Chapter 21 (Part 2)

Kiara

1st May 2019, Wednesday
13:55

I found absolutely nothing. The replay button might be broken by now but there was nothing. I watched it the tenth time as if it would change and I would see something. It was the same. Kids got on the bus. Conductor cracked some jokes. Somebody took her hand out of the window. All the windows were already open and it was likely that the leaf flew in. And settled just above the note? Before the bus stopped at my house, a third grader got up and sat at the seat I sat on. Then, he got up and got back to the last seat.

I paused the video and tried hard to figure out what happened. Did the kid place something there?

"Are you done?" Nidhi Ma'am asked.

I hummed but did not budge. Her heels clicked against the floor and the screen went black. I looked over it at her. She held the wire in one hand. I had a strong urge to plug her finger inside the socket, maybe all the fingers.

"I need to go back. You need to go too. Now shoo," she said, her bright nails pointed at me and the door.

"We both leave together." This woman knew I was the support she was standing on. I stepped in any one direction and the rope around her neck would choke that sweet voice of hers. I had openly threatened her authority by resigning. This could be her game too, just the note. The warm welcome in the washroom was a beginning of something entirely new. Or maybe the continuation.

We walked to the door and changed our paths, her gaze making sure I didn't go back, mine staying at her face until she was in the lift. I was too busy and failed to notice the mat near the stairs had been folded by a herd of students. My foot entangled in the folds, too close to the stairs to step back. I tried to grab the railing, my heart a beating drum, sweaty hands a reminder of the humiliation they had on them in the cubicle, eyes wide like an owl whose wings - my specs - had been chopped off. First, the edge of one of the steps hit my head, then it poked me in the back and when I thought I was going to die, my wrist twisted and I yelped in pain.

I lay motionless in a corner, wincing at the slightest movement of my fingers which I couldn't stop. I tried to get up but my back did not support the idea.

"Shit," I said.

"Well, shit."

Tushar stood near the mat, his feet well aware of the folds. He picked up my specs and adjusted the mat back to its original, less harmful position. I watched him come down from the same floor I was on moment ago, in a room that was beyond our limits, with the teacher he warned me about. Shit, indeed.

He handed me my specs. "Are you okay?"

"More than okay," I said. "What were you doing u-"

"Kiara?" Nolan emerged, climbing up the stairs, his shirt clinging to his body, greasy hair swept at a side. He had the worst timing in this world.

"Are you okay?" he said.

I groaned in response. "I'm not breathing. I'm dead. Dead."

Both of them scrutinized my head. "She's hurt pretty badly. Must've hit her head."

I pushed their faces away. "I'm fine. You people are exaggerating."

Tushar stepped back. "I should go now. School got over five minutes ago. Get that bump examined by a doctor."

I touched it and winced. But I was thankful that he hadn't see anything, if he had, then at least he didn't mention it.

"-not that bad," Nolan said.

With blurry eyes and dizzy mind, I grunted and asked him to repeat.

"The head boy," he said slowly for my deaf ears. "I said he's not that bad."

"He has a name. It's Tushar," I replied. He referred to him as 'the head boy' all the time, I thought it was his way of insulting. Now I realized, he just didn't know.

"Oh," he said.

"He studies in your class. H-" I coughed. "How did you not know?"

"He's in Medical. I'm in FMM. Are we seriously having this conversation right now? How are you not having a concussion?"

"Do you want me to have one?" I pretended to faint with my tongue hanging out of my mouth.

"That's not how you faint." He showed me his version of fatigue and unconsciousness. It was better than mine. I laughed. It ended with coughs and saliva out of my mouth.

"Let's get you home."

"Don't you have any practice?" I asked in a weak voice.

He shook his head and got up. "I'll get your bag."

Sitting there, my thoughts began to wander off to pre-fall events. I sighed and twisted my body to a more comfortable position, my heart a palpitating mess and my brain a disappointed mentor. I did not know whose side I was on. Was it my fault if this guy somehow calmed me down? I said one word of sorrow, he replaced them by a thousand blows of optimism. Him standing in Dandelion Presidency was lotus blossoming in mud. I would have maintained distance, vary of the mud but in reality I was the mud.

I heard his steps, slower than my pulse, calm for a storm but cautious for someone careless like me. He smiled at me and adjusted both of our bags in his hand. Nolan Adams stayed here despite my pushes, not because he was adamant but because he belonged here. A lotus growing in the mud.

"Can you get up?" he asked.

I did not trust my tongue and nodded. After groans and grunts, shoving away his hand multiple times, I finally managed to slither up the wall.

"Everything hurts," I moaned. "You're not laughing at me, are you?"

His cheeks, a dark shade of pink, lifted with his smile. "I joke, Kiara but I never joke about someone's condition. Stairs or lift?"

I eyed the mat. "Stairs."

He threw his head to a side and laughed. "After you."

We walked at a snail's pace. My body rebelled after five steps or so. I was surprised by his patience. He stayed behind the whole time, murmuring at me to go slow or holding my back when I felt I would tumble down again.

Max stood outside the gate, checking out the school's building. "They should renovate now. The colour is getting monotonous."

"You should see the inside. They renovate every summer," I commented.

He removed his sunglasses and smiled at me. "Hey, kiddo. What's up?" After a glance at my face, he asked, "Are you-"

"Yes!" Both Nolan and I answered.

