I woke up to the sound of what felt like a thousand fire engines crowding my ears and quickly looked up and around only to see the chuckling faces of Rhea, Karan, Jay and Arya. I covered my ears with the pillow, turned around and used my most famous line...'five more minutes,' but before I could cherish those five minutes, I was sprayed with what felt like a waterfall in my face. Then after that I hurried to the bathroom, only to come back five minutes later (after brushing my teeth obviously) with toothpaste on the inside of my hand and went and put it in all of their faces. Suddenly, I noticed the clock and the faces of all the others. We had music class today and I had completely forgotten. So quickly, I hurried into the bathroom and came out in ten minutes after showering. (I don't put makeup on, so it didn't matter too much). The guys were all wearing shorts and a tshirt and Rhea and I were wearing salwars and then we got ready to go to class and piled into the car, when Jay's mum quickly turned on the radio and started to drive. Rhea and I sat at the very back, Jay, Karan and Arya in the middle and Jay's sister and mum were at the front. We all listened to 'lay it all on me' by Ed Sheeran! Finally, after fourty five minutes, we made it to music class and walked in with chirpy smiles on our faces. Aunty looked so happy to see us and we arranged the mats and sat down on them. The only people apart from us were our other friends, Meehan and Lav. That's when we noticed Jyothi. She had just joined one year ago, but she always hung around with Aunty and sucked up to her, so Aunty kept pushing her up in singing class, even though she struggled and had not learnt the basics yet. But I didn't want to let her get to me and so I just sang my heart out, but obviously Aunty didn't care. I had to push for my passion, harder than anyone else and it sucked. I hadn't even told anyone how I felt about singing, but I'm pretty sure Jay knew. I looked at him, noticed he was looking back at me with a concerned expression and so I just turned my head and desperately blinked away the tears and that's when I noticed Karan was looking at me with the same confused expression on his face. I tried to turn away, but unfortunately for me Aunty had a phone call and got distracted when Karan caught my arm, before I could turn away and asked me what was wrong. It was hard to say, I didn't want to sound like a sob story looking for attention, so I just shook my head. I only had two secrets in this entire world, my feelings about music and my cutting problem. Karan couldn't know either. His chocolate eyes bored deep into mine as if coaxing the answer out of me, but I kept my mouth shut. Just then, Karan moved his arm a little bit and it hit that spot on my arm and I winced. His sharp glare turned sharper (if that was even possible) and he lifted up the sleeve of my cardigan, but luckily, my watch was covering it and he slowly moved the watch strap to expose the newest scar. The others were all broken old scars, but this one was fresh and he looked at me sadly.
'I want to talk to you later okay?' He commanded in a soft tone.
I just nodded my head and looked away, but Aunty came in just at that moment and we resumed the lesson as if nothing had happened. Karan was a good guy, Jay had looked over at Karan with a worried look on his face and Karan had just shook his head. I sang my heart out after that. I had to invest my fear in something. I just closed my eyes, and imagined myself at home as if no one was there. Aunty just smiled at me and I smiled back. Earlier, I would have taken this gesture as something big, but now it just meant, that I was good, but Jyothi would win anyway, so my helpless feelings came back and I longed to take that sharp little hairpin out of my hair and just slash.
No one understood the relief that cutting brought me. It didn't bring more pain, but instead, when I cut, I couldn't feel the pain of the bleeding wound, but the pain inside my heart reduced. Not drastically, but it helped me tell myself what a loser I was and how I couldn't go on blaming others for all the mistakes. Just one slash and most things would be okay, it reduced tears and pain. I itched to just take that hairpin out of my hair, but instead,I resorted to just pinch myself until the blood clotted inside. I had a lot of those pinch scars all over my arm. The pain left me for a bit and I sighed a breath of relief.
After class finished, a few of us would usually stand outside class talking. This would generally be Arya, Rhea, Karan, Lav, Meehan, Jay and I. Arya would always find something funny on his Instagram account and we would crack up about that. Times were good. That particular day, Arya found something funny in his phone called blessings in disguise. It was an angel with huge glasses and the fake nose on. We all cracked up but Jay had a realisation, he whispered to himself that we were like the blessings in disguise. Each one of us had our own problems and our own issues, but when we were together, it didn't matter anymore. I simply told him it was because we were Indian but he claimed that it was definitely something bigger. Just then, my dad came to class and after talking for half an hour, I left. I said bye to all the others and closed my eyes praying that Karan wouldn't remember earlier and luckily he didn't. I managed to slip past and get into the car. After a great day, it was time to face reality.
