Crossroads | ✓

t w e n t y o n e

Video attached: Click my fingers by The Tide. I call dibs on Drew :P (edit: wrote this like, a month
back).

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t w e n t y   o n e

[ c h a p t e r   35]

I'm, normally, a happy person.

A very happy person at that.

But I didn't feel exactly happy as I called my personal driver Yuvan to pick me up from the hospital or when my mom barged into my room demanding why I wasn't staying at home almost always these days. Yuvan had shot a meaningful look at my mother before taking his leave and even though it bugged me why and how my mother and my best friend were exchanging meaningful looks, it couldn't stand beside the emptiness I was feeling.

I felt — I just felt sad.

And though I tried to laugh thinking how the old Kiranya would be teasing me and my inability to express things, I couldn't even stretch my lip muscles.

I was sad.

I had lost a friend.

I saw an important woman cry.

I felt like this was the end of something big.

The sound of knocking broke me from my depressed musings and I muttered a 'yeah?' from my curled, fetal position, my comforter tucked till my chin and my room looking dark with the shades down. It looked like a perfect druggie's room.

"Hey kiddo," I heard my dad say, before the door snapped shut and my bed sunk beside my feet.

"Hey," I muttered before burying my face deeper into the pillows.

To people seeing me in such a position and wondering if guys really twisted their body in such positions and buried their face in their pillows, guess what? Yes, we do. Just because we are 'boys' doesn't mean we lie on the bed as if a ramrod had been stuck up our back even when we were sulking. Like the universal lie of how boys don't cry (we do cry. And it looks real bad), not sulking around or not balling up like a cocoon with our shades down is another universal lie. Let me tell you guys a truth. Technically, boys are very emotional people. We are just awkward about it. Really awkward about it.

"Curtained window, worried looking Yuvan and your body, which has zero fitness for yoga, is doing horizontal yoga positions," my father said, "let me guess. You ran over a dog?"

I waved my hand and I heard my father chuckle.

"Wrong? Let me guess again," he said, tapping some tune with his fingers on my feet.

"A girl beat you to a pulp?"

"I look fine," I pointed out, grimacing when my pillow got in my mouth.

"Your teacher gave you detention?"

"Seriously? This is the best you can come up with?"

I looked up from my pillow unamused. My dad pulled his game face on.

"You asked for this," he declared seriously. "A dragon pooped on you?"