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‘[email protected],’ he says and begins to laugh. She hits him on his head and then gets back to the more important matter at hand.
‘Don’t try to distract me – tell me, you won’t come?’ she asks.
He shakes his head.
‘Why?’
‘I can’t be the only boy at your party.’
‘Dad won’t let me invite Akshay or Prithvi,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I don’t care about them.’
He shrugs.
‘Please?’
‘They’ll all make fun of me,’ he says.
‘And that’s more important, isn’t it?’ she says angrily.
For a few moments, nothing happens. She stares at him and he stares back, not sure if anything is expected of him.
‘Fine,’ she thunders, ‘don’t show me your fat face ever again!’ And she marches off.
How would you feel if twelve girls you don’t care a penny about turned up for your twelfth birthday party but the one boy who really matters, your best friend, is not there?
Terrible.
And that is how she is feeling as she sits in the kitchen while music from the living room streams in, her frilly (and silly) white dress enveloping her.
Ma is shouting for her to come down and be with her friends.
A knock on the kitchen window.
She turns abruptly.
His ink-stained face is pressed against the window. He is grinning.
She doesn’t want to but can’t help the grin that spreads across her face too. She opens the window.
‘Here!’ He places something in her hand. ‘Happy birthday. I can’t stay.’
And with that, the greasy, ink-stained face disappears.
Here. Happy Birthday. I can’t stay.
She opens the badly packed gift. It is his Walkman, the one his uncle got for him from the US, the one she has often admired, the one he had only let her touch as a favour. Only his most prized possession.
Here. Happy Birthday. I can’t stay.
She clutches the gift to her chest in delight. She feels as if her heart has been dunked in a warm fuzzy drink. She doesn’t know it yet, but that is how it feels when your heart melts.
‘So you hit that boy?’ he asks, gingerly pressing his tie against her bleeding nose. It is their favourite place in the world – the little bench under the generous, sprawling branches of the ancient imli tree on the dirt road leading out of the back entrance of their school.
With his hands pressed against her nose, they must look really weird, she thinks, her heart finally beginning to slow down. How her world had turned red when that fat boy had said all that about her and Atharv. She hadn’t even attempted to contain her anger – no voice of reason had raised its head as she had picked up the tennis racket and smacked his fat leg with it.
‘Did you?’ he persists, staring intently at her, his eyes serious. He has promised not to mention anything to her parents but Koyal knows the school has already informed her father who is on his way to pick her up.
Atharv looks like a disappointed parent, Koyal thinks, allowing herself a little giggle. Atharv, the true friend that he is, has waited in the school library for the three-hour
