The Wrong Number

12

5:18 pm, Ruhan: hallo

Alankrita's throat felt dry when she read the sender's name. She was still not over the previous night. After Ruhan had hung up, her mind ran his last sentence over and over in her head, like a scratched CD. It had become even louder after he had shown up at school with a dark bruise on his jaw.

"Don't let my father hit you too."

She was still in shock when her friend Gaurav shook her shoulder. Snapping out of her reverie, she turned to him. "Yeah?"

Gaurav, a skinny pale kid with glasses twice the size of his head, was one of her classmates at Erudite Training centre, the coaching classes she attended.He shoved the notebook he was holding into Alankrita's face. "Look at my diagram!" he said, visibly upset, "My golgi apparatus looks like a sausage!"

Alankrita sighed. "Gaurav," she said, taking the book from him and placing it on their desk. "It's supposed to look like a sausage. That's what Chari sir said."
"But it looks nothing like yours! Can you draw it for me? Please?"

She frowned at her pleading classmate, but eventually rolled her eyes and began erasing his diagram. "This is the last time I'm doing this, okay?" she growled, and he vigorously nodded, grinning widely, and bounded off with his friends. She exhaled loudly. This was not how she would have preferred spending the half hour break they got between their classes. She was so engrossed in drawing cell organelles that she had forgotten about Ruhan's message. Until, of course, her phone buzzed again.

5:25 pm, Ruhan: heelllooooo

5:25 pm, Ally: hey. Sorry I took a while- I'm in coaching classes

5:25 pm, Ruhan:So apparently I called you last night

Alankrita almost dropped her phone when she read his message. He remembered? "He wasn't supposed to remember any of that!" she thought frantically. Then it struck her that such a thing existed known as 'caller history'.

5:26 pm, Ally:Yeah

5:26 pm, Ruhan: What did I happen to say?

She debated whether or not she should tell him what he had told her. She didn't think he intended to tell her what he had, and it probably just slipped out. However, it would be right to tell him that she knew something about him. It wasn't a very nice little detail about his life, either.

5:26 pm, Ally:oh just some random stuff.

Alankrita pressed her lips together and hoped she'd taken the right decision because there was no going back.

5:26 pm, Ruhan: really?

5:27 pm, Ally:yeah. Like how you wanted to have a sleepover and stuff
5:27 pm, Ally:You also tried to carve my name into a table with a straw

5:27 pm, Ruhan: hahaha really?

5:28 pm, Ally:yeah. You're a very incompetent vandal

5:29 pm, Ruhan: that's all I said?

5:30 pm, Ally:yep. Also you may or may not have said my voice is pretty

5:30 pm, Ruhan: no you sound like an ogre ew

5:34 pm, Ally:wow I liked drunk Ruhan better
5:35 pm, Ally: But on a more serious note, you should probably wait till you're at a LEGAL age to get drunk again. I was worried sick all night

5:36 pm, Ruhan: oho

5:36 pm, Ally:I thought you'd end up asleep in an open drain or something

5:37 pm, Ruhan: but still- you thought about me ALL night ;)
5:37 pm, Ruhan: surely you couldn't have been just worrying about me the whole time ;)

Alankrita giggled at her phone screen and went back to adding the finishing touches to her diagram. When a loud buzzer sounded, signalling the end of the break, Gaurav was herded into the classroom with the other students and he took his place next to Alankrita in the first bench.

"Thanks," he said when she slid his book to him, "Wow, this is really detailed." She nodded and switched her phone off, complying with the 'no phones during lectures' rule.

"Ugh, we have Chari sir for an entire hour now. Wait, are you seriously smiling?" Gaurav asked, looking at her incredulously, "Wow, you must really like zoology."

She didn't look away from the phone on her lap. "Yeah," she said, "Zoology."

*****