"She's annoyed of the question," Nolan said and pointed at me and Max, his eyes still smiling at me. He needed to stop or I'd die from heart failure.

He opened the door and I got in, still mesmerized by his SUV.

"To the-"

"Hospital," Max completed Nolan. "I know that."

My eyes widened and I shook my head. "There's no need for that. Just take me home."

Max poked my forehead and Nolan pushed me back into the seat. "No," they both said.

14:15

"This is bad," Papa said. "I'm surprised you didn't break your neck."

I yelped in pain when he pressed a cotton blob at my side just above the kidney. Somehow I had managed to scratch my back and it looked like it was smeared with leftover sauce.

"You're talking about my neck. Nolan wanted a concussion. Are you secretly plotting to murder me?" I joked. My laughter seized after he began to clean it up further.

"You're hurting me, Papa." I tried my best to control the string of polite words sitting at the top of my tongue that could possibly give Papa a heart attack.

"He's still outside," he replied, "your friend. I told him he could leave. He was adamant to stay. He's a senior, I found."

I nodded and played with my nails.

"Since when did you start hanging with seniors?"

I snorted. "He's a year old, not ten. If it wasn't for him, I might still be lying in the corridor of the school, half-dead."

He dressed my wound and checked the bump in my forehead. "You're still half dead. I'll tell your mother to feed you. You fell down the stairs and it could have been fatal."

"I'm sick," I protested. "No lectures."

He sighed and pointed at the door. "I'll call him in."

I inspected my face in the mirror and decided I was done. The door opened.

"Are you feeling better?"

"Do you want me to dance?" I replied.

He chuckled and shook his head. "Do us all a favour." He brushed his hair back. "There's something I needed to tell you."

I placed the mirror back and stared at him, his facade different now, a little hesitant as if he was unclear about something.

"What happened today in the washrooms," he said. When he questioned me with his dubious gaze, I said nothing. So he continued, "I told Roy."

The lines in my forehead fell back to their original position. "What?" I spat.

"First, someone did it with Rishab, now you. I...I did not...I don't get why the school is doing nothing. It just felt the right thing."

"When?"

"Ki-"

"When did you tell him?" I repeated my question just in case he did not hear.

"Just now...I mean a few minutes back. It wa-"

My throat tightened. "Was it about you?"

He didn't reply.

"Was it about you?" I said, slower this time. I was injured and he had gone deaf. The convenience of the situation.

"No b-"

"If it wasn't about you, what gave you the right to do it?" I spat. My brain laughed at my hammering heart, the sick laughter that twisted my insides.

"Did you see the mess? It was awful, all over t-"

"I saw, Nolan. I saw all of it, in both the washrooms. Someone even left a note in the bus with a good luck wish. Go on, tell that to Roy. Call him. Or better, see him. Do it."

He sighed.

It further angered me. "I should be sighing instead of you."

"Why are you shouting at me like it is my fault somehow?"

Good luck.

I was going to kill whoever was behind this, strangle the scoundrel in his or her own blood and piss. The idiot would choke on her own tongue and cry. She would never be able to walk again. I stilled.

Shay.

My jaw ticked. Nolan took a step forward. I raised my hand.

"Go," I said. "Just leave me alone. Please."

His face twisted with agony and I shook my head, unable to believe if I saw tears in his eyes.

"Nolan, please. I have nothing against you. You did what you considered right. I respect that. Please respect my words and leave. We'll...We'll talk later."

I was scared that my anger would unleash on him, scared that I might lose him. I couldn't afford that.

"My head hurts," I said. "I-"

"Okay, it's okay. We'll talk later. We'll talk later," he repeated it again, mostly to himself. "Will we talk later?"

"Yes. Yes, we will," I said and took a step towards him.

His lips moved in an apology. I searched his eyes, the ones that glinted everytime we met.

"I'm sorry," he said.

My head throbbed. If I did not get a hold on Shay, I might just go crazy. He did not have to be sorry. It was my fault. His apology paused when my hands wrapped around him. I could smell his light perfume mixed with the scent of grass. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding down my temper.

"Go," I whispered into his shirt.

20:20

Nidhi Ma'am or Shay.

I was confused. As much as my beloved teacher was beginning to loathe me, she would be risking too much by doing all that meticulous planning. Besides, it was not her style. Shay, sweet little Sheereen and her mind was not a thing to underestimate.

"I'll do it my way," she had said.

Her ways included, if wasn't entirely about tricks, blame games that made others do the work. She simply uploaded the cassette while others played it.

I picked up my phone and called him.

"Hello?"

"Did you do it?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Come on, Kiara. I'm not that pathetic or lame."

I growled into the phone. "Listen, Rishab, if she comes after me, I'll come after you."

He yawned. "She has already come after me. And you let her. Be thankful I'm staying out of this mess. She hasn't approached me and I'm not even betting on it. I have nothing against you, Kiara. If anything, I owe you. I'll tell you what, we played. Let her roll the dice."

"It's not a game anymore."

His laughter echoed through the phone. "It is. It is just the game she has been waiting to play."

I scoffed at the cringey line. "What is it called, then?"

"You tell me, Kiara. Desperation?"

My fingers clenched around the note I was welcomed with when I had entered my room. Surprise, it read.

Surprise, indeed.