Coloured Me Grey (Book Two)

Chapter 37

Remember how I mentioned a few chapters back that the angst was almost over? Yes, the keyword was "almost".

Yash couldn't meet Zara as he was long gone before she woke up, but he really did forget to give me the notes that evening. Once he had reached home, he apologised and sent me pictures of the notes with a winky face emoji.

I had just finished cleaning the floor and washing up, and I threw open the windows. I thought the room still smelled foul.

I sent him the middle finger. I bet he blushed.

Yash was right, we both got chosen for the Santiniketan trip, along with two other girls – one of them was Yash's friend from Painting lessons and the other from Business. The last of the five was a trans boy from Basic Drawing.

With semester exams coming up, I had worked myself to the point of not sleeping in the nights. If I did not get enough credits for all of my courses by the end of this sem, I wouldn't be allowed to go on the trip in the summer. I had been working on a sculpture made of wasted wood shavings, sacks of which I had collected from Pramila Ma'am's studio over the days. It was inspired by the Russian mathematician Sergey Bobkov's life-sized sculptures of birds and animals made from wood shavings. Though the wood he used was cut for this purpose, mine was proper waste. I did try to sort them out by size as much as I could, and soaked them in water for several days to soften them.

The topic of the project was 'Conservation'. Using the waste we generate as sculptors, I chose to do a sculpture of the increasingly endangered coral reef.

Zara's mother had once walked in on me at three in the morning thinking that I had fallen asleep with the lights turned on. She found me buried neck deep in piles of shavings with sawdust in my hair, and nobody said a single word when I walked into the living room after two days, freshly smelling of soap and shampoo. I had survived on meals that Zara's mother would leave for me just outside the door.

My only reward was the way Zara stared in wonder at the coral reef made of wood shavings. She wanted to touch it but the varnish had barely dried so as compensation, I offered to take her to the park. Romita's board exams had come to an end and she agreed to come with her brother too.

"Give me some status update! You're literally my only source of gossip now," she said once we had sat down on our regular bench, looking over at the kids playing at a distance. There were a few more kids from around the neighbourhood today. "My schoolmates are such bitches; they don't even both to keep in touch once Boards are over."

I scoffed at her remark, thinking about Ishan's large group that managed to stick together even a year later. Maybe not physically, but I was pretty sure those two years of utter bliss was enough to keep them bound in spirit.

If only I hadn't helped Shivam fuck it up, they might have had fonder memories.

"COME ON!" Romita nudged my shoulder and I couldn't stop myself thinking of everything that had happened since the fest. "That's a very weird grin – oh no! You two have done something! Admit it."

"Shut up," there were other adults within earshot. "Yeah, well, we kissed, had some quarrels and then came back stronger than before. I think." I kept it as PG as possible.

Romita whooped and then pouted unhappily, "I have been MIA for way too long. I'm not getting any more details than that, am I?"

"No, but you get to see something I finished working on this morning."

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and showed her some pictures that I'd taken before leaving the house.

She smiled. "You've got a lot better than the last time I saw your stuff."