Endless Road (Wattys 2015)

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

28th June, 2008

       "So," he said, plonking his tray next to mine on the table, and flopped down in the empty chair beside me. His messy hair was sticking up in every direction, slightly distracting me from his speech and the fact that he was here. For a moment, Milli and I just froze. Then we regained ourselves as Ajay kept speaking, his genial, casual voice ringing clearly in our silent corner of the canteen. "So I was thinking, I need help."

       "Help?" Milli and I echoed together. Then we exchanged glances. Rishi sat passively in his chair, not giving the littlest of reactions.

       "Yes," Ajay peeled away the foil from his vegetable wrap and took a huge bite. His tray looked obscenely filled compared to Milli's lunch of greens  and my own dal and rice. Rishi was eating an apple, clearly too skeptical to start on a normal diet after his month long courtship with jaundice.

       "I need help with Math."

      "With Math," I repeated.

       "It's just so confusing! And last night, while doing the homework, I realized that I didn't understand a single thing about trigo. It was all gibberish to me. Took me hours to get the sum right—and I was copying them. Seriously, if I don't get help, I'm going to flunk," he announced.

       None of us had said a word while he talked. I was still watching him as he chewed noisily, small pieces of capsicum falling onto the tray from the end of his roll. I cleared  my throat. "So, what are you going to do?"

       He looked up and stared at Milli with a pleading, groveling expression. "I've heard you're a whiz at teaching Math. Please help me, Milli, or I swear, I am going to end up stuck in ninth grade while all of you move on, leaving me behind."

        Milli snorted, and Rishi just stared at him with mild amusement. "There's no need to be so overly dramatic."

      "She is quite good at math," Rishi pointed out. "I don't think she'll have a problem taking you on."

       Milli shot him a dirty look, but Rishi just shrugged and played innocent. I listened to this bizarre conversation, wondering how easily everything just kind of fit in. Ever since what happened in the canteen three days ago, I'd been driving to school and back with Ajay and his younger brother. It had become a routine now—an unexpected change that I had never intended to happen, but which had turned out to be a constant source of relief to my family, at least. Ajay was causing too many changes in my life—ever since he'd joined the school this year, things had been different. I had never imagined our paths would cross, that my life would even be remotely affected by his presence or existence. Yet, the opposite was happening now.

      We were driving to school together. He'd introduced me to his group of friends, and yes—they all said hi to me whenever they saw me in the lobby, or in the hallways, or anywhere nearby. It was like being noticed after a lifetime of being invisible. It was strange, to say the least. Then there was his habit of dropping in on our lunch table unannounced. He'd  done it two days ago, and he was doing it now. The sound of him chewing and the way he kept his mouth half open was beginning to annoy me a little, so I tried to focus my attention elsewhere, lest I should say something rude to him about table manners. What were his other offences? Oh, yeah. Giving me a new nick-name.

       My name was so short that my parents had probably looked it up in the dictionary of acronyms. It ended as soon as it began. I had never been given a nickname, ever, except for two years ago, when I'd been called 'Poor Dia.' but even then, no one had altered my name or tried to call me anything different than what I already was. But Ajay seemed to think he had to change that. So, for some particular reason, he called me Panda. The first  time he'd used that name for me was, well, two days ago in his car.