Turning Lighter

Kritvik Bhatt

My eyes were closed, with the left half of my face sunken inside my white fluffy pillow. My lips were open a little, and my hair all messed up on top of my head and half of my forehead. The strands of my hair were running in all directions—front, back, left, right—forming circles and stuff. For some reason, my eyelids were a little wet. The room was lit up, with the double-mattress bed on which my body laid on right in the middle. My body was compressed—my knees up in front of my belly, and my hands under my chest—under the dark brown blanket which I was sleeping in. The shallow faint sunlight was coming in through the white curtains in front of the bedside table in front of my sleeping face. The door on the other side of the curtains was closed. The other door of the room was just parallel to the door of the balcony in front of me, covered with curtains.

The door opened, and my mom rushed in, went straight across the bed and the wall to the other door, pushed open the curtains aggressively, and opened the door. “Wake up, dear!” She shouted as she turned back, and after a couple of fainting footsteps, walked away.

My eyelids tightened. “Damn… man!” I said in a cracking low voice. My eyelids then opened. I looked at the windows to the balcony in front of my sleeping head. My eyelids then narrowed, closed again for a second, and then my back moved up. My left hand was on where the primary half of my body lay just seconds ago, my back straightened, my legs spread on my right. With my right hand, I rubbed my right eye. My legs dragged themselves from my right to my front, down by the edge of the bed. My feet touched the ground, my narrowed half-asleep eyes fixed at the front, and my right hand rubbing my hair.

I then suddenly remembered the face of Aaryan.

I remembered what happened yesterday—the scorching sun, the empty street, the apartments on both sides, the intersection in the front, and the three boys with their heads turned to their back at me. I remembered them glaring at me with fear, disgust, and fun in their eyes as they whispered something to each other.

My right hand, which was on top of my blanket beside my body, clenched hard. It was so aggressive that my arm started to tremble a little. I felt a lump on my throat. I opened my lips, filled with drool, for some reason. My eyes closed down. My heart… was throbbing. It was painful. I felt what was coming. My eyelids tightened as I started to quickly breathe in and out through my mouth. A drop of tear escaped out from the edge of my right eye. I then took in another breath with my open mouth. I breathed out with my mouth, breathed in again, and then breathed out. My lips then closed. Beneath my tight eyelids, my chest moved up and down slowly as I took in breaths through my nose.

“Yeah, I was about to cry, but I controlled myself. I had the fear of getting caught, and after that, I knew that I wouldn't be able to answer my parents why I was crying, and secondly, it was just the morning. The day had just begun.”

***

“And so, a polynomial with degree one is called a ‘linear polynomial’,” The old man with white hair said. He wore a shirt and exceptionally loose tailored trousers gray in color. Beneath them he had a pair of black slippers. He corrected his glasses after the sentence and turned to his back. He had a piece of chalk in his right hand, which he used to write something on the blackboard surrounded by the white wall. “And the polynomial with a degree of two is called a ‘quadratic polynomial’,” He said as he switched a line and started to write another word beneath the first one. As he was writing, the only noise in the whole class was of the chalk being dragged on the blackboard. The class was completely silent as all the eyes listened to him.

I was sitting in the center front desk, my dark narrowed eyes facing the blackboard. My face was on my right hand, which stood on the desk by the elbow.

“Mom, dad, why did you two shift from Faridabad to here?!”

“Dad, why did you do this to me?!”

I stood in the middle of the living room, facing the gray sofa with black sheets on it. The walls were painted white. The TV hung on my back. “Dad, why did you need to shift here?” My figure, which stood in front of the TV set, asked emotionally, my voice breaking down a little.

My dad, who was smiling and had his glasses and usual gray pair of coat-suit on, smiled at me warmly and replied, “So that you can get better opportunities, son. The school in which you are in is far better than your previous one. Plus, this house too is better. The locality too provides you with better products. Noida is far more developed than Faridabad. Plus, I earn more here than I did there, work in a better company with a better office, and we’ve all seen a raise in our standard of living.”

“But… But… But I didn’t want to come here…” My eyes were leaking a little at this point. There were drops of tears on the edges of my eyes. I turned my head down, covering my face with my palms.

“But son, you’ll find more friends here,” My mother said, consoling me.

“They were special.”

“We always have to leave our friends and make new ones. It’s just a part of life.”

“But… I didn’t even have a say in this. I didn’t want to shift here. I wanted to spend more time with them.”

“Just some more time… If I could have got just some more time with them… it… would have been so… so great.”

My thoughts returned back to the class. My teacher in front of me was saying, “So, open your notebooks. We’re going to start with exercis—”

Ding, dong. Ding, dong. The bell rang. The mathematics period was over. With a little disgust, the teacher turned his head to his right—my left—maybe cussed the bell in his head, and then walked to the teachers’ desk. He walked to the desk, took up his books, and everyone stood up. “Thank you, sir,” The class said in unison as he turned backward toward the exit on my right, and walked away from the front of me. As I looked at his back stepping outside on the corridor, I moved my butt back and sat down on my wooden chair again, my eyes still fixed on my right at the exit. I sighed out, “Huff!”

