, but a wall had appeared between us.

One day, in the last year of middle school, I heard her talking about me to her 'friends' in the washroom. It wasn't behind my back. I was right there, washing my hands, and she pretty much spoke directly to me.

"You can't tell Tas things about girls," she snickered. "She's probably gonna tell everything to the boys she always hangs out with."

I tried not to barf. By boys, she meant Lance and his younger brother. And when she said secrets about girls, her tone was screaming 'menstruation'. Why would I even bring up something about someone else's period to Lance? It was so senseless, I remembering laughing in the washroom right there.

And then she continued, throwing me the insult of the century. "She's like gas, leaking all news."

I remember laughing at her in disbelief and just walking calmly out of the washroom. It didn't bother me. But when the others present in the washroom laughed with her, I felt a little hurt. The girls with her were actually nice to me, but hearing them laugh at something so trivial made me feel awkward. What she had said made me sound like a person who ratted people out, when in reality I never talked about anyone except for myself and Lance, that too with Lance.

And because of that, she became the first person in my life who I really disliked. Now if I think of that time, it just makes me want to laugh at how horrible of a roast that was.

"Hey, Denna. I see you've got glasses," I tell her. 

She smiles. "Yeah, my vision increased a lot last year. It's been a while since we've met."

"Quite a while," I repeat. We sound like normal friends, as if nothing happened between us. Partially because nothing really did. True, that incident occurred. But I never confronted her about it. We kept being normal friends after that, until we graduated. I figured I'd never see her after. But alas, that is not the case.

"What are you doing here?" I ask her, not rudely. 

Denna gives a small laugh. "I study here."

I narrow my eyebrows in confusion. "What? But I never saw you in, like, the last three years."

"Me too!" Denna revels. "I suddenly found Lance today. He was going to the ground and then I asked him about you."

"Oh," I smile. Not at Denna, but at Lance.

"Wanna have lunch together?" she asks. I nod a yes, and look at Lance again.

"I'm not joining you guys, gotta practice," he says, already taking off.

"Well, no one asked him to," Denna tells me as soon as he's gone. I laugh awkwardly.

While we eat, we talk about the things we've done in all these years in high school. Once she tells me that she's mostly chosen Arts-based subjects, it becomes clear why we hadn't run into each other before. The Arts students go to a different building from ours. It's on the other side of the tennis court, which is quite distant from our building. They even have their own canteen, so it's also very unlikely to see someone from there even during lunch. And Denna's never been an outdoor person. I wouldn't have believed it was her, if I ever saw her sitting in the ground.

This entire conversation just reminds me of how enormous Portmouth High actually is. And how much my parents are paying to keep me in this school. The school fee might be one of the major reasons why Mom keeps telling we're running out of money even when my father has a decent salary.

As lunch break ends, so does our conversation. Telling that she'd probably come by again tomorrow, she heads out to the Arts building.

I sigh, something I've been doing a whole lot recently. Exactly how many people from my middle school are in Portmouth?

|| ~~~~~ ||

At 11:30 in the night, while I'm doing my Physics homework, it whooshes into my head that Arohi had once sent me an e-mail. If I remember correctly, it had the details of her Google+ profile. It's good news; it means I can contact her in some way without using a phone.

I open my laptop and search for the mail she'd sent. It's been ages since I last checked my Gmail account. A little later, I realize it's impossible to find it in this sea of spam e-mails, so I type the bit of her e-mail I remember onto the search bar. To my happiness, a lot of them show up. 

Seems like the useless things I remember can turn out to be useful sometimes.

In that e-mail lies a video of her dancing to Purpose by Justin Bieber. I watch it, bringing back memories. She used to send clips of her dances to me all the time. I smile at the skinny girl trying her best to loosen her body.

When the video's over, I scroll to check if her username is present there. It's not. Off to the next one, I say to myself.

I watch about eight of her videos. At the ninth one, I finally find her username. A-rowtheboat-hi. I laugh at her choice.

It's probably the first time I'm going to text someone on Hangouts. Without thinking much, I send her a message.

Hey, A-rowtheboat-hi

My senses tell me that she had contacted Lance via her laptop. Her parents have mostly confiscated her phone for who knows how long, so she must've used the Instagram website to talk to Lance. Her parents must not have thought of confiscating it; she told me she found laptops uncomfortable so she never used hers.

I'm about to close the tab when I suddenly see a reply.

Tas?

A smile forms on my face.

Yeah, A-rowtheboat-hi?

God, stop calling me that.

I was, what, 10 when I made that up?

Ok, A-rowtheboat-hi

Tas

Stop

Yeah lol

Was getting too long to type anyway

But it's awesome that u remembered this app exists

I honestly didn't until u suddenly popped up in my notifs

....Tassyissassy 

My eyes widen. I didn't notice my username is worse than Arohi's. 

Use that name thrice and not more

Then we'll be even

But who am I trying to tell that? For the whole time, Arohi types out Tassyissassy at the end of almost every message.

From my room, I hear Mom and Dad bickering again. I don't catch onto the words they're saying. I can feel they're not good, so I don't even try to. I focus on A-rowtheboat-hi again.

She confirms my suspicions. Her phone's been confiscated for a month, and she uses her laptop only after her parents fall asleep so that it doesn't slip away from her too. We text each other about how it feels like we've turned back in time, using Hangouts like we did during Middle school. All the nostalgia makes me feel eighty years old.

About an hour later, Arohi tells that she feels sleepy. We quickly sign off, sending each other goodbyes. Love you, she sends. Love yourself, I reply.

I hear Mom's voice shout something again. Dad shouts back, but it's an apology. I brush it off again.

I feels good. For the first time in my life, I'm grateful for Hangouts. At least I have something I can contact her from without Mom shouting at me to get off the phone. Some solid thing. 

The hole that appeared in my life; it was too sudden. I filled it up, but only with worry and overthinking, which made my head gain fifty pounds. This sudden connection though, started to take it all out again. The hole became a hole once more. But this time, it feels good. Like I'm a sheet of paper from which a paperweight has just been lifted off. I've gotten a chance to fill it with the memories we'll make through these messages. I've gotten a chance, and I'm not going let my restrictions waste it anymore.