Kritvik Bhatt

My eyes opened slowly. My vision was blurry at first, but I could make out that I was surrounded by dark shades all around me. I closed my eyes tightly. Then, after a second, I opened them again narrowly. There was that same bench of stone at the top of my vision. In front of my eyes was grass, and way behind the bench–about a dozen steps away–were bushes and trees right in front of the dark wall. There was darkness everywhere. The park was not really well-maintained too, which was evident with the view of the grass and the way it was creeping to the top of the pavement irregularly. I took a deep breath as I closed my eyes again—just like I’ve just woken up from a night’s sleep—fixed my right hand on the ground in front of my chest, and then started to push it up. As my body lifted up a little, I had made room for my left hand to seep between the ground and the body too, and with both my hands on the ground, I finally sat up. I opened my eyes, looking at the dark park—illuminated only by the faint streetlight behind me. I turned my head down, looking at the grass just a step away from my sitting body, and looked at the edge where the faint lighted grass touched the dark grass. And my figure was on the edge of it. On the edge of light. And one step ahead was darkness.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Just as I was trying to wake myself up, I remembered the face of Aaryan as he was smiling with his right arm around my shoulders.

I opened my eyes, exhaled it all out with my mouth, and then started to glare aimlessly down at the grass, lost in my own thoughts. “So… this is the crowd of Noida, huh?”

“Kids our age literally smoke there! Freely! Can you believe it?!” I remembered a boy’s voice saying that to me.

“But, what can possibly go wrong? There must be some people like me too!” I remembered my voice replying.

“Yeah…” I murmured beneath my breath as I looked aimlessly at the grass, sitting down with my legs spread out on my right. I moved my right arm up, my left one on the ground for support, and rubbed down the broken pieces of dried grass on my left cheek. “For some reason, I had this damned feeling that something would go wrong here. No doubt, I should have never come to this damned place.”

I remembered the face of a girl with pimples as she laughed beautifully.

“Jiya…”

I remembered my arms spread open in front of my vision as I tried to catch her running back.

“Yeah, you were the only one for me in the whole world, maybe…”

As I was running at her, I noticed three other figures—two of boys on her right, and one of a girl on her left—scattered away from her, running away from me in all directions.

“Yeah, you guys… For some reason, you guys were the only one in the whole universe in front of whom I could be myself. I can never find friends like you all… never again.”

I was looking aimlessly at the grass a step away as I was lying on the ground. I then closed my moisturized eyelids, and slowly turned my head up. I opened my eyes, looking at the dark sky of the night. It had no stars or moon—just some shadows of the clouds which covered it. As my eyes glared at it, a drop of tear slid down from my right eye.

“Damn… Damn it.”

***

Ding, dong. Ding, dong.

The bells of the school rang. The teacher had left. Everyone was standing up in the class, turning right and left and talking and chatting. The class had turned into a mess, just like before… just like always. I was sitting in the front seat of the middle row . As all of the socializing stuff was going on behind me, I had my head tilted down silently, my hands lying on the wooden table of my desk. I remembered the face of Sana—wearing her usual black mask as she corrected her long black hair behind her head.

“Will she ever talk to me if she gets to know that I roam with people that smoke and do stuff like that?”

Her faint voice was reaching my ears from behind my back, “That’s sad. You see, I get it that you’re not irritated, but like, why then talk to me like tha…”

“No. And that’s not even the right thing to do. No doubt, I will never take those things.”

Then I suddenly overheard a girl’s voice saying, “And did you talk to that Kritvik, the new guy?”

Thump! My heart punched my chest hard.

“N-No…” Sana’s faint voice replied hesitantly. She was standing just some steps away from my back, talking to her friend.

“That guy’s an absolute loser, girl!”

“Why?”

“He literally shat his pants out yesterday when I tried talking to him.”

“W-What?!” My eyes opened wide.

“Really?” Sana asked her in awe, which had a slight smile on it too. She covered her open mouth with her right hand, which obviously I didn’t know because it was my back facing her.

“Yeah.”

