Crowded Silence

4 | Facing Problems

It's been a month since we stepped into our 10th grade. I don't know why, but she's been avoiding me.

Whenever we are forced to speak, she does it like her own, old self, but at other times she's all different.

It is worse than having a dispute, at least that would confirm if we were still friends, or not. This was killing me.

My train of thoughts was cut off when I felt someone approaching me.

It was her.

"We need to talk." She said.

"We sure need to."

"Let's talk during the break. Cafeteria'd do, right?"

"Right." She nodded and left. I was again left with my thoughts, our thoughts.

Almost 3 years back from now, when she first saw my sportive side, I had taken her to our cricket game and made sure she watched me play from the front.

That day, the first half went with me getting p*ssed off for getting interrupted in between my conversation with her and the second half went with me hitting a half century and grabbing the victory.

Every match we played after that day included me and Anna on the team, that's when I realised she also had a thing for sports as I did.

We were very close, there was no need of telling that we were besties. Every student knew it and so did the teachers.

The bell rang and there it was, the time we agreed to talk. We headed out of our class and into the cafeteria. We took our seats, I was getting impatient about what she had to say.

"I...ugh,"

After a moment of what felt like a never-ending silence, she let out a...sigh? That indicated she was tired of these avoiding and ignoring games. It seemed that she was struggling from where and how to start, so I took the lead.

"What's it with you? Why're you avoiding me?" I asked as politely as I could.

"I thought that way I could prevent, or at least minimise the impact of loss we'd have to suffer afterwards, b___"

"What loss are you talking about?"

"...next year I'm leaving, Han." She said it all, looking directly into my eyes,

"What!? What do you mean you're leaving?"

"You know my dad's job involves him moving around to different places for a couple years, right? That's the reason I'm leaving." This time she didn't look me in the eye, but continued. "But I was wrong about minimising the impacts, no matter how much I keep my distance from you, I'll never be able to get over with you, you were and still are my rock. I'm sorry for hurting you by avoiding you."

We faced so many problems when we were in our 8th grade. One of our own friends accused Anna to have made a harsh comment about her sister. It was stupid, everyone knew that Anna wouldn't do something like that.

Most of our friends stood against Anna and in support of the other girl. From then on everyone who used to roam around her started keeping their distance, but she was not bothered by it in the slightest.

She always insisted that I hang around with them and not to lose my friends because of her.

My friends? Were they?

She didn't know about how the year that I came to this school for the first time went by. So she thought that because of her I was suffering too. But no, I wasn't going to leave her side.

She pleaded me to at least sit and have my lunch with them, I agreed. But it broke my heart to see her sit alone and have her lunch. I used to finish my lunch as soon as I could and went to sit with her for the rest of the break.