Yours, Raven

Three

Three
•

• •

The following day, in the evening, Raven sat lounging in front of the wide TV screen in the living room, a bowl of popcorn in her hands. Math tuition had just got over, and Aaron and Darrin had left. She shifted through the channels for a while and once she settled on Disney’s Hannah Montana, Elliot and Nicholas walked in.

Raven's eyes bumped into Nicholas’ line of sight and she felt some invisible, alien extension of sorts, creeping inside her chest and giving her a mini heart attack, possibly squeezing the life out of her little heart.

Looking away at once, she sunk lower into the couch, tucking her chin in the process and hiding her face from him with her fringe. Despite the goosebumps and malfunctioning heartbeats, she kept her eyes fixated on the TV and the popcorns from the bowl kept disappearing rapidly. With nothing much left to do, Raven kept eating, faster and in handfuls.

“What's up, Dumpling?” Nicholas asked casually as he came around the couch to sit with her, picking up the acoustic guitar lying next to her school bag on the next couch.

For a moment, Raven wondered if he still hadn’t seen her letter. He behaved just as always. He gave her his usual kind smile and he still dared to sit next to her.

“Hi,” she replied, putting down her legs from the couch to make space for him.

“I’ll be down after I take a bath,” Elliot told Nicholas as he headed for the stairs.

Nicholas strummed the instrument once and he winced. The strings were completely off tune. It sounded like a dying grandma.

“Who messed it up again?” Elliot looked back from the stairs, frowning.

“It was Aaron,” Raven answered.

Aaron was one who couldn’t keep his hands off anything. And ever since he first learned how to play the opening piece of Greenday’s ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’, he wouldn’t stop showing off. All of Raven’s effort in telling him he was in reality messing up the guitar went to waste.

Elliot let out a frustrated sigh and went up to his room. Nicholas stayed back with Raven on the couch, fixing the guitar strings. Chewing on her lips and clutching the bowl tighter and tighter in her hands, she kept her eyes glued to the TV.

"Your tuition's over?" Nicholas asked and at the sound of his voice, Raven started and the bowl slipped from her hands. It shattered to the tile floor, breaking apart and sending tiny sharp splinters to every direction, and spreading the popcorns everywhere on the floor like wedding confetti.

On the spur of the moment, and in panic, she bent down to get the bowl. Nicholas called for her not to do it, but by then, Raven had already sliced the tip of her right forefinger on a sharp edge and two thick drops of blood splattered on the floor next to her feet.

She hissed and winced at the cut. Then she stood up from the couch, "I'll go get the broom!"

"No!" Nicholas shouted, but again, Raven had already stepped onto a broken piece.

Wincing and clenching her teeth together, she sat back on the couch and pulled her feet up to inspect the underside of it. A rather large splinter, about the size of a needle, was sticking into her flesh an inch below her toe.

"You shouldn't have moved. Stay where you are," Nicholas said and went for the kitchen the other way round.

Raven bent and looked at her wounds again. She could see the enormous piece of glass running into her flesh and she didn't dare remove it. Nicholas returned from the kitchen with a broom, a dustpan, and the first-aid kit that her family kept in a cupboard above the fridge. Raven watched him begin to sweep the floor.