Hide & Seek

The Beginning

The Ocean. The sea. Its a delight to be able to espy such prodigious expanse of life that can subsist forever and never have an edge, no end. While hundreds of things keep changing about. Ending in solitary. How extraordinary!
My best friend, I used to call her Jerry, how we came up to it, I have no idea. She liked the blue of sea, the shinning of waters under the blazing sun. My first memory of the ocean is vague. Her chasing me along the shore, yelling the names of disney characters. We were probably six.

Now back at the same shore the memory didn't hit until now, the scene of two kids chasing each other, tiny moles in the aureate sand from atop the lighthouse.

Since I came to Goa, my meetings with the endless blue has appeared  wonted but now as I was leaving, the irresistible ordinary waves are much appealing.

"So young and yet so brave to go to the extremes for anothers content that their own heart wouldn't account." Miha mused beside me. Her one foot dangling off and the other neatly folded.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Present is always sad and future is much more equisite because heart is always in the future." I repeated the line I heard from Eshani the other day.

Miha let her other foot follow suit and flopped on marble floor with her hands over her eyes. "This is excruciatingly painful."

"Now, you talk like Shivangi." I muttered.

"Oh, why, oh, why did I ever agreed to join that stupid writing club with Eshani?"

I scoffed. Eshani joined some book club after the finals. Her repetitive babbles about the delicious excitement that they share in the club caught Miha's ear and she went off to concur. I warned her, it was not the cup of her tea but whenever did the girl listen to me!

"Have you heard from Nicholas?" I asked. I got his email three days after he left, though, I never read it, a lot more kept coming through.

Miha sat up, brushing her hair with her fingers. "Yep. He's all settled in."

I nodded. "Thats good."

"He asked about you." She continued.

I sighed. "Right."

"You don't reply to his emails."

"I don't."

"He wanted to know if you are upset....."

"Stop."

She shrugged. "Just delivering his words."

"You don't need to."

"Why don't you reply?"

"I don't want to." Cutting off the ties was my resolution, and I plan not to yeild.
Miha shook her head. As much as cogent my friends had been about me leaving they weren't with my situation with Nicholas. They had hundreds of questions, I know, whose answers they deserved, yet they didn't pester me, for which I was grateful. I didn't have the vitality to roam through the details and make them see the point.  

"He sounded upset." Miha said.

"Stop telling me that."

"Fine," she raised  her hands in surrender then pointed  at the  photograph I was nibbing with my fingers. "What are you going to do about that?"

It was a picture of six year old me and Jerry which I found in the attic  while scrounging  through old photographs. I stared at it. "I don't  know. I have search every SNS but I couldn't  find her anywhere."

"Do you think she would on Wattpad? She liked reading." Since I've  told Miha about her, she volunteered  to help find Jerry. She even got the contents of Social Registry from the church, how, I've  no idea.

I folded the photograph and put  it in my pocket. "Even if she is, we can't  find her that easily. They don't  really  use their real  names, do they?."

"So....." Miha trailed. I stared  at her and oh! how earnest she looked.

I smiled. "I'm  going to let it go."

"What?" Her eyes almost bulged out. "You can't! She is you best friend!"

I laughed. "You are my best friend."

"Well, she was first."

"She must have another now."

"Doesn't matter. You two were first!"

"Oh, hush, now." I shook my head. "I've  been pursuing something  I don't have the lead for. I don't  know a single thing about where she is, how am I suppose to find her? And why even? Its been so long, there's but just a teeny-tiny bit possibility that she would remember me. I  have....probably outgrew her. No! don't  give me that look! Maybe we will meet someday. Perhaps she will be in Kolkata. Who knows?  But until then, I'm not going to live and mourn over something or someone and go friend-searching. I have friends." I slung my arm into hers and snuggled closer. Some parts of life are better left behind. I learned it quite late.

"You loved her." She wispered.

"I still do." Love. What an enchanting word. The feeling that emanates from it, is unprecedented. What we all desire. Love, of which I got to hear days after Nicholas left, leaving me in  a conundrum. Damn him! He probably  wanted me to regret  my decision which I still do but that doesn't  mean he had the right  to make me feel so.

I sighed.

"Hey!" Rishi yelled from down the shore. "You gonna come down or what?"

"Hey Miha," Eshani's  voice came booming to us. I could swear she was glaring. "You cannot have Ileesh all to yourself!"

"Yes. I can!" Miha shouted back.

"Oh, have her all you want," Shivangi waved her hand. "But for a moment, get down here!"

"Oh, come on," Purav was jumping on his heels like a child. "I wanna play with you too."

Priya smacked  his head. "What you mean play? You don't  even have the guts to...." her words were gashed in the rush of wind.

Miha sighed. "Infants."

"They are right. We should get down there."

She groaned  and buried her face in my hair. "What an horrible end. There was so much to do for us."

"Oh, I'll  call you everyday."

"They say," her voice came muffled. "But they don't."

I laughed. "You know I will."

"Yeah," she looked at me. "Still. I'll  miss you. And Nicholas........I don't  know how to take all this. And its not just me, them too," she pointed at our friends down at the shore. "It hurts. "

I squeez my eyes shut and open it to the smashing horizon. The same every day the dusk falls still anew. "It's like a beginning." I clasped  her hand tightly. "One day we will be over it."

She stiffled and wiped her nose. "You think that."

"Yeah." I smiled

She took a band from her pocket and tied my hair back. "I hope so....we are, by the time we meet, again. Too young to take up on the burden of such complexities."