Auburn Ivy runs away from her problems even if it means running away from her family, friends and familiar life. Anthony Kroff is a footballer on the rise but is lonely and lost in the new city he finds himself in. Their lives would have never inte...
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0.35 | from Sabah's recorder: when changing a subject |
I stayed there for a long time, in that empty damp alley thinking the same old thoughts, another memory added to the haunting pit at the back of my head.
I jumped slightly when I heard my name whispered through the night.
"Carlotta?"
It was Auburn, blinking out into the darkness, sleep still evident on her face, her hair a mess. Rubbing her eyes, she stepped out, "What are you doing out so late?"
I shrugged, "Thinking." I had a feeling I knew what was coming next. If she hadn't seen my cigarette, her disapproval would wait until she saw it. Then, would come the shock and stark judgement. I would mutter an apology, throw it away and squash it under my heel. That would give me an insane jolt of pleasure. Later, I would miss it.
"Can I have one too?" she asked, settling beside me, looking up where the stars would be if the pollution was a little less.
I raised an eyebrow and passed her the packet with its colourful warning cheerfully telling its users, smoking kills.
She picked one and I handed her the lighter wordlessly. Once again, the alley around us flared up in a circle of light and then we were two points glowing in the smokey night.
"We better not wake up Anthony. If he sees us like this, he'll have a fit." She smiled.
"You smoke," I stated, dully.
"It's a bad habit but at the end of the day, it is a habit," she replied.
I shifted, realizing once again how less I knew about Auburn even after all this while but for once, that didn't trouble me. Maybe that was the first time when I understood that all we know is just a drop in an ocean of all we don't and as someone who was swimming along as best as she could, I couldn't know all the drops at once or maybe even ever but that was okay. It was okay because there are other swimmers in the rivers and whether we notice or not, all rivers lead to seas and at the end of our voyage we will end up in one ocean where all swimmers join hands even as their toes touch the sand and hidden plants on the seabed. What did it all mean, I wondered?
I placed everything in front of her and she shrugged.
"I don't know about this ocean you talk of but we always seem to find ourselves coming to the sea, don't we?"
"Do we?" I frowned. "I haven't noticed."
"I think it might be because we are after all, seventy percent water and all that water inside us is just telling us to jump back to where it came from. Maybe all evolution is a going back and all we do our lives is run and run until we come full circle." She was whispering now and maybe I was too.
There were just too many maybes for people who stayed up beyond two in the morning when the night tricks you into temptations of all your unreal dreams. I wanted to take this window, jump out and run too. Would I come full circle if I did?
