Three
•

• •

The following day, in the evening, Raven sat lounging in front of the wide TV screen in the living room, a bowl of popcorn in her hands. Math tuition had just got over, and Aaron and Darrin had left. She shifted through the channels for a while and once she settled on Disney’s Hannah Montana, Elliot and Nicholas walked in.

Raven's eyes bumped into Nicholas’ line of sight and she felt some invisible, alien extension of sorts, creeping inside her chest and giving her a mini heart attack, possibly squeezing the life out of her little heart.

Looking away at once, she sunk lower into the couch, tucking her chin in the process and hiding her face from him with her fringe. Despite the goosebumps and malfunctioning heartbeats, she kept her eyes fixated on the TV and the popcorns from the bowl kept disappearing rapidly. With nothing much left to do, Raven kept eating, faster and in handfuls.

“What's up, Dumpling?” Nicholas asked casually as he came around the couch to sit with her, picking up the acoustic guitar lying next to her school bag on the next couch.

For a moment, Raven wondered if he still hadn’t seen her letter. He behaved just as always. He gave her his usual kind smile and he still dared to sit next to her.

“Hi,” she replied, putting down her legs from the couch to make space for him.

“I’ll be down after I take a bath,” Elliot told Nicholas as he headed for the stairs.

Nicholas strummed the instrument once and he winced. The strings were completely off tune. It sounded like a dying grandma.

“Who messed it up again?” Elliot looked back from the stairs, frowning.

“It was Aaron,” Raven answered.

Aaron was one who couldn’t keep his hands off anything. And ever since he first learned how to play the opening piece of Greenday’s ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’, he wouldn’t stop showing off. All of Raven’s effort in telling him he was in reality messing up the guitar went to waste.

Elliot let out a frustrated sigh and went up to his room. Nicholas stayed back with Raven on the couch, fixing the guitar strings. Chewing on her lips and clutching the bowl tighter and tighter in her hands, she kept her eyes glued to the TV.

"Your tuition's over?" Nicholas asked and at the sound of his voice, Raven started and the bowl slipped from her hands. It shattered to the tile floor, breaking apart and sending tiny sharp splinters to every direction, and spreading the popcorns everywhere on the floor like wedding confetti.

On the spur of the moment, and in panic, she bent down to get the bowl. Nicholas called for her not to do it, but by then, Raven had already sliced the tip of her right forefinger on a sharp edge and two thick drops of blood splattered on the floor next to her feet.

She hissed and winced at the cut. Then she stood up from the couch, "I'll go get the broom!"

"No!" Nicholas shouted, but again, Raven had already stepped onto a broken piece.

Wincing and clenching her teeth together, she sat back on the couch and pulled her feet up to inspect the underside of it. A rather large splinter, about the size of a needle, was sticking into her flesh an inch below her toe.

"You shouldn't have moved. Stay where you are," Nicholas said and went for the kitchen the other way round.

Raven bent and looked at her wounds again. She could see the enormous piece of glass running into her flesh and she didn't dare remove it. Nicholas returned from the kitchen with a broom, a dustpan, and the first-aid kit that her family kept in a cupboard above the fridge. Raven watched him begin to sweep the floor.

"I could do it," she offered and Nicholas scoffed and smiled at her.

"You stay where you are."

He collected the broken splinters in the dustpan and went to the kitchen again to dump them in the dustbin. When he came back to her, he opened the first-aid box and handed a strip of band-aid to her.

"Stick this on your finger," he said, "Lemme see your feet."

She shifted on the couch, leaned back on the armrest, and showed her feet to him. He took her leg on his lap and said, "Don't move. I'm gonna remove the glass, alright?"

"Okay." Raven nodded, aware of the gentle grip he had on her ankles.

He sought a tweezer from the box and pulled out the splinter in less than a minute, leaving a slight sting in its place. Raven's leg jerked a little at the sting.

He looked up at her and asked, "Did it hurt?"

"A little."

He gave the splinter for her to see, wiped the blood off her wound, and stuck a band-aid over it.

"Thanks," Raven said and shifted to a sitting position again, feeling slightly giddy at how nicely he had treated her.

"So, your tuition's over?" Nicholas asked her again.

"Yeah. It's over."

He met her eyes and he could tell just how nervous and scared she was. For some moment he wondered if he should really talk to her about the letter or just ignore it. But he decided it was always better to talk things out and clarify the situation.

He continued plucking the guitar strings.

"Your Nu's not home?" He asked, making sure there was no one who might hear them talk.

Raven quickly glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. He was looking down at the guitar strings, pulling one string after the other and twisting the tuning pegs on the head.

"No."

Nicholas plucked the strings one after the other all over again. Raven listened. The tune was perfect now. He strummed a simple tune and kept it back on the couch.

Relaxing and leaning back on the back of the couch, Nicholas breathed deeply and said, "I found your letter."

Raven swallowed hard and stared up at him gingerly.

"Did you mean it?" His voice was soft.

Raven nodded again, her fringes trembling uniformly just above her almond-hooded eyes.

Staring down at his hands, Nicholas wrapped his left fist with his right palm and cracked the knuckles.

He scratched the back of his neck and turned to her, "Listen Raves. Uh. . . I don't even know how I should put this to you, but I think it's best you don't think about us that way. I mean, we're like a family. I think of you as a sister. I love you a lot in fact but, only as a sister. . . and I'm going to miss you too after I leave. Truly."

Raven didn't meet his eyes. She nodded for the umpteenth time. Then the room was quiet for a while until Nicholas attempted to lighten the mood.

