Saloni was gone. Not died. But gone, forever. She got transferred to Bangalore. The distance between Patna and Bangalore was too big to cover, they knew, but didn't want to accept it. Bangalore was far, and phones could not always be the connecting link, they would soon know.
Shreya took her book and sat in the corner, reading. She had to do something to distract her mind. Reading for her was drug. She chose not to sort out things between her mind and herself but to run away from them, getting involved with books so much that she would forget what was going around. But she had to come back to the same ruthless world where she could not be at peace with her own self. Something was going wrong somewhere and she buried that place deep inside below books.
The other girls looked at her and pitied. Saloni had been a substitute for her distressed mind. An ideal friendship it was. Their path was of fire, of thorns and of hurdles and they crossed it smiling like little beautiful fairies who didn't care about anything but holding hands together so as to not to leave. Shreya would miss it, she surely would. You don't always get a friend who would not leave you even after you commit world's greatest sin.
For Shreya, it was a new beginning. Later in her life, she would describe her days in two parts - before Saloni went and after Saloni went. This was the beginning of the later.
"Steven"
"Present sir"
That voice broke her concentration. It always did. She shut her book. She looked at the class teacher who was taking the attendance. He took her name and she absent mindedly replied. Her mind was somewhere else. Lost in those pages and wanting to come back to reality. The words had trapped it, good that they did.
"Present sir" It echoed in her mind in the same voice. She had heard it every morning of school for the past three years. Yet, every year, it had a different meaning.
It was crass cacophony for the first year in class seven. It meant another day filled with competition from the TOPPER. But by the end of the year and starting of class eight, it became a melody. She yearned to hear it. Not hearing it meant another day without him. Class nine had brought a very drastic change, she couldn't understand what it meant. She didn't want it to mean something for her. Why couldn't that particular voice be like everyone else’s? That year, it meant a mixture of emotion, a turbulence in her recalcitrant heart every time she heard it. For her, it meant chaos. The most painful part about it was, she could not ignore it. She wondered, what will it mean this year.
