The Zeroth Law

CHAPTER 16: THE BETRAYAL

It was the day before our first test of Thermodynamics, I and Rudraansh were invited at Karan's place for studying; when I came to know how does it feel to have the earth beneath you shatter or to have the world spinning around you or to get knocked out of your breath or to have your back stabbed with a pitch fork. I experienced this all at once as I exited Karan's house abandoning our group study half way through it and tried not to die of suffocation as some invisible iron chain squeezed my lungs to draw out all the air in them. It was like getting your periods for the first time, it's not fatal but it is so damn traumatizing that you are absolutely sure you are dying of some rare form of screwed up cancer that's so not very curable.

Seeing as I discussed about disgusting bodily fluids and malignant bunch of useless cells we often refer to as tumour in one sentence, you must have guessed correctly that I am going through another emotionally traumatic incident; you have got to know me that well now after fifteen chapters. So let's take a turn or two of Time Turner and go back in time to somewhere near half an hour ago when Karan was displaying what ideal patience is as he taught Rudraansh while I studied with earphones plugged in my ears and a book in my hand while I sat on windowsill of Karan's room with my feet resting on a small stool. And no, I don't listen to Pink Floyd or Coldplay or Lucky Ali or any other hipster choice for music while studying, I was listening to Kumar Sanu songs, that guy is so monotonous that you hardly ever notice his singing after two songs and he does excellent work of blocking out unwanted surrounding sounds.

I was solving some example about triple point of water (another thing no one needs to know) when Rudraansh gave a loud enough grunt to break Kumar Sanu's acoustic barrier. I pulled out my earphone and looked at him with anticipation; almost knowing before he spoke what he was going to say.

"I am hungry", he said and proved my suspicion to be correct.

"You ate two hours ago", Karan reminded him.

"Two hours is 120 minutes, 7200 seconds, 7.2 X 109 micro seconds-"

"We know you can do multiplication, this isn't school anymore", I cut across Rudraansh's rambling; "you should be talking about how active your mitochondria are during exam times."

"Or how highly functional your thyroid fluids are", Karan added with a laughing expression at the look on Rudraansh's face, "Don't worry, this isn't Engineering we are talking about."

"Look at society's double standards, they have the word bimbo for a girl but what do we do when we come across their male counterparts?" I said heavily picking up a line from Shayoni's book and Rudraansh scoffed.

"Heavy social commentary on equality of gender is not what's going to help you score a date and neither is it going to feed me", he said stretching on Karan's bed, "Mrs Mujumdar's food will do that."

"Do what?" Karan got to his feet, "help Adira get a date?"

"I don't need a date", I mumbled darkly and looked at the retreating figure of Karan, "I will have those almond cookies", I yelled for his benefit.

"So what's your deal? Why don't you need a date? Are you infertile or you drive your car on the other side of the lane or are you saving yourself for the special one?" Rudraansh said the moment it was just me and him.

"You don't need to fill up all the silences while with me", I ignored him and continued solving my problem.

"My voice is better than the constant scrapping noise of your pencil on the paper", he said with a yawn, "Come on! Don't be a prude and answer."

"Huh!" I slammed my pencil down and looked at him with determination, "I am not able to understand relationship goals, they seem like too much work and I don't even get the point of it. So, I think it's better to stay single than to get into that tedious ordeal unless I am absolutely sure about it."