The Wrong Number

33

Alankrita chewed on her lower lip as she always did when she was nervous. But today, it was different. She wasn't worrying about anything that would occur in the near future, instead she was remembering something she clearly wasn't going to forget anytime soon. Yesterday's conversation with Ruhan had left her shaken and stunned. In all her previous interactions with Ruhan, ever, she had never heard him sound like that before. Usually, when he was with people, he seemed so cool and carefree and appeared to exude confidence. But the boy she'd spoken to yesterday had sounded broken.

'You don't understand,' he'd said, 'they hate me. They wish I'd never been born. Sometimes I wish I hadn't too.'

At first, he'd sounded like an overly dramatic teenager, complaining about how his parents 'just don't get him'. But then the whole story spilled out.

'I was a mistake. He said it himself, my own father. My mom was fifteen when she met my dad, and he was a lot older than her. He was in the film business, and he told her he could make her a big star. They had a secret affair, and when they found out that she was pregnant....it wasn't a secret for much longer. She was just seventeen when she found out she was pregnant with me. Seventeen. That's younger than I am now.'

'The only thing they could think of was to get married. And of course it was a big scandal and the tabloids were all over it and my father's job suffered... but he loved my mother too much to leave her. It was great for a few years I think. I wasn't even meant to exist.'

This was when he started sobbing. Oh God, those heart wrenching sounds tore through her like physical pain. 'My dad blamed me for everything. He said if it wasn't for me my mother could have become an actress. He said I sapped her of her beauty. He admitted he wanted to get me aborted-getting a minor pregnant would have landed him in jail if it weren't for his position in the music industry- but my mother was too scared. My father regretted not letting me die before I was born. That's pretty much the worst thing you could hear your parent say to you. Ugh, I hate this. I hate them. I hate everything. This is just so screwed up.'

Alankrita brushed a tear off her cheek. If not for the holiness of concealer and cucumber, her eyes would look swollen and baggy from the sob-fest the previous night. She was staring at the classroom door, wondering if Ruhan would walk through them. He hadn't been waiting at his bus stop that morning and she worried if something really bad had happened to him. Her train of thought was derailed by a jab on her cheek.

"Hello? Earth to Alankrita!" Her best friend Anu said, glaring at her through her slanted eyes, "I've been going on and on about my crisis here and you're staring at the door like you expect Hitler's ghost to walk through them."

Anu didn't bother to quieten down. Besides, why should she have to when they were two of the only five students who'd chosen to spend the few minutes before their morning bell in their classroom?The rest of the students had taken full advantage of the fact that the rains had caused flooding in the assembly hall, and were spending their free time splashing about in the pools of water than had manage to seep through the wooden flooring.

"Sorry, da," Alankrita tried for a smile, "I've just got something really important on my mind right now."

Anu rolled her eyes and twirled her manicured fingers in her curly (and by 'curly' I mean 'so frizzy she looked electrocuted') black hair. Today, she had on a very seventies ensemble, complete with the cat eye look she was so famous for. Alankrita remembered her saying she had a Tumblr blog dedicated to her winged eyeliner.

"It's not for me, it's for the public!" Anu had said to her, scrolling through her Tumblr dash while Alankrita had looked on in wonder. Now, this Singh wasn't your everyday Punjabi. In fact, she wasn't Punjabi at all, and when was assumed to be one, took great offense. She was, as she had once so eloquently yelled, "A BADASS RAJPUT WITH ROYAL BLOOD IN MY VEINS" at a poor external examiner who had harmlessly made the fateful assumption whilst collecting her tenth standard board paper.