UNO Cards

S A R A

You are now reading: UNO Cards

Twenty minutes later, Vivaan and I are sitting on my bedroom floor, and I'm shuffling UNO cards, pretending not to glance at his troubled face as cards slip through my fingers.

"Let me do it," Vivaan grumbles, leaning forward to grab the stack from me. Droplets of water slide off of one of his hair strands, plastering it to his forehead, and I stare at my lap, my nostrils suddenly filled with the scent of minty shower gel. The scent fades as he backs away and begins to shuffle, and I watch him mess around with the cards, bits of bright green and red flashing through the gaps in his golden hands.

Suddenly, Rohan's words fill my head. You two should be a couple...you've known each other forever...it's senior year, give romance a chance...

I shake my head violently, trying to get his words out before I feel a single butterfly in my stomach.

What the fuck, Sara? No, no, no. We're not crushing on Vivaan.

Vivaan looks up and gives me a strange look. "You good, bruh?"

"Uh. Yeah," I say nonchalantly. "All good."

He continues to shuffle the UNO cards, and I sigh as I think back to all the times that we've played UNO. I was pretty quick to figure out that UNO, the simple children's cards game, was what gave Vivaan the most solace whenever he was really upset. Since we first met, that's what I do to cheer him up when he's really unhappy; playing UNO.

Yet somewhere in me, there's this fear, this fear that someday he'll be so upset, falling back into a deep black hole so far that even playing UNO won't give him a single bit of consolation. I know that UNO cards don't fix his problems, obviously, but they make him feel better.

But what if one day, they don't? Then what?

I try to shove the thought away as he places eleven cards in front of me, jutting his chin forward.

"Come on," he mumbles.

Before long, we're slapping cards down into a pile on the carpet, silently engaged in the childish card game. There's no hint of laughter in the air, and no problems seem to be forgotten, but when I peep up at him through the gaps in my cards, he appears more relaxed. His eyebrows are no longer scrunched together, and his angry expression has gradually faded away, as if someone's turned down the gas on a pot of boiling milk.

As we finish a couple rounds of UNO, Vivaan glances down at his phone, and I begin to feel the presence of an invisible hourglass with kernels of time slipping away faster and faster.

Taking my chance, I begin to gather up the cards and ask, "So what happened at practice today?"

"Huh?" Vivaan looks up sharply.

"Shitty practice. What happened?"

"Oh, nothing."

"There had to be something." I know I'm pushing it, but I can't control it, not when I know I can get an answer out of him.

Vivaan sighed sharply. "Nothing, Sara. Our new basketball coach is just an asshole, and he's going crazy because our first game's tomorrow night."

"Oh, you have your first game tomorrow!" I say excitedly, a little guilty for forgetting. Glancing at my calendar to make sure I'm free, I add, "I'll come."

"You don't have to do that." Vivaan stands up.

I stand up, too, and I can feel the smile beginning to fade off my face. "Why not? I'll-"

"Sara, you know me." His words silence me. "I don't like being watched during my games. Not by you, not by Dad, not by anyone." He softens a little and then adds, "It's not personal."

"I-I know," I stutter, and then add quietly, "I do have to be there, though, because of the yearbook committee. The first game night is one of those big things we're supposed to take photos of."

"Oh," he says, and suddenly I feel really bad. It is true that I did want to come and genuinely watch Vivaan play, but I do also have to come because of the yearbook committee.

"That's fine," he says. "If you're on yearbook duty, you can't be watching me anyway."

"Yeah."

"It's just, if you're not coming for the yearbook committee, don't come," he says. "Alright, I should get going and start my work."

"Oh, yeah, homework," I respond, a little lost. "Bye, Vivaan."

"Bye."

He slips out of my room, shutting the door as he goes. I don't walk him to the door, even though it's what I want to do. After this awkward conversation, it would just seem too clingy, like too much.

Nobody's home, or I would have heard him saying bye to my parents, who would be cooing over him as if he's still a little kid. I can barely hear his footsteps, but I hear him opening the front door and shutting it, locking it with his spare key. Yes, he has a spare key--that's how close our families are.

Yet despite this closeness, there's still distance, distance between us, distance between him and the world. He's not one to open up, and I'm used to it, but lately, ever since senior year started, a big part of me has been wishing that he would open up, even if it's just a little bit.

I stand at my window and peer down through the blinds, watching him trudge over to his house next door, his old Air Jordans pumping up and down in slivers of red through the tall grass blades, his shoulders hunched, as usual. He doesn't turn back, even once.

I sigh as he disappears into his house and shut the blinds, turning around to stare at my walls.

"And this, ladies and gentlemen," I murmur, "is why Sara Iqbal can't like Vivaan Rathore."