Silently Falling in Love: Race (THE EDITED VERSION)

Chapter 18 - Back to School

Anjali September 1991:

We were in the third week of school our junior year and Arjun and I still hadn't caught up with each other from the summer. I needed to stop avoiding him, so I picked up the phone and called his room.

"Hello."

"Hey Arjun, it's Anjali. Do you want to meet for dinner," I blurted out in one long breath.

"I'm not hungry and I'm in the middle of doing homework. My mom also sent me enough food to avoid the cafeteria for a while."

"Okay, we'll meet another time. Talk to you later," I said and hung up.

I was no longer hungry either. I went to the gym first and headed to the cafeteria afterwards.

After a long workout, I slumped through the cafeteria line in my sweaty clothes and slimy hair, too tired and hungry to bother going back to my room to shower first. I took the most edible looking items in the hot food line and headed to the salad bar.

I dumped a huge pile of salad onto my plate and moved further down the line to add the rest of the fixings. As I moved down, I looked up and on the other side of the salad line I looked into Arjun's dark brown eyes.

I raised my eyebrow, "Did you finish all of your mom's food already?"

Arjun laughed at being caught. "I missed the mystery meat."

"So how was your summer?" I asked as I dolloped Italian dressing all over my salad.

"Good. And yours?"

"It was good too."

"Anything interesting?"

"No, not really."

"What about you?"

"Just hanging out with the family," I said as we slid into a booth.

We ate the horrible cafeteria food. It was rare we were both quiet for this long.

Dinner continued to be quiet and awkward.

Arjun broke down. "Something happened this summer."

"Oh no, you tried to kill Ms. Icy Pants!" I teased.

"No, but I thought about it! No one likes her! None of Amar's friends like Chris. If I killed her, there would be several suspects, it wouldn't be obvious it was me."

"You'd think since no one close to him likes Chris that it might be a clue she's not right for him," I said supportively. "If they throw you in jail, I'll write you every week and I'll send you the latest Hindi songs."

Arjun laughed, "God I missed you!"

"I missed you too. But I need to tell you something," I confessed.

"Me too."

"Let's get out of here."

"Let's grab soft serve first," it was one of the few decent items the cafeteria served. We both grabbed cones and heaped it with extra-large swirls of vanilla and chocolate soft serve ice cream and headed to our favorite spot.

Minutes later we lay on the grass at the edge of campus while licking our fingers from the dripping ice cream. We found a grassy area surrounded by a few trees away from main campus. We always came here when we needed to talk. This was our sanctuary.

"You first," I said.

"Promise me you won't get mad," Arjun pleaded.

"Okay, I promise not to get mad at you." I laughed like we were still in kindergarten.