My Programming Mind

Chapter Fifteen

It had been 3 weeks since the meeting with the university students, and it was finally Roshni's birthday. She was going to be 9 and I couldn't be more grateful for how healthy and graceful she was growing up. I was more than thrilled about that day but knowing that I had to go to school made me frown a bit.

There was something that made me think that my friends were cutting me off. They were being distant for no reason at all and we never really talked like we used to. It was eating my insides but I played it cool saying it was last year and they had some things that they needed to take care of. I was wrong.

There was a time when I felt like there was something that they wanted to tell me and they would just end up not saying a word. The only person who didn't leave my side all that time even though it was still awkward having him around was Kesari.

I tried a bunch of times to ask him subtly about what was wrong but he never gave me a suitable reply to questions I asked him. And when I pushed him to get him to answer me, he played the gay card saying I was being hard on him because I was afraid to ask the others. He even said I was creeping him out and would prefer to be alone if that continued.

But on that day, I thought that enough was enough and so I asked Kesari not caring if he would also be distant or whatever.

"I have nothing to tell you." That's what he told me. Was he serious at all?

"If you have nothing to tell me then why did you even speak in the first place?"

"Am I supposed to keep quiet when you speak? Yes, I should after what you did but why am I talking to you? Because I don't believe you could have done that. Though I know you for less than 10 years that I've been here, I believe you could have done better than what you did. Or if it is true that you have done that, then there might be an explanation for that."

"You know pretty well that I'm not talking about you answering me." I didn't understand a word.

"Ooh. My answer still stands. I am saying nothing."

"And what the hell that I have done for you guys to act like that? I don't follow."

He looked at me like he wanted to tell me something and I was sure I had seen something flicker in his eyes. It was like a feeling, a pity feeling but he brushed it off. "If you need to know, and if everybody wants you to know, today is the best day to find out. You can only know what has changed in you if you want to. A third person's eye sees best and a second person's mouth speaks best. Make that third person the second."

That was something he had said. I felt like he was suggesting something for me to do and if I got it right, he was telling me to turn them in and confront them because they wouldn't. And if I was being honest to myself, nothing had changed to me but it was them who were keeping their distance. I had to get them to spit out just what Kesari had suggested, whether they wanted it or not. And if it was true that things were pretty ugly, I didn't want to have problems with anyone. I wanted to end it peacefully.

I had everything sorted out in my mind and during the last period of that day, I asked them to meet me after school and it was very important because it was a situation of life and death. I didn't exaggerate it because it was a situation of life and death. If they wanted to be alive in my heart as friends that I have known for all my childhood and till that time, then they had no way out rather than coming to listen to me. Any excuse or anything to make them not respond to my call, then they were dead to me.

Though it was hard to convince them to come even with my trick of life and death, Kesari decided to help me and we were on for after school. The last class went by pretty slowly but after some time, I was putting my things back in my bag and ready to meet the guys.