The Great Indian College Romance

1. Board it up

Who could have predicted that the last day of board exams would have me crying my eyes out in a strange toilet of a school that I had been to only four times? 

Not me, I can tell you.

And who would have thought the crying would have nothing to do with the three-hour Chemistry exam I just took. 

But life tends to throw you curve ball after curve ball and you are supposed to keep dodging and standing straight up. You are expected to be resilient and pretend existence is a gift. 

I know the trivialities of a high school girl's life would not seem as crushing to another person but in my opinion, this was pretty much the worst thing that could have happened to a girl of seventeen on a day she thought would be filled with celebration. 

"Meera, are you okay?" Sarah knocked on the stall door pulling me out of my spiral for a second. It had been some minutes since I had been sitting on the toilet seat crying silently.

I thought of how I had it all mapped out, March 15th, the day we would all be on the precipice of greatness. Our school lives were over and we were venturing into the next big phase of our lives and what made it sweeter was that I wasn't doing it alone, I had Parth with me. 

But now I couldn't do it, I couldn't go out there and face people. He had pulled the rug out from under my feet. The love of my life had just dumped me. 

"Meera just answer me so I know you are fine in there." Sarah continued knocking. 

"No Sarah, I'm not fine in here," I said and a sob escaped my lips. I probably looked like a very mussed up raccoon by this point with my hair in a mess and kohl streaking down my face with my tears. 

Parth and I had decided we couldn't let our relationship come in the way of our academics. We had taken a break so as not to distract each other as he prepared for his engineering entrance and I prepared for board exams. It had seemed like the smartest idea at the time, we could pick up right where left off, after all, we had such a solid foundation. I had spent the entirety of my high school life with him so it seemed only natural that we would spend the rest of our lives together. 

I laughed bitterly at my stupidity. 

"Meera please come out here. Let me take you home. Do you honestly want to stay here in this stinky washroom?" she implored.

I wiped my tears on my handkerchief and sniffled. She was right, the washroom indeed smelled incredibly bad and the seat was starting to feel uncomfortable. I opened the door and faced Sarah who immediately winced at my appearance. 

"It's that bad, is it?" I asked turning to the mirror above the washbasin to fix it and wailed, "Why doesn't this stupid school have mirrors anywhere?" 

"Here let me help you." Sarah took the already blackened square of fabric from my hands and ran it under the tap water. She started to wipe my face gently. 

"So how bad did it look?" I asked her. 

"How bad did what look?" 

"The scene. Me getting dumped by my boyfriend. Was it at least entertaining?" 

She did not reply and I could only conclude it was worse than I could have imagined. Fresh sobs emerged from my throat as I realized how humiliated I must have seemed. 

"Hey, Hey, don't do this to yourself for that loser." she chastised gently.

"Did he have to do it in front of the entire school?"

"Meera, it was one section of one batch and we won't be seeing their miserable faces again anyway. School's over. Besides, they were all too occupied celebrating the end of boards. Here all done. Tie your hair up." she said handing me her hair tie. I put my hair up in a ponytail.