Perks of Being Indian [On Hold]

Lesson 8 - Don't mess with the Devil

I walked into the library after being tortured by the wind whilst walking to school and looked around for my friends. I found them sitting down at a table in the corner and joined them. I guess you could say I was that one friend who always appeared last.

"Hey guys." I said, sitting down.

I received a few 'hello's' and nodding of heads when I realised that Alia was nowhere to be seen.

"Guys, where's..." I trailed off, looking around the library to see if she was there.

"She's gone." Teagan mumbled before she rested her head against Cyan's shoulder and looking into space.

"What!? Where?!" And I suddenly remembered the 31 missed calls. Oh God!

"We all got a text this morning from her saying that her Dad had this huge fight with her Mum and that things got so nasty he booked their tickets for America and they left late last night." Aaron said. I was slightly concerned that Cyan was hearing this but I suppose that didn't matter right now.

It all made sense now and I felt the ball of guilt appear inside of my throat. I should have known that it must have been really important if she called me 31 times. Maybe she hadn't even left and I could have convinced her Dad. Maybe that's why she called me in the first place. 

"Oh God!" I gasped, holding my face with my hands. "It's all my fault!"

"What do you mean, Shanaya?" Teagan asked. "It's not like you could stop her, don't blame yourself for what happened."

"No but she called me! She called me so many times but we had some stupid guests and everything went wrong and it's all my stupid fault! If i'd just picked up her call once then maybe I could have convinced her Dad to at least stay back a few more days and we could have helped her!" And that's when the guilt turned into anger.

"Are you joking? We all know how adamant and short-tempered her Dad is! There was no way we could have stopped him" Jay said. And then the bell rang.

We all spent form in silence and this was even more surprising because of Ash. I was hoping that he would have cheered us up a little with his lame jokes but it was understandable that this would have been a shock for him too. After all, we were really close despite our different personalities and we always stood up for each other. Alia's absence had a huge impact on our little group.

I could tell that today was most certainly not a good day. My lessons flew by with me finding it hard to concentrate but even Shay was ignoring me after what happened on Saturday. It was strange really, I kind of missed his teasing and fooling around.

                                                                                 ..**X**..

Back at home, I decided to call Alia after taking her number from Aaron. I walked around my room with anticipation, waiting for her to pick up.

"Shanaya!" She said, "I knew you'd call!"

"I'm so sorry! I-I don't know...I don't even have a good enough excuse! We had guests and my Mum would have...but what happened, Alia?"

"Oh stop it! Stop blaming yourself, besides, even if you did convince my Dad, it wouldn't have been for more than a few days. Anyway, so on Saturday morning, my parents started arguing over some stupid thing and my Dad got so mad he lost control of himeself. He slapped my Mum. In front of me. And that's when she went mental, throwing things around and breaking stuff. My Dad had had enough with her nonsense and he told me to go and pack my bags. I knew that he was furious so I did as he said and he booked our tickets for the next day. Until then, we lived at my aunty's house. But honestly, Shanaya, I think what happened was for the best. And I also want my Dad to start fresh, so this was the least I could do for him. It was all last minute and I don't even know how he managed to sort everything out since we're gonna live there, but yeah. I called you because I thought you could convince him, that was before I realised that it was the right thing for us to go. Honestly, don't worry about me and tell everyone else too!" She explained.