"So. . . yeah. We're good, right?"

"Yeah."

"Don't feel bad okay? You're an amazing girl. Very pretty too if I'm being honest. I'm honestly surprised you fell for a boomer like me."

Raven felt the corners of her lip tugging up to form a smile before she gave a little laugh and said, "You're a nice person. You're very kind and good to everyone." Very good to me too and that's what I like about you - she wanted to add but she chose not to.

Nicholas' heart went out to her that instant. He found himself softened by her shy gestures, her twinkling brown eyes, her sweet voice generously giving off honest compliments. His instincts urged him to hug her but he opted against it for fear of leading her on. Instead, he reached over and ruffled her hair.

"Thank you. You're a special girl. You'll meet someone much better when you're older."

Raven didn't reply. She brought her fingers to her lips and chewed on her nails.

"I hope you're okay, Raves. I just want you to understand. I'll tell you what, people feel so many different emotions when they're young, but they don't usually last. If I have hurt you today, I'm truly sorry, but you'll realize later on that this was for the best."

Of course, he didn’t mean to hurt her. He would never but it still hurt Raven how feeble and meaningless he thought her feelings for him were, that she would easily forget about him in a few months. Because for crying out loud, this thirteen-year-old was quite convinced she’d love him FOREVER.

Yet, she said nothing more. She didn’t think he would understand. She didn’t think he was willing to understand either way.

"Besides, don't you think I'm too old for you? When you're grown up, I'll be looking like a grandpa beside you. Geez." He joked to lighten up her mood.

Raven returned a quick, fake smile and answered lowly, "I don't really care about your age."

Then Nicholas was quiet again.

‘If he’s talking, might as well speak my mind,’ she thought.

Of course, she’d thought about their age gap too. Seven damn years. But that never held her back from loving him. Somehow, she knew Nicholas would never love her back the same way. No one had to spell it out to her that he was way out of her league. The village was flooded with tons of beautiful girls, girls of his age, girls of his league. She could even name a chain of them exceptionally pretty girls all pursuing him. Word even got around that the village's beauty queen, Claudia, too had a crush on him. Imagine that.

She knew. She knew it all, even though with Darrin they’d concluded she held a pretty good chance. Deep down in her gut, she knew she had none. She was silly, but she wasn’t stupid. All Raven wanted was for him to know.

And yet, she had let herself believe in Kim's silly tarot readings and told herself that this move was important. It had to be done. Kim was one of her best friends and she often solved a simple puzzle about relationships. She called it FLAMES.

F stood for Friends, which meant that the two love interests in question were only friends, or would be friends in the future. L stood for Lovers, A for Admired, M for Marriage, E for Enemies, S for Siblings. Then they’d have to write down the letters of the names of the love interests in question and strike off the same, overlapping letters. Then, they'd have to count the remaining letters. After which, they'd count the same numbers on the word FLAME and see where the last number falls. If in case, the last number falls on the letter L, that would mean that the love interests were fated lovers and no force in this world would break them apart.

It was silly. They all knew that and Kim often did this with celebrities and her crushes for fun. Raven loved it too because it was utterly simple and funny and because it gave the letter L when she tried it on her and Nicholas' first names.

Nicholas swallowed and replied again, nodding, "Yeah. I guess you don't but, we're like brothers and sisters. I mean, I care about you in the same way your brother does. You know I love you too but just . . . not like that."

Raven pursed her lips and nodded. "I know. I just want you to know how I feel."

This was all expected. She’d thought about everything that needed thinking. She knew he’d say she was still young. She knew he’d say he cared about her as a sister. She knew he would be much older too when she’s older. There was no denying that. He would always be much older. Before he said those words himself, Raven had heard them over and over in her mind every time she thought of him like a prayer. How she wished he said something she didn’t already know.

On top of that, there was the tradition, or more so a restriction in their tribe that Sakas and Ronglos should not marry one another. Nicholas being a Ronglo could not take Raven, a Saka, as his wife. Everyone as a tribe was aware of that. But neither of them was in the mood to even mention that. It was enough for now.

"Are you mad at me?" She asked him in a timid voice.

"Of course not, Raves. Look," he shifted on the couch to face her fully. "This doesn't change anything between us okay. I'm still the same Nick. You're still the same Raves. Well, you know I can never get mad at you, Dumpling." He grinned and ruffled her hair again like he always did.

Raven managed to give another smile, although her heart was crushed. It was a good thing she actually expected nothing from him. It hurt less. But it did hurt a lot. At some point, she felt like crying. But she didn’t. She wasn’t a cryer. And definitely not in front of a human being.

What would he think of me? Weak? Obsessed? No way am I crying. Ew!

You see, Raven was the youngest in the family and everyone treated her like a princess. When you look at her, it would come across as if she had everything she could ever ask for in this world. . . as though sadness was something so foreign in her life.

Raven did seem so because she had learned to conform to the life people think she had. . . that people always expected her to be happy, jolly and pampered. Moreover, the personality she had of never showing her weakness to anyone covered her like a veil. Was it a good thing or a bad thing, she had no idea.

"Will Elliot know about this?"

"Not unless you tell him. Will you?"

Raven quickly shook her head.

Nicholas smiled at her. "Then this is our secret."

Thank God!

Relief washed over her like a wave.

“What secret? The two of you?” Elliot asked, coming down from his room.

"What secret?" Elliot asked cheerfully, coming down from his room.

"That I messed up your guitar even worse," Nick looked up and grinned at him.

Raven stared at him stunned at the quick save.

• • •