“And he acts like he doesn’t give a damn about others.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“S-She… What will she be thinking about me now?” I thought. “No doubt, I will never be able to make a good image of myself in her eyes now!” I turned to my left, bent down toward my bag, opened up a zip aggressively, took out my lunchbox and patted it down on my desk, and then without closing the zip back, straightened my back. As I opened my lunchbox, I thought, “And here I was, saving her from terrorists in my imagination, man! That’s so embarrassing!” I had opened my lunchbox, and I suddenly took a bite in. Chewing aggressively and irritably, I turned my narrowed uninterested eyes to my right, looking at the entrance of the room. “Damn. What the fuck do I do now, man?!”

“Huff!”

***

I was walking back home from school, wearing my complete all-white uniform and my black bag hung on my shoulders behind my back. My shoulders were hunched, my hands in my pocket, and my eyes uninterested as they glared on the road aimlessly, lost in thoughts. On my right was the road filled with cars honking and speeding on the road, and the pavement ahead and behind me was filled with the dense population. The pavement, for some reason, was not like a regular pavement, but just a part on the edge of the road not cemented to provide people some space to walk and not get run over by any car or some other stuff. The school was some steps behind me as I stepped to the market area on my left, filled with confectionaries and bakeries, but some even wholesale shops selling parts and stuff.

As I was walking away on the pavement silently, my mind was lost in my own thoughts. I imagined the ruined building of my school with lights off, tables and chairs toppled everywhere, windows from where the bright summer sunlight entered broken, and the figure of Sana being trapped in the arms of a man with a pistol facing me. He was an adult, and quite taller than her. Her head was just in front of his chest, her neck trapped in his slender but strong arms. Her eyes were closed and she was trying her best to shake that arm off. “Get off me!” She said as she struggled to push that arm off and free herself. “Kriti, do something!”

As I stood some steps away, my eyes widened as I heard her. My arms and legs were spread open a little in carefulness as I was thinking hard to do something.

“Kriti!”

The bustling cars’ honking and stuff hit my ears as i returned back to reality.

“It’s so embarrassing,” I thought as I returned to the real world, my head turned down.

“For some reason, all I used to think about at school was Sana. I used to overhear her from a distance, listen to her, daydream about her, and make up some unrealistic scenarios with me and her in the lead. No doubt about it. I’d developed a crush on her for some reason. And, thinking about her made me forget about all the depressing thoughts I used to have at that time.”

“It’s dumb.”

I turned my head a little up on the other people on the road as I continued to walk on the bricked pavement. A group of three friends—all boys—were walking some steps in front of me. “The team needed just seven in the last over, and then Saini hit the six off the first ball!”

“The one who came to ball the last over wasn’t really a good one. He’s never even played internationally.”

“Yeah, he’s not an experienced player. And only an experienced player should bowl in the last over.”

The boys in the front were talking about last night’s match or something, maybe. For some reason, I had no interest in cricket, so I just followed them and heard them talk silently for some time.

Walking behind them, I took a right turn, then a left, then a right, and after about twenty minutes, the three of them—with me behind them—were walking in a narrow street with high-rise apartments on both the sides. About a dozen steps away was a four-lane intersection.

I remembered the last night at the intersection when I was walking home in the faint light of the streetlight at the corner, coming from the right and entering the lane at the front.

I blinked, and I was back to that day’s scorching sun. “I don’t even want to remember what happened yesterday, man,” I thought. “What happened yesterday was… truly… truly…” I turned my head down. “I don’t feel good at school, for some reason. I feel depressed, and I’m unable to talk to anyone. They are nice people,better than Aaryan and others, no doubt, but… but I just can’t… open up… I-I, for some reason, can’t be myself with them.”

I imagined myself tied up with shining metal chains all over my body as I walked in my uniform, my bag hanging on my back.

“Something’s wrong.”

I then turned my head to the front. I was walking nearer and nearer toward the intersection. I noticed that the boys in the front were already turning right—toward the park—on their way home. I was glaring at their backs as I walked straight to my home, which at that point was just some steps away. Suddenly, my eyes widened with horror and shock. I… I froze there, with my left foot in front of my right one. I continued to glare at the right turn.

From the right turn… had suddenly emerged the figure of Aaryan. He wore a gray pair of pants over a white shirt—his school uniform, no doubt. He was seriously glaring at the front as he intended to walk straight—from my right to my left. But, as he emerged from the other side of the building and entered the intersection, he tilted his eyes to his left at me.

My horrified eyes met his neutral confident ones.

His lips gradually widened to a devilish smile.