A Race For Two

Chapter 4: Akari

Dedicated to @Shambhavi_Krishna, for agreeing to be the editor for this story. If you guys see any typos, its all her fault! (jk, don't take me seriously)

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Dear Father,

Did I ever impress upon you how infuriating our education system is?

Because the fact of the matter remains that in school, we are not taught important lessons and how to use them in life, we are taught how to answer questions in exams!

It's the second day of school after the winter vacations and already our teachers have started telling us how the question paper for the exam is going to be framed and how we are expected to write answers. I mean do we need to know a certain phenomenom and how it occurs or are we expected only to learn how we will tackle the question in an examination?!

And to prove my displeasure for this kind of faulted teaching, I am currently boycotting Ms. Rana's English Language lesson by writing a letter to you.

(I'm not actually doing anything of the sorts; our assignment is to write an informal letter to our father, but at least I'm not sticking to the topic!)

Already Ms. Rana's favouritism ticks me off, that too because she is partial to Samaira, but as per my resolution, I am not going to be hateful and say (write; whatever, semantics) anything negative about her or her diabolical doings:-)

Vanessa can be a real dear when she distracts my mind from the imperfections of the mundane world. Right now she is describing her theory of how if you don't know someone's last name in India, it's probably Singh. She says it's similar to some Nephilim family motto quoted in the most recent Shadowhunters novel.

Just proves how much a person can obsess over a book.

Navya, surprisingly, seems to agree with her. Although she has similar tastes as mine, sometimes I just don't get how she can understand half the words Vanessa's spouting.

Navya is my desk partner; she sits next to me in class, while Vanessa and Kiwi sit behind us. We are the infamous backbenchers of the class, huddled in the right corner of the room, and do not fail to entertain the class with our (especially Kiwi's) antics.

Navya wasn't as close to me as she is now. In fact, we hardly knew each other in the start of the term. By chance she got seated next to me and slowly we got to know each other, discovering in the process that we were actually soul sisters (Vanessa's theory is that we are similar to each other because we were twins in our previous birth). She gradually got integrated into our group of the Three Musketeers and made it four.

And I didn't even realise how close she was to me until today.

Like I didn't realise I was on my period until first lesson this morning (it always turns up on the wrong time doesn't it?)

My stomach slowly started cramping, until the pain was almost unbearable by third period. One look at my hollowed out face and Navya knew something was wrong. I usually avoid taking painkillers in such situations, but desperation drove me to check my bag for the medicine I kept there.

Guess what? It wasn't there.

Navya offered to give me the medicine she kept, but I didn't take it, not knowing what would suit my system.

During recess, I thought of taking a walk to ease my pain. My mistake. I walked back to class, with a limp in my step, and slid into my seat with a resounding sigh. Navya looked over at me with alarm and I, not being able to endure the agony any longer, asked her for the painkillers she had.