Healing Him | ✓

16.

Annika was staring at the invite in her hand apprehensively. "No, I won't go." She huffed. Sudha sighed, "You don't want them getting exposed?" She asked with raised eyebrows. Annika frowned weighing the options. "Okay, I will." With a smirk and she knew there was something going on in her daughter's mind.

They entered the school hallway. The school always appreciated its students by calling them in an after school ceremony along with their parents. Annika, who scored the first place at State level was invited exclusively. Harsh and Sudha were immensely proud of her. The principal called her to the stage and handed her the microphone.

Annika looked at the crowd. Her father nodded at her and she smiled. "You all must be expecting some words of gratitude and appreciation. But they're absolutely not the emotions I am feeling right now when I look at the school." Well, that was something.

The teachers frowned, they turned to her parents who were were waiting to hear her words eagerly.

"I am not here to express my views but to expose something dark about this school. About our teachers and the friends we have at school." Annika took out her phone. She played the audiotape. And watched as few faces paled in response hearing the voice. Mallika immediately turned to her friend who had shrunk back on her seat. You're not getting away from this.

The school listened to the clip attentively. Tears sprung in her eyes again when she heard what they had done to her friend. Why did Shivaay never say anything? She could only imagine the hurt and betrayal he must have felt whenever he saw her hanging out with Mallika and her friends. She was unknowingly betraying him. Sudha wanted to go and comfort her daughter but Harsh held her hand.

"We've raised a lioness, Sudha. Let her roar."

The teachers' faces paled.

"I was told to avoid him. Mallika has said that to me. She said i mustn't associate myself with him. If I wanted to avoid being an outcast. He was called a freak. A freak? Why? Because he lost his family? That he had to grow up too soon?"

"Outcast. He was isolated away from all the kids. He had no one to talk to. Can you all imagine how hard it could have been, for him? Like imagine yourself not talking to anyone for a whole year. Not possible huh? For Shivaay it was years. He had been dealing with this for eight years. A decade almost." Annika said. She was holding herself strong. I am doing this for Shivaay, I won't fall weak. He needs his justice.

"He is a child. Just like all of us." She said. The other parents present there lowered their heads in shame. "But you all never behaved to him like one. Instead you treated him as if he was some criminal."

"What was his crime? That he lost his parents in his early childhood? That he never got the love that child deserves from his parents? Or that he lost the ones too that took him in, during the hardest phase of his life." Her words brought shame down to the parents present there. Something that he held himself responsible for which he wasn't.

"Instead of being consoled or being comforted he was instead held responsible for something that was never in his control. He was termed a---a bad omen to his family. Did any of you ever thought how traumatic it could have been for him. First losing his loved ones and second being blamed as a reason for it and being called a bad luck for as long he could remember." Annika was letting her frustration out. All this time he had been paying for other's crimes. The pain she felt on hearing that was unbearable for her, she can't even imagine how much they must have hurt him.

"You all ruined his life." Her words were heavy. Her words were stabbing. She wanted them to know what they have done.

The police arrived, Harsh had called them. Mallika and Raghav were to be sent to the juvenile prison. Because what they had done to Shivaay was not forgivable. Rashmi remained unpunished as true to her words she had never done anything. Annika couldn't care less about her. Sudha was holding her. Annika hugged her mother and cried in her hold. The atmosphere had turned sad irrespective of the situation.