...
❝He was the poison I was dying to taste on my lips.❞
...
I was a coward.
The coward who wanted to leave behind the wreckage of her life for the man who had tormented her for as long as she could remember. The boy who had spit venom at me gro...
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november 2005 — age ten
TWO MONTHS OF school whizzed by and nothing seemed to have changed.
I was still being treated like a nobody, like I was invisible, but I was slowly beginning to get used to it. It was really only bearable because I had Faye at my side, and like the true best friends she said we were, we now practically knew everything there was to know about each other.
I knew that she had an older half-brother whom she'd never talked to or seen — because he was on her mother's side, and that woman had left Faye when she was a baby on her father's doorstep — and I also knew that she had a stepsister who was apparently in love with Faye's father; her words, not mine.
Faye told me about how she was allergic to all sorts of stuff, including strawberries, apples and peanuts to name a few, and had to carry an EpiPen on her at all times. She even taught me how to use it on her in case she ate something she wasn't supposed to, which would really only be the case if her stepmother or one of the girls at school sabotaged her food. I thought that was a bit dramatic, but judging by the serious look on her face, I quickly came to realise that those types of things were not uncommon around here.
She also asked me why my surname was my dad's name, and after weaving through a complicated explanation, I told her that many Tamilians and some South Indians didn't have a family name. Instead, our last name was our father's or husband's first name, if a woman chose to change her last name after marriage which would result in the latter being the case.
We also came to see that, unlike friends in movies or books, we were not polar opposites. In fact, we were pretty similar; we were both very realistic people, neither too optimistic or too pessimistic. We were both naturally curious, only that she was a little more outspoken than me and spoke her mind more often, whether it was good or bad, while I seemed to digest the situation first and say what felt the most appropriate after.
A sudden clattering noise broke me out of me reverie, diverting my attention to my mother who was fiddling around in the kitchen. But it seemed that her fiddling was actually baking when she placed a plate of apple crumble in front of me, a golden spoon on it.
"Who's this for?"
I knew it wasn't for me because I didn't really like apple crumble, and my suspicions were confirmed when my mother said it was for River.
"I always see that boy with an apple in his hands, not that I see him often. And I thought, why not bake him something that he might like?" She elaborated, an embarrassed smile on her face.
"You're trying to get on his good side, aren't you?" I shook my head. "He's ten-years-old, ma. His opinion doesn't matter."
She gasped. "Ishwarya. Don't say that. Of course his opinions matter; not just because we work in his house but because everyone's opinions matter. Regardless of age."
