Indie-America

24

   (((Edited•)))
 
   Mara drags me to sit down beside her. Grandma is knitting something on the red sofa she has come to love so much.

"Hey Grandma," I say and she mutters something back to me without looking up.

"Where's everyone else?" I ask Mara and she shrugs,

"Simmi got invited to her first party and Ken and Rohan decided to tag along,"

I raise my brow at her, considering how close they've been these past weeks this must have hurt. Even though logically an 11-year-old girl would never be allowed into a high school party.

"And Aunt SanJ's is doing the groceries," She finishes then jumps on her chair again, "which gave me the time to think about my actions clearly. Of course with grandma's help," She winks at grandma who(surprise surprise!) winked back at her.

"I can't really...spit it out so I decided to draw something for you. I hope you can understand it," she hands me paper cardboard. Did I ever mention Mara is terrible at drawing? I don't know how it is we're related.

Anyways so she drew something like a comic book, in the first panel a terribly short girl is sitting on a porch holding her head in her hand and she's obviously crying. At first, I think that's Mara until I read the second panel where an extremely tall girl with hair around her shoulder in a room with posters of a man I'll assume is Harry Styles and several TV series on the wall. That's definitely Mara's room, and that's definitely her hair.

"Amara I think it's safe to say I'm the taller one," I side-eye her and she shrugs.

"It's fiction."

The girl in the room is also crying, there are no speech bubbles so I can only assume she feels bad for doing what she did. It's only now I realize this is an apology.

In the third panel, another tall guy is talking with Mara outside at night. I have no idea who he could be or what they could be talking about but it ends up with them hugging each other. In the fourth panel is only Mara, she's looking straight at me(actually diagonally if I must say) and that's all. I look at Mara and she immediately says "sorry."

For a moment I stay put, unsure of what to say but then she coughs as a means to prompt me and I say whatever comes to my mind.

"I forgive you. And I'm happy you realized your mistake and came to apologize. I'm also sorry I yelled at you back then."

She smiles and swallows me in a big bear hug.

"So grandma talked the sense into ya eh?" I say after releasing her.

"Well, grandma and Luca actually,"

"Luca?" I can feel my eyes popping.

"Yes, that boyfriend of yours is a diamond. And apparently, he's got a couple of diamonds himself," grandma answers instead, finishing with a chuckle.

"But I don't get it when did Luca talk to you?"

"The night it happened," She answers and I want to swallow that but grandma hasn't finished voicing her thoughts.

"He's also very handsome. If I had found someone as handsome as that back in India I probably wouldn't be here today."

"Is that really bad? I think here is quite ok," Mara says looking around our house and Grandma rolls her eyes.

"So tell me Ravi, these days most youths date for the fun of it and don't even last a month. Will you do the same?" She looks me straight in the eye and I'm wondering how I could ever tell her that there's no relationship in the first place.