The class behind my back again lost all unity and discipline as they turned here and there, stood outside their seats, and talked and laughed with each other. The yellow shades of sunlight filled the classroom, coming in from the windows on my left. I turned down to my left, looked at my bag on the ground beside my chair, and bent down to take out my lunchbox.

As I opened the zip of my black colored bag and stuffed my hands in, the legs and shoes of a female in the white pair of trousers walked from the back of my chair and stood beside my bag. I looked at the legs of the girl standing straight, facing me and my desk, maybe, as I slowly moved my back up, turning my head up and looking at the girl. It was the cute face of Sana, half covered with her black mask, and she had her head tilted down toward me. She looked at me, maybe with a smile beneath her mask, and had her lunchbox in her hands in front of her waist. “Hi, new guy!” She said in her soft girly voice.

“Hi,” I replied back, a little shocked, as I put my lunchbox down on the wooden table, my eyes fixed to my left up at her face.

“Don’t you feel bored sitting here silently all day?” She asked.

“Uh, not really,” I replied with an awkward smile of my chapped lips.

“Don’t you have any friends around?”

I shook my head slowly. “No.”

She nodded.

“So, uh, do you need something from me?” I asked hesitantly.

“Not really. My friend was absent, so I was just bored.” She turned to her back, looked at the empty desk, and sat on it, her legs outside the desk facing me. She kept her lunchbox on her thighs and opened her lunchbox. “I noticed you’re always sitting lonely in class.”

“Yeah,” I replied, turning to my own lunchbox, opening it.

“Are you always like that?” She frowned in doubt as she looked at me and asked that question. She then turned to her lunchbox again, taking a bite in.

As I chewed my food, my eyes opened a little wider than usual, as I looked aimlessly at the front. I then turned to her, chewing food, looked at her with my shocked eyes, gulped in, and then replied, “Y-Yeah, maybe. Maybe that’s because I, um, don’t really have any friends till now.”

“That’s sad. New guys sure have it hard,” She commented, her eyes on the lunchbox as she moved in another bite after her comment.

“An-And there are not even other new admissions, so that makes it harder.”

“Really, it would have,” She said as she chewed her food.

I took a bite in.

“Like, new admissions generally befriend each other,” She commented. “But this school is only until tenth, so it’s both your first and last year here.”

I smiled. “Yeah.” I then gulped in.

“Well, not even a whole year, actually. You see, half of the semester is already over.”

“Mm,” I nodded as I chewed the food, and then gulped it in.

She then gulped in too, turned at me, and asked, “But why didn’t you take admission in a school which was till twelfth? Like, you gotta take admission again in another school in some months…”

I turned to her. “My father said one of his friends’ son studies here, and he was praising this school. We have shifted here from another city, so my father didn’t know about the schools here, nor did he have time to get to know about the schools here. So, he trusted his friend and got me an admission here. Now he has enough time to search for a good school in the city for next year.”

“That’s sad.” She took in another bite, her eyes facing me.

“What’s sad about it?” I frowned in doubt a little upon my smiling lips.

“No, not like that, but…” She turned her head up, gulped in her food, and tried to explain it to me. “Like, it was just an expression… for… for something… like…” She turned at me. “I didn’t really mean that it’s sad, but like… Like, how can I explain this to you?”

“Ah, I guess I got it,” I replied with a smile, and then turned at my food again.

She had her head down at the lunchbox on her thighs, and I had my face on my table. I had a little suppressed smile on my face, whereas she was neutral. A second went by, another second went by, then another. We continued to eat our meals, and there stood a little silence between the two of us.

“I can’t believe it! I’m talking to Sana!” I thought. I turned my head up, looked at the blackboard for a second, and then turned at my lunchbox again. I gulped in, my smile fading away. “I gotta start the conversation this time,” I thought. I then turned to her. “D-Do you, uh… By any chance, d-do you like anime?” Beneath my neutral face, a thought suddenly stroke my head, “Fuck, man! Obviously she won’t!”

Her eyes lit up and widened as she moved her head up from her thighs at me. “You too?!”

“Yeah!” I smiled, sighing inside my chest that it worked well.

“I sometimes watch it, but what I’m really into is a game.”

“Jenshin?”

“Yeah!”

“For some reason, all weeb gamers are into Jenshin,” I commented with a smile.

“Because Jenshin is so cool! Like, they literally merged fantasy RPG with open-world adventures! That’s so cool!”

“Sure is. I’ve heard a lot about it, man!” I commented with a smile as I looked at her.

“Each character is so cute, and each quest is interesting. Have you played it?”

My lips compressed a little in disagreement. “Not really. My PC is low-end, so it crashes down every time I try to play it, for some reason. And I’m not that into games, so…”

“What are the specs of your computer?”

I slightly nodded my head as I looked into her face. “Uh, I-I don’t know that much. I’m not into computers and stuff…”

“What? Really?” She replied, covering her mouth with her right hand.

“What?!”

“I really thought that… you were a lot into computers.”

“But why, man?” I asked with a smile.

“Because of your face!” She replied back. “Like, you look like you’re always glued to your computer!”

“Damn. That’s not true, man! I’ve not opened it in weeks.”

“But you really…” She was a little shocked at it. “That’s sad…”

I smiled a little at her. “Yeah, maybe it is.”