Tenth Girl

o n e: oh, hello.

This is in third person, but there are POVs. The POV's will be switching mid-chapter, so it might get confusing. A '-x-' means a POV switch. It'll be kind of obvious whoever's POV the parts are in, hopefully. Also, there might be parts which don't have POVs and just . . . yeah.

-x-

There's something different in the air on the very first day of school, Rhea has come to observe in her nine years of education.

It's chilly even though it is supposed to be summer, the school seems to be dimly lit, and it's like the people you've studied with everyday for the last few years are strangers.

At least until you're on the correct floor, where you'll probably have some nice kid standing close to the stairs to guide you to the class once you two are done chatting.

Or when you meet someone on your way up and you discuss what you did for the vacations, or maybe even the reading you have this year.

And as you walk to class - luckily, now you know where it is - people wave at you, smile and say 'hello,' hi-five you or come over to talk to you for a bit.

And you realize you've missed this place, the building, the corridors you now know your way around, and, more importantly - the people. And you know they've missed you too.

That doesn't seem to be happening today, though.

The reception area is different - there are no couches like there were back in Delhi, only five or six plastic chairs which seem to be glued to the floor - the floor which is concrete instead of the marble she was used to.

There was no AC, or the coffee machine in the corner, and she couldn't hear the annoying receptionist who seemed to have nothing to do except use the school phone to talk to her friend as she glared at Rhea for disturbing her, and would ask her to get a note from a teacher because she had to call up her mom to pick her up from school, because it was fucking 3 o' clock, and school ended forty-five minutes ago. She would have to sit at the reception silently and wait, because there were no teachers about, and she wouldn't know if someone came to pick her up if she was running around school.

The receptionist would look at her menacingly as if to say, hah, what was that about using the phone? And Rhea would think -she's such a bitch for not letting me use the phone. The same phone she uses to talk to people for eight hours a day. Hey, wait, they probably use our fee to pay the bill.

She would then walk out and use the phone in the shop outside school and wait for her mother outside because she couldn't go back in now.

She shook her head free of those thoughts, because, dang, this place is a thousand miles away and, god, that receptionist was a bitch and she hopes there aren't people like that here.

There is a barely working payphone close to the office, and there is no receptionist to look at her from under her glasses as the adjusted her dupatta - the receptionist - when she - Rhea - was taking too long and say, "Listen, Your skirt is too short."

She would kill to wear the same, grey checked skirt and the white shirt instead of the stupid blue-bordering-on-grey salwar-kameez she would have to wear soon, kill to hear Aparna laugh and say, "Our school has the best uniform in the city," and she would kill to nod in agreement because it was true, and then they'd discuss the possibility of the school being built on a graveyard and wonder if 'they're ever going to have a swimming pool like they now have a tennis court', and she just yearns for all that she used to have - all that she took for granted - and wonders why this school is so goddamn stick-to-our-roots type.