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6. VIKING STARSHIP

❤︎ Anjali ❤︎

I am pretty good at school. I can't do much exercise or physical education because of a congenital heart disease I've had from birth. To compensate for my handicap, I excelled in academics. At least, I think this is what happened.

All my life, I have always been reading books. While my friends played at the park, I sat on the bench reading a book. Scenes like those comprise most of my memories growing up; sitting and reading.

People often ask me what is wrong with my heart. I respond by, "My heart's muscle is not strong enough to pump the blood." That's what I tell them because that's what my mom always told me. Because of my heart disease, I have always been skinny and have a bluish tint to my skin. Luckily, people don't notice much because I have darker skin.

When I was in my sophomore year at high school, I was getting weaker and weaker. It became challenging for me to walk to school. My breathing became shallower and shallower because my heart was enlarging. The countdown to my death, heart failure, became imminent. If I couldn't receive a new heart before I was twenty years old, I wouldn't have any chance of survival.

Probably because of my weak heart, I am very shy and timid. These combinations don't help me become popular in school. I am entirely invisible, and I am okay with it. Boys don't pay attention to me that much.

I didn't have any boyfriend in middle school or high school. I talk to my best friend, Ananda, about having a perfect prince charming arrive, knock on my door, and take me away to an enchanting white castle. Of course, this prince charming never knocked on my door.

Ananda and I grew up together—we have been next-door neighbors. When I was about five years old, Ananda's family moved to an apartment next to ours. When I saw her for the first time, I instantly liked her. She already had her round glasses on, and she was pudgy.

But my parents somehow didn't want me to play with her, and neither were her parents. They didn't tell me the reason until much later. I always knocked on her window because my bathroom window was right next to her room. She quietly opened it and let me into her room.

Then we ever played with her wooden dollhouse. We were both princesses from Wonderland and had a lot of plastic jewelry to play with. Her room became our dreamland, and we were talking louder than we should have because Ananda's mother walked in, took my arm, and threw me out of her house.

Ananda looked so sad to see me go when I looked back at her before entering my apartment. The following week, both forgot all about the incident, and I knocked on her window again.

In the beginning, I didn't understand why her mother always kicked me out. I thought it was because we made too much noise. It went on for some time, and I kept kicked out of her house whenever her mother found me until one evening.

I always loved talking to Ananda because she made me laugh so much with her strange adventure stories. When we were in third grade, she started to speak to me about going to see some whales. First, I didn't quite understand what she was talking about. She explained to me with conviction.

"Anjali, we are going to see some humpback whales in the ocean. Don't tell anyone. It is a big secret between us."

She was very serious.

"I figured out how to get there. First, we will take a subway to Sutphin Boulevard, then walk to Jamaica station. At the station, we will take a train to the tip of Long Island."

"You know we live on the west-side of Long Island, and the whales are living on the east of the island. Once we get to the town called Montauk, we will get off the train. There, the boat is leaving from the harbor, and it will take us to the whales."