To Express Happiness || Fayne ✔✔

Stones and Sticks 😵

Three days later. The last day before exams begin. 

Aaron writes. Keeps on writing, suddenly the pencil breaks. He sharps, start writing, and the pencil breaks, again. So, he takes the pen...and when it doesn't break, he brakes it himself. In reality, he isn't writing, he is practicing Maths, and when answers don't match, he tends to break everything, everything but his brain, which is already broken. Neha, Zack, Irina; they don't matter at all now. Tomorrow is what that matters, tomorrow is when the Day Of Judgement befalls for Aaron. He keeps the broken pencils and pens aside, and rests his head on the desk, over the scrapped papers and highlighters. It's a mess. 

Have you ever felt what end is like? Aaron feels it, feels the tremor inside the ground, feels the lights flickering,  everything falling apart. It's here. It feels like you are pushed into a room ; a room with no doors, no windows and nowhere to get out. As time goes by, this room shrinks in size. It gets smaller and smaller until the walls and the ceiling touch your skin and in the last day, it smashes through your bones and skull between the walls. The scrapped papers become wet as they get flooded by Aaron's tears. Tear drops fall to the small screen of his phone too as he calls Zack.  Within the next 2 rings, Zack picks up.

'Ahoy matie.'

''Zack...Zack...I...I cannot take it ..''. 

A remorseful silence dawns, which Zack breaks by his serious tone.

''Aaron...what's up?''.

Aaron shakes his head, and lets it all out.

''Help me, Zack. Help me...''.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~OO~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Aaron wakes up to his mother's call. The first thing he feels for the day is shock. His mother's eyes are filled with half sympathy, and the half hope part being  seemingly blank. Sometimes the sympathy turns into anger, sometimes sorrow ; and Mrs. Reeves tries all her best just to keep it within her ribcage, never let it out.

Not even a good morning, and she does like, ''Aaron, you can do it today, okay? Just have faith. You have worked all along, son''. 

Aaron doesn't talk to anyone the entire morning, until he reaches school. There we have it ; the buzzing of students solving math problems out loud, the  head-scratchings, the face-rubbings, and the tat-tat-tat of the calculators in the corridor that seem like detonators to Aaron, blowing up his entire life. He is holding his breath, telling himself that he'll fail anyway and one subject won't really matter if he gets an A on the rest, and as he is about to exhale, skinny arms grab his hoodie from behind and pull him out of the school campus. The already-traumatized Aaron swings about to look who he is, but Zack is still pulling him to the parking lot. 

Aaron tries to push away but Zack has already let him go.

''What the fk, Zack?''.

Zack doesn't mind but Aaron does. It's the first time Aaron has swore to , after himself and his sister.

Zack brushes his hair back. ''Yo brooo. You said about the Mathematical Anxiety sht that you have? Well...I told it to the gang and they wanna discuss about it. In Shae's van. Hop in.''

Aaron recalls the girls already discussing questions right before the classroom, so the 'gang' will mean only the boys.

'' But first....I'll have to take your phone. It's more like... a gang thing : no phones during serious discussions'' . 

Aaron nods wordlessly and hands over his phone to Zack before entering the van. His face lights up with the thought of how much the gang cared about him. As the van door opens, Shae smiles on the sight of Aaron, and Aaron feels his black clouds turn into cloud 9 completely.