The end of the world started when I stepped foot inside the premises of that goddamn school.
I remember the air was humid, autumn had just poured its way in and everyone seemed to already get a hang of it.
Well, everyone except me.
The place was magnetic, drawing you in like a shipwrecked sailor to the sound of a siren. It had everything you ever dream about a school. Furnished classrooms with ACs, indoor swimming pools, icecream parlours and state of the art canteens, and my most favourite, a canopy of trees where birds sat judging the basketball game.
It was everything.
St. John Bosco High School was the epitome of privilege.
If you were a part of it, you were respected in society ; applauded for having cracked the entrance, patted on the back for being able to keep up with it. It was charismatic, I'll give it that.
And I, like everyone else, was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
What I didn't know then (perhaps i should've known) that flames have a way of catching and I was no superwoman.
The moment I stepped in through the gates, it was like the outside world just paused. Or muted itself. My father's voice drowned in the cacophony of the new world I was in.
And that's when my eyes caught sight of her.
My beloved best friend and the girl that ultimately twisted the knife on my back.
My very own Brute.
My Bernadette.
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Arm in arm, she led me towards my personal hell and I didn't even know.
There's a thing about trust that people don't get. It's a fragile little thing, too easy to break. Yet, all people crave for in this rotten world is trust.
Pathetic.
The seventeen stairs leading up to the hallway on the third floor wasn't the hard part. The hard part was coming face to face with what I then thought, was my new "safe haven" ; class 11 E.
How do I describe in words what 11 E was for?
From the outside, it seemed like your average classroom. Chairs and benches stacked in unison , a whiteboard, a duster, posters of positive thoughts and quotes, and the bubbling chatter of the fresh batch of freshers.
So normal, so average.
And yet, class 11E had managed to etch into my brain like permanent ink on paper.
As soon as I stepped into class, the glimmer of someone's watch caught my eye and I turned to look at who it was. A sly smile, an almost grin, and a short wave.
Miles Montgomery.
He invited me like an old friend. I rolled my eyes. That was us.
A little backstory here; Miles and I were next door neighbours since we were 4. We had practically seen each other's every phase. I often used to tutor him whenever he needed help with math. In return, he would tell me all the gossip about the neighborhood we lived in.
It was a pure transactional friendship.
Up until he did what he did. But that's a tale for later.
