365 DAYS 365 TALES

Forever Strength

She was my friend, a bold and fierce friend. I loved her a lot. She was my neighbor as long as I could remember. Naturally, we did everything together. We played, talked, and laughed while sitting at the terrace to study, earning scolds from both of our parents. However, we never listened to their pestering. Star gazing was our favorite entertainment of all, and we had spent most of the nights connecting the stars, creating a new species, and naming them.

It was a perfect life for two teenagers who were engrossed in happiness and friendship. Until one day, a guy from next area proposed me with a greeting card and a rose. She was fairer than me, and beautiful too, but he chose me instead of her. That hit her in her teenage ego. I was not going to accept the guy's proposal. A stranger with funny sunglasses and weird hairstyle, was all I knew about him. On a rational thought, I walked away from him, without actually giving him his answer.

"Since when you and the guy... I mean who's that guy?" she asked, her face little as a red angry bird. It was quite common to think, I might know the guy since he approached me out of the blue. In reality, I didn't.

"I don't know." I shrugged it off.

"You want me to believe it?" She walked faster like she didn't want to walk with me anymore.

My hands were already shaking from the encounter with the boy. While I tried really hard to compose myself, she had to do that.

"What is your problem? Wait, let me explain."

She stopped in the middle of the road. It was not some fancy, traffic overbearing road like that of in the cities. It was a simple dirt floor that paved the paths for estates and connected housing units in the hill station.

Crossing her arms, she looked elsewhere apart from my face, her face still flushed from anger and the cool weather.

"I've seen the guy, okay?" The moment I said this, she walked away. I had noticed him on the side walk three or four times in the past month. He whistled, yelled, and laughed louder whenever we passed him and his small group of friends. I was sure, she might have noticed him too. After all, we walked to and from school, hand in hand.

"Hey!" I shouted behind her retreating figure, but she wouldn't stop. She kept walking. Desperation of explaining everything and to make her see things through my eyes faltered, as she wouldn't give me the chance to do so.

We just walked for a few meters down the road, she still ahead of me.  The road turned to the housing units in the clearing, in the middle of a tea estate. A bike came down the road, I could guess it without looking back, like everybody in our village did. Might be the village president's son, I thought and never paid any attention to the vehicle.

I suddenly leapt forward and grabbed her wrist, stopping her to face me. "What?" she groaned. As she stood facing me, her eyes went wide as eggs.

She wasn't looking at me, at my face, but looking past me. The bike? I questioned myself. Before I could turn back to see what grabbed her attention, she shoved me hard that I fell on the rock on the side of the road. My elbow hit on it, however my groaning was completely sunk by the unbearable, agonized scream emanated from my friend.

Panic clutched my heart. Was it an animal? Did I mistook it for a bike? My head swiveled with questions, as I managed myself up on my feet and rushed to her. The bike swept past in urgency and I saw the same guy who proposed me earlier, sitting at the pillion. He seemed to be pissed off, or not satisfied with something. I didn't care. All I cared was about my friend and what he did to her.

She was writhing in pain, her hands and legs flapping on her sides. Her scream filled my ears, and my heart. I couldn't watch her like that. Hearing another scream was nerve wrecking, but I didn't know it was my own. Her face was smoking fumes. What did that filthy mutt do to her? I cried. I repeatedly called her name, as she rolled in the dirt.