The Vaticinator

6. Midnight On New Year's Eve

Neal and his friend, the one who enormously dislikes me, Alek, are already present in the town-square park when I reach there. Neal is dribbling the orange basketball nonchalantly. Alek is moving back and forth around him but not looking interested in snatching the ball from Neal. Alek is the usual Russian brunette with a lanky form, his dark hair slicked back with tremendous amounts of hair gel. Unlike Neal, Alek is wearing a normal t-shirt which is primed for his size. Neal on the other hand is again adorned in an oversized hoodie. His loose-fitting clothes make it difficult to ascertain his built, just like always. The court is at the end of the exceedingly large park, twined with a badminton court next to it. The park is not overtly crowded but enough occupied by kids, the gossiping ladies and the joggers so to make it look lively.

Neal and Alek spot us soon enough. Neal immediately stops dribbling. We are still a good twenty feet away from the court where Neal and Alek are. I wave at him in a gesture of acknowledgement and he instantly replies with his own wave.

“I really don’t like that guy.” Alek mutters next to Neal.

I wonder if he’ll still be saying that if he knew that I can hear him clearly even with the vast distance. He has more than made his hostility familiar to me when I had approached their table in the cafeteria. The problem is that I don’t know what the source of his hatred is.

“He is alright.” Neal mumbles back, shrugging infinitesimally.

“I still can’t believe you invited these guys to play with us.” Alek mutters again through gritted teeth. “Look at them,” he sneers, “Came to show off their girls.”

Neal chuckles and he jestingly punches Alek’s arm, “One of them is their sister.” He says quietly.

I get momentarily shocked. Silvia and Faith are the girls accompanying Aakir and I as we move towards the basketball court. Technically, Silvia is not Aakir’s girl, not yet at least. Only Aakir knows the hurdles he has to go through to grasp one friendly date with Silvia. Even today she is here because Faith decided to tag along as well. On the other hand, for the life of me I can’t figure out how Neal is knowledgeable about Faith, much less that she is our sister. Faith hadn’t studied in the same school that we are in. It’s nearly impossible for Neal to know of her existence and exceedingly unimaginable to know that she is our sister. It makes me wonder just how much and to what extent Neal keeps information of the people around him.

I feel a stare on the left side of my face and I know that Faith is eyeing me incredulously. If she is expecting me to be best friends with my partner and to be getting along extremely well with his friends then Faith is in for a roll. She is already enough surprised to learn the gender of my partner and after throwing a fit for not informing her earlier, she threw another fit regarding desiring to be introduced to my partner. I explained to her in the best way possible why she shouldn’t be expecting me to be suddenly gay. She isn’t convinced about my hypothesis of being just close friends with Neal but gives me the benefit of doubt. She is also in favor of listening to my father’s view on the bizarre occurrence but he hasn’t returned yet and already half of the weekend is about to come to an end.

“His aura…” Faith says in a very low voice. So low that even Silvia, who is busy interacting with Aakir doesn’t hear her, despite walking right next to us. Faith is frowning as she looks at the two boys in the distance. I sigh. I didn’t inform her about the oddity that my partner’s aura exhibits. I gesture to her that I’ll explain later. We reach the boys who have stopped talking amongst themselves since we have neared, most probably in fear that we’ll hear Alek expressing his detestation. If only they know.

Rounds of awkward introductions follow, making most of us look inept. Only Silvia and Neal manage to look relatively casual and at ease. Neal is always laid back but I do not expect that from Silvia. I anticipate her to be feeling extremely out of place to be spending the day with a bunch of juvenile guys. Faith, bless her heart, decided to come along. Since she and Silvia are of nearly same age, I don’t expect her to feel inapposite anymore but still not at this much ease as I am witnessing. Least I was expecting to see Faith at unease. She may be Gwen aunt’s daughter but Faith is a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, being one of the most amiable persons in our family. I believe she is tremendously taken aback by my partner’s sudden overwhelming aura.