Someone's In My Head (WATTYS AWARD WINNER 2015)

Chapter One

The really frustrating thing about Sudoku is that you have to be guessing constantly; sometimes to identify a single digit, if you're lucky, or maybe a chain—a digit after another. There's no certainty at all. And the even more frustrating part is if you get the first guess wrong, you'll have to start all over again, all the way from the first guess. Sometimes you don't even remember what the first guess was.

That was why my head was hurting terribly as I struggled to solve the INTERMEDIATE-Level Sudoku, a challenge by my roommate. Wong was probably the most intelligent human in the world. His mind functioned in matrices, and when he spoke it came out either in codes or in mathematical functions. It impresses me on some days, but most of the time it just grinds on my nerves.

"Dude. Drop a clue for Row 4 Line 5." I pleaded.

Wong had his head buried in a Further Maths textbook as thick as my mom's safety box. "Take the probability of the number four to be 3 over 7, you can deduce that the probability of the numbers seven and nine, with probabilities 2 over 7 and..."

And he said all of that without even referring to the puzzle. Sometimes I seriously suspect that my friend had inherited his brains from Albert Einstein himself.

"So you're saying the answer is 3." I summarized.

"Yeah."

"Great. Thanks." I proceeded to jot down the answer. Sweeping a glance at the piece of wrinkled paper, I groaned in disbelief. An entire hour and I had yet to complete half of the Sudoku Puzzle.

I gazed miserably out of the window. With the grueling, mind-boggling end-of-sem exams over, the basketball court was full of enthusiastic Michael Jordan wannabes. The constant thumps of the ball against the board struck a rhythm into my head.

In the second year of my education in Nostradamus College, things started to get hectic. Assignments came like the wind, with extra-curricular activities adding their weight to my already heavy schedule. I was practically studying twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, if not completing my 50 hours of social service. Only my routine jog around the campus every evening helped me to stay sane.

My phone started buzzing noisily. I scooped it up and glanced at the screen. "Mom?"

"Jarod!" My mom's cheery voice floated out of the speaker. "So, how were exams?"

"Fine." I mumbled. Is that a trick question?

"Come on, Jarod. You know that's not the answer I want. Did you survive through Calculus this round?"

Calculus was my weakest subject. Great motivation, mom. "I think so." I lied. More like, 'I think I missed the passing mark by 20 marks, but I'm not gonna tell you that. Not when the holidays are so close.' There's no way I'm gonna ruin my only chance to hang out and party with my friends.

"Oh and mom," I added, suddenly remembering something important. "I'm gonna be going over to Layla's place tonight for a sleepover party. She'd invited everybody and it's gonna be real fun."

I eyeballed the glossy invitation card that sat on my desk. Layla was one of the most promising actresses in college. She came to Nostradamus on a Performing Arts scholarship, and her extraordinary beauty merely enhanced her image in the eyes of her audience. Almost every guy in college was in love with her.

Layla had approached me when I was catching my breath after the last paper, which happened to be Calculus itself. My face was flushed with the huge mental effort that I'd spent solving the indecipherable (to me) questions, and she chose that particular moment to invite me.