The Wrong Number

57

You idiot.

You absolute tit.

He's never going to forgive you.

Alankrita looked up at her red eyed reflection, lying face down on her bed, hair unkempt and dishevelled. She sighed audibly and put her head back into the duvet covers, and hardly flinched when her door was flung open by Anu, who looked quite fed up.
"Alankrita Sundar, what the hell are you doing in those clothes?"

Alankrita groaned, and Anu said, "Alankrita, you can't possibly be upset about Ruhan still. It's been a week!"

Alankrita groaned again, louder this time, and Anu shut the door and stood with her and crossed. "At least tell me you plan on changing before we go to the dinner because I am not dragging your cotton nightie clad bum to school."

Alankrita looked up at Anu, who finally noticed the dark rims around her eyes. "Aw, choti ," she cooed, her voice soft, "you are upset about Ruhan, aren't you?" When Alankrita didn't answer and looked away, Anu sat down next to her on the bed, and said, "Sweetie-poppins, I know you had a good run, but guys like Ruhan don't stick with one girl for more than a while. He's not worth your tears, Ally."

Alankrita let her head drop into the bed and groaned into her duvet for the third time.

"Okay I can't help you if you're talking to me in Wookieespeak. Work with me, Chewbacca."

Alankrita sighed. "There is no way you would know if he's worth it or not, Anu," she muttered, and went back to smothering herself with her duvet.

"Of course I do. And how do I know that? Because I sit next to Shrithva in the computer lab, and every week she goes off with some douche bag or another and I'm expected to comfort her because that's socially expected or whatever," Anu carried on without a pause, "Ugh, that girl just does this to herself. You know if she actually paid attention to all those looks Jayanth gives her from over his computer screen she might actually have a nice decent boyfriend for once. On second thought, Jayanth's a nice kid and he'd just have his heart stomped on by that self obsessed-"

"RRRRRGGGGHHHHH"

Anu turned to see Alankrita giving her a dirty look. She smiled sheepishly. "Sorry," she said, "guess I got a little carried away, heh heh."

Alankrita scrunched her eyes shut and inhaled loudly. "Anu, I'm such a screw up."Anu tutted and patted Alankrita's poorly maintained ponytail, "Don't say that."

"Anu, you should've seen his face. He looked absolutely shattered," Alankrita said, her voice thick from all the crying she'd done, "I mean, things between us were going so well, and then I end up being the biggest ass since Nicki Minaj's backside."

"I like how you manage to keep your sense of humour even when you're so completely devastated," Anu said sarcastically.

Alankrita acknowledged her statement with a mere nod, and continued, "I told him he could trust me. He opened up to me because of that. Now he must think I lied about everything."

Alankrita's lower lip trembled, and she took it between her teeth. After a moment of silence, Alankrita said in a low voice, "Anu, I don't think I can come to the dinner tonight."

She didn't have to look at Anu to know what her face looked like. When Anu got mad, she'd usually yell at the person who annoyed her so fast she'd give them whiplash.

But when Anu was infuriated, she would not say a word. She would stay silent, absolutely motionless and seemingly devoid of emotion. Then, like Mount Vesuvius, she'd erupt in a violent explosion of anger, destroying everything in her wake. The longer she stayed silent, the more destructive the result.

Alankrita had only witnessed this three times, and the one time it was directed at her for accidentally dropped Anu's new purse down an uncovered manhole Alankrita'd wanted to crawl into that manhole herself.

But now she was too guilty to care. 'Here it comes', she thought, 'in three....two....'

"Well, I guess if you're not coming to the dinner there's no point in forcing you to come."

Alankrita's head shot up and she narrowed her eyes at Anu. "W-what?"
Anu shrugged. "I said, there's no point in forcing you to do something you don't want to do."

Alankrita tilted her head to the right. This wasn't the Anu she knew. "So....you're saying...I don't have to come to the dinner?"

"No, Ally, I guess not," Anu said, getting off the bed and smoothening her skirt. She sashayed towards the door and lingered there for a moment. "Oh yeah," she said, turning around, "I should probably tell you that Sandhya ma'am, our head mistress, was looking for volunteers to man the music because the college dude who was supposed to the DJ broke his leg or something, and I gave up your name. So you might want to call and tell her you're cancelling two hours before they all expect you to show up. And a few hundred students stuck in a small auditorium being expected to dance to no music is enough to make someone want to wring your neck over."

With that, Anu turned the corner and walked out of Alankrita's room. Alankrita practically fell off herbed trying to get up. "Anu!" she squeaked, before she planted face first onto the ground. Anu innocently stuck her head back in the room.

"Yes?"

Alankrita shot her the dirtiest look she could manage with the left side of her face smothered by the rug, and picked herself off the floor. Alankrita was very stubborn when it came to not disappointing people. The fact that the students from seventh grade upwards would be furious if they found out that she'd ditched and left them with no music helped her make this decision too.

"I...don't have anything to wear," she said grudgingly, and Anu smiled a smile that took up half her face.

"You didn't think I came empty-handed, did you?"

Before Alankrita could ask her anything, Anu rushed out and just as quickly came back with a large Marks & Spencer's bag. Alankrita's eyes widened at the sight of it, and then she remembered that Anu, being the only child of a hotel manager and a lawyer, got a weekly allowance greater than most people's monthly salary.

She dug into the bag and threw what looked like a dress on Alankrita's bed and said, "Suit up, Ally, we've got a lot to do and only two hours to do it."

Alankrita stared at Anu in amazement. "You knew I was going to change my mind?"
Anu rolled her eyes. "I've known you for so long I know your bowel movements. Now come on, strip."

*****