Escapade » z.m

62. I Spend Some Quality Time In The Bathroom Stall

Zayn looks like he's listening to a song in his earphones, but quite naturally, he has turned the volume down. He has a penchant for eavesdropping, and there's half an hour left for the exam to start. He might as well put it to good use and overhear some conversations in the hallway. It's refreshing sometimes, because students with their outpouring hearts are beautiful, and, if you ask Zayn, also cute.

Sometimes he's filled with a deep longing; longing to know each person and their stories. Anyone who he's met until now, anyone who has touched a part of his life, anyone who has met his gaze, even for a fleeting instant, he wants to know.

He fears he will explode from the amount of stories he'd store in himself. He still longs for it.

It comes from his love for the books, probably.

He's sitting between the two colonnades again, perched on the wide stone that bridges the two of them. He has his bag with him, it only has a few books and pens in it now, his legs are propped, arms resting on his knees, holding his phone. He's staring ahead.

Unlike yesterday, there's no sun. Unlike yesterday, there's no silence or empty hallways. The students are crowding the hallway near the exam cell, and many are fidgety. A few metres away, Zayn can hear a guy crying. Soft sniffles. Zayn knows him. The guy sits behind him in a few classes, he mustn't have prepared for the exam; Zayn remembers he mentioned it to him once, in one of the classes, how he has been having trouble in his family since some time and he hasn't been able to focus. Zayn could only offer his notes at that time, as some consolation.

Zayn thinks for a moment, how everyone has a life of their own, a reality only they can touch, and he wonders if he's real at all. If anything is, really. He doesn't understand sometimes, how everything is real. Not because of his battered mind, but because of how miraculous things seem to be. The sky, and the moon. The winds. Fragile, like a piece of an imagination, and at the same time, too intricate to not be real.

There's Gemma in front of him, even today. Unlike yesterday, she's not humming, unlike yesterday, she isn't alone. A part of him aches that he cannot have her here all to himself, talking, relieving a bit of nervousness that he's starting to feel too.

He can hear Lucas, however, and he sounds (and looks) more of a nervous wreck than Zayn ever has been in his life, and that's saying a lot. Zayn can't question it, because Zayn has never worried about the result. Every always says he shouldn't worry about his grades, because he'd do fine, he'd come out with flying colours. Gemma sums it up in one word, calling him a nerd does the job for her, she puts all her faith and believe in him in that one word. Zayn never tells them that it's not the result he's worried about. He never has been.

He's worried about not putting any efforts.

He's been there, he's been in that cycle of letting things take their own course, never taking the steering in his own hands. He has known the agony that washes over when you realise you hadn't even tried.

He fears that, because he's capable of that. He's capable of letting himself fail, and not just in an exam, in every walk of life he can let himself fail. For a while it feels like he's battling for some cause, against his parents, or the petty systems there are in this world, or the world itself. He's a rebel that way. After some time, when he's tired and weary, he realises he was battling with himself, and he will lose either way.

He fears that he'll stop trying again, and he'll lose to himself again. There's a voice in him that always warns him, he's thankful for that voice. He can't not try. He has to keep trying, and that will do.

Gemma and Lucas are both sitting across Zayn, their feet firm on the ground. When he hears Lucas groan in anticipation, flipping the pages of the book that's kept in his lap, Zayn smiles, a little endeared. Gemma has her hand intertwined in his, anchoring him, otherwise Lucas' free hand would be fixed in his hair, trying to pull them all out.