NEVER MIND

It was summertime. Hot days and hot nights.

I was preparing for my high school midterms.

I was actually a good student.

An average topper—always sensitive, responsible, and calm.

I used to go to school every morning without skipping a day.

I enjoyed myself with my friends, ate lunch, sometimes studied (only sometimes), attended evening study hours, and finally went home.

I have a little brother and a little sister.

So, technically, I’m the eldest.

And I have to look after them as I grow older.

Everything was good, and my life went on smoothly.

Sometimes, I used to have some family issues. As I’m very sensitive, I get hurt over small things easily.

So, sometimes, I used to fight with my family, and later, I’d cry into my pillow, feeling sad and angry at myself for fighting with them.

It always ended like this.

Either they hurt me, or I hurt them.

In the end, it was always me who finally cried under the blanket, my face buried in my pillow, for the whole night.

Okay, sometimes those fights with family happen.

That’s how my life used to be...

Until one day...

A day when I never thought something like this would happen.

I never thought these things would happen to me.

I never thought I would be forced to change like this.

And the person I had been until then would completely disappear.

(Not physically.)

I got moved to a new house, where I got a best friend.

Suzie, who lived exactly near my house.

And then we became friends.

Unlike me, she was perfect.

She was beautiful, with long hair and an irresistible beauty. She was clever and brilliant.

And there was never a boy who didn’t want her as his girlfriend.

Sometimes, I wondered how someone like her had become my best friend.

We hung out together, studied together, and did all sorts of other things.

We were new to social media.

That’s when Instagram officially entered our lives.

We created IG profiles and used to do a lot of chaotic things together.

We used to play around with the guys who hit on her. Only the weird ones, though.

She actually didn’t hurt their feelings either. She would simply tell them directly if she didn’t like them.

And some weird guys who still followed her—we used to be friends with them for fun without actually hurting them.

Even when she was on a call with them, we used to take chances to talk to them.

They really couldn’t catch us, as we both had almost the same type of voice or something...

They couldn’t figure it out, and we played with them a lot.

Ahh... there are all my past shenanigans coming out now, from when I was a dumb teenager.

I didn’t know what love was back then.

Or should I say...

I still don’t know what it is?

One fine evening, I got a follow request from a guy whom I thought I knew.

And I actually knew him when my best friend showed up with the same person in her follow requests list, saying he was none other than the guy who lived in front of our house.

And yes, of course, it was true.

But I didn’t know that someone like him lived right in front of my house.

Thick eyebrows. Good hair. Spectacles. A chain around his neck.

He was handsome.

For me.

Okay, I wondered how this handsome guy actually existed right in front of my house, and I had never even gotten a glimpse of him until then.

Everything was fine...

Until the third day, when my friend told me that he had texted her, asking about her.

I don’t know what actually got into me.

I found myself texting him first, out of nowhere, asking,

“Hey, who are you?”

I don’t know what it was.

Was I jealous because he had followed me first but texted her first?

Or was it because I wanted to talk to a boy like my friend did?

Or should I just blame my age for wanting to talk to handsome guys?

And then there he went, telling me:

“Your senior.”

I was like a bee buzzing from one corner to another in my room after reading that text.

I went all over the place wondering, What does he mean by saying “your senior”?

Was he actually my senior?

How come I had never remembered him from my school?

Or did I actually not remember him?

Did I forget?

Am I a goldfish?

Is my memory okay?

I continued texting him, asking things like, “Were you in my school?” “Where are you from?” and all those stupid questions.

And I finally discovered that he was from the last batch that had passed out of our school.

And he lived right in front of my house.

I got three or four glimpses of his face from back when he was in my school.

And yes...

He was actually from my school.