Delicate

Chapter 1

Being on stage was very familiar to me, so much that my first time on it was a distant memory, almost lost to time. It was one of the fewer things I did on my own and for myself. All the faces in the unagitated crowd, known and unknown with their same black and grey uniform, seemed to blend in to form one entity becoming less of a stranger as long as I gazed at it. You can ignore them, pretend they don't even pay attention to anything you say but that reassurance is fake in the end. They see everything, hear everything, and their disapproval magnifies with each face in the crowd. As much as they celebrate your success, they will trample you when you fail. And I had failed.

Aleena caught my eye from one of the front rows and smiled at me. I tried to give a small smile back but shook my shoulders and looked ahead instead. I was in line to receive my prize. Second prize. The school organizes quizzes all year round and this was the first of the session. As second place winners our prize was more like a consolation prize as there were only four teams and god forbid if the losers feel bad about losing a maths quiz. Even if I hadn't thought about not participating in any more quizzes for the rest of the year, my sore defeat would have driven me over to that decision. The principal ducked out after giving prizes to the first couple of participants and the rest were stuck with his proxy vice principal. The long line sizzled out and now it was me standing in front of her. She smiled passively at first but then her eyes lit up with recognition as she took a good look at me.

"Ava!" she said beaming. "Good job and keep it up."

Like an NPC she handed me the certificate and kept repeating the same words to the participants behind me. Did she really think I did a good job? Did she even pay attention when I fumbled three consecutive questions up at the stage? I wheezed at the fresh memory of my fuck up and tried not to look down at the huge student body which witnessed it first hand. In a haste I got down the stage and made my way to the front seats. I had told Aleena to save me two seats, and one of which I sat down on and on the other where I put my certificate, saving it for Ben.

"Thank you so much for letting the others win for once," Aleena said. She was grinning.

"Shut up," I grumbled and sank into the cushioned chair.

"My house almost always loses when you're up there," she continued. "But not this time."

I groaned. "Will you stop?"

"What? I'm joking!" she said. "It's just a maths quiz and also you won 2nd prize. It's something."

"It's a consolation prize." I took the certificate from the seat and thrusted it into her face, pointing at the words with my finger. "Look, they covered up the word "Participation" with "Second". Look at it!"

She scrunched up her nose. "Is that whitener?"

I scratched at the white grainy patch and it crumbled under my fingernail, revealing the words underneath. "Shit, yes."

She lowered my hand down. "So they are saving up money on certificates. Look I'm not defending this school so let's just agree that winning some school quiz doesn't mean shit."

"Of course it doesn't but..."

Aleena looked at me expectantly. "But what?"

"I'm so..." I groaned in frustration. "I'm so angry!"

"At what?"

"At myself," I said. "I got so many questions wrong."

"So what? I'm bad at maths. I get every question wrong."

"You are an Arts student, you don't even have maths. I have at least two whole years of maths ahead of me."

She went quiet.