Oh My R!

7. All eyes on her!

Thashi's paranoia kicked in ever since she walked through the giant arch of PAC.

It was a week after the speech. Despite Mrs.Varsha's firm disapproval, Thashi ventured into the campus encouraged by a strong sense of indignation.

From gate, it would take her exactly three minutes to reach the classroom. She had to walk down the driveway, take a right at the circular lawn with a dolphin shaped artificial fountain in the middle. PACians call it roundtana. The pavement circling the lawn was one of the few places where students group together to gossip, take a last minute look at their textbooks before exam, discuss the secrets of the universe, admire the beauty of the nature and girls minus the nature, recruit fags from the junior year herd, and so on.

That's Thashi's first ordeal. If she could, once, get past the crowd with a confident countenance, she could do it daily – she said to herself.

Thashi's guts whirled inside; heart gave into palpitation; leg muscles experienced a tremor that made her stagger a bit. No one laughed at her. No one whispered. Everything was a shush. That drove her crazy. All eyes on her. She sucked the blood out of the monster that urged her to run; run like a maniac. She didn't. She won her first ordeal at the cost of losing half her mind.

After taking right at the lawn, she had to walk past few pink colored buildings ignoring the curious faces peeking out the windows before she entered the building that had her classroom on the second floor. The stairs and corridor would also be swarming with students who'd never consider entering the classroom until the floor bell goes off, so that was her second ordeal.

She explained the injustice inflicted on her to her friends just like she'd prepared a million times in front of her closet mirror. No one wanted to listen. They simply nodded with a judgemental pursed-lip expression. She wished she had earned some besties apart from Red. Loneliness took a seat next to her. A thousand-people-around-but-I'm-only-there-for-you kind of loneliness. The professors that professed an embarrassingly failing ethical impartiality added one more layer of misery to her already perfect day. That was her third ordeal.

She tried to sit with her classmates in the canteen during lunch, but having read their facial expressions, she walked past their table with a faint smile that barricaded the tears. She had already cried a lot, still the secretion never seemed to cease.

She chose an empty table.

She opened her lunch box and took out the sandwich she'd made herself. The whole canteen was noisy. She was still paranoid. She imagined a possibility that everyone in there might suddenly stand up; point fingers at her, and start laughing. She knew that it won't happen. But, the irrational what-if made her shiver secretly. Her senses were keen. Her peripheral vision was active the whole day.

Suddenly, she felt something strange. Someone's attention was reserved on her the whole time. She's been ignoring that initially; blaming it on her paranoia. But, her senses screamed a strong affirmation now.

She lowered her head and looked at the far end of the canteen from the corner of her eyes, so that the stalker doesn't notice her noticing her.

It was the goth-sloth, daughter of an undertaker. The weird girl that everyone used to make fun of. She was senior now. Red's classmate. Everything about her was weird. Her clothes always been black and old and smelled of cheap detergent. She was huge and fat. Her short thick disobedient hair (that had never witnessed a conditioner) and her frowny face made her look like a lioness with mane. She had a small pointed nose that seemed ill-assorted with her round balloon-like face. Her eyes were huge that when she closed them, it'd look as though marbles had been placed behind each lid. Not to mention the thousand strokes of mascara that always completed her goth look.