Trial #9 {Challenge Accepted}

Day 1

Write about a walk down your street or to your favourite place through the eyes of someone else.

***
Dedicated to my first brother of the two that I have. You might not read it now, but the day you will, know that I love you so, so much.

DJG, this one's for you.

I sighed as I looked down at the two digits written in red ink. Even though the digits were written in a text size that would roughly be a 40 on MS Word, the two of them put together only amounted to a negligible mark that would make me a laughing stock in front of my relatives.

Eleven out of sixty. The number stayed the same whichever way you put it, almost as if the digits were taunting me that there was no way I was getting out of this.

Math. My greatest enemy had struck again.

I wanted to ask my teacher if he had left anything out, but risking my embarrassment did not seem like the best option now. So I stayed quiet.

My walk home was quiet, in spite of Daniel blabbering about everything under the sun as we walked home. I observed him dodging the broken tiles on our path, as if it was lava and not a simple tile. He walked with a lilt in his step, with no cares about tomorrow, as he ran to the bakala. We could have just called it a “shop" like normal people, but living in the Middle east for a long time made you accustomed to these words, which now make absolute sense, even if we didn't know about the first thing about Arabic.

“Uncle, two chilli chips,” Daniel told the shopkeeper as soon as we got in. “Hey Sam, would Deena want one?”

I nodded my head. Our elder sister was such a foodie that she would probably kill us if we didn't get one for her.

“Okay, uncle, make that three".

After getting on the elevator upstairs to our apartment, I took my bag off my shoulders and rubbed my neck. Even though our teachers scolded us for our heavy bags, it didn't change the fact that they always wanted all their textbooks brought to class every single day.

On reaching our floor, we knocked on the door. If I was right, Deena would probably be switching off the TV and erasing any suspicious evidence that pointed out that she was.

I heard the door click open. Behind it, stood my sister, in all her fine glory. Oh, by glory, I mean the frizzy mane that she called her hair.

“Hi,” she said, a little breathlessly.

“You were watching TV, weren't you?” asked Daniel.

“W-what? No, I wasn't,” she stuttered.

I shook my head as I got in. My sister may have a detective’s mind, but she sucked at lying.

I zoned out of the argument that had begun between her and Daniel. There was only a fortnight left for her to go back to India. Deena was currently studying at a College in Kerala, after spending most of her life here with us. The three of us had only truly become close after she had left. They say you don't realize the value of an eye until you lose it. Well, they were right.

In spite of all that, I couldn't take my mind off the fact that I had just failed in my Math exam. Mom and Dad were going to kill me. They helped me in learning the basics for this exam until I had them in my head, and all of it had gone to waste.

I didn't want to see Dad’s look of disappointment or Mom’s remarks about others that scored better. I know that Deena had been at the receiving end of it multiple times in her life, only to come back onto the right track in the next try.