It's been two days since that boy with curly messy brown hair and gold black eyes asked Misha, 'So you really don't remember me?'
And Misha can't help but feel the thud in her heart again, like a pin poking inside of her veins, trying to scrap something out. She can't forget his haunting eyes that looked at her like they were pleading for something she couldn't give. And why did she feel like that? When, she hardly even knew the guy.
There was something about that guy, something she couldn't quite put hold on, finger on, but something so much, that her heart was ready to be in war with her mind. It was two days, and she couldn't help but think about him, about his name, about his voice, about his eyes.
Aakash.
She gets up from the high back leather study chair, and moves to her bedroom window, pushing aside the fuchsia curtains she looks out at the surrounding mountains covered in snow and removes her black wool gloves.
She touches the cool glass with her bare hand and points at the houses decorated with green wreaths, cotton ball lights, little snowman, she saw small kids making with their parents earlier, Christmas trees and red and green sparkling strings hanging in the porch railings. Everything was white, gold, silver, red and green, and she thinks of his spiteful sentence, 'I wish Christmas would never happen, I hate it.'
There's something to that sentence too. It makes her want to sit away from the Christmas decoration, from the plum dry fruit cake she loved eating, from the chocolates and black wool dress which her father and mother gifted her this morning. She loves Christmas, she tells herself, she closes her eyes and a sudden punch of pain falls in the pit of her stomach and she feels tears erupting out of her closed eyes, why is she crying? then there's a storm of his words, words that she was trying to avoid until now 'What about Australia,' 'Do you paint?'
'Do you paint?' The question shuffled inside her, Misha doesn't remember painting ever, she just remembers waking up one day, and finding some paintings on loose papers in an old trunk she opened to find her sweaters. Something she never would have believed she made, if not for the small signature of hers at the bottom.
There was a painting of a rose, a small blue and purple rose. A lake of flowers, surrounded by mountains, a view of a town from a mountain's top. But what she most remembers is, finding some smudged paintings, some torn. She remembers holding a half painting of one red shoe, a torn painting of a cup of coffee. She remembers going to her parent's bedroom in their Australian townhouse and asking them, if she made these paintings, she remembers them looking at her peculiarly and saying, yes.
And then she remembers her mother gifting a box of painting supplies, and canvas papers, and her trying to paint, to draw. She remembers holding pencils and brushes feeling lost and unable to draw or paint anything.
She remembers trying again and again, to picture one moment where she painted before, she remembers, not remembering a moment.
Her blood turns cold, and she swivels away from the window to the oak ivory bed, her hand delves under the blue comforter and she finds her Macbook Air, she runs it and jumps on the bed. As soon as the screen lights up, she pins in the pass code and goes to her Instagram, typing Aakash Acharya on search engine, her fingers shaking. She goes through all 536 results on the searches, her heartbeat thumping and finds no Aakash Acharya with black gold eyes, or curly messy brown hair. She does the same through Facebook, and finds no result.
And her heart feels like tectonic plates, her throat feels dry, and an ocean drain out of her eyes with no accord. She doesn't know what she is doing until she gets up from the bed and runs to her study table. Her heart races when she touches the bag with Santa on it, remembers him looking at the bag and her, and she wants to go back.
She doesn't know why and how, but she wants to go back to 23rd December, and she wants to say, I don't remember you but I want to. She should have known, she should have known when she looked at him, and felt something like longing to have a friend like him. She should have known when she looked at him and felt something like recognition in the way he looked at her, she thought it was because they were both early both waiting in the snow, that she felt like talking to him, that they had this some sort of bond-like feeling.
But she should have known, because she didn't just talk with people. She didn't just go and introduced herself to them; she was very uncomfortable with people. She should have known when she felt panicked when he suddenly snatched his arm away from her in the basketball field, when she offered him to take to the washroom, she should have definitely known when he turned the corner of the field that day, after he threatened Darshit to not hurt her and she screamed out his name even after Darshit clutched at her waist and asked her what she was doing.
She should have known when she turned and clutched away from Darshit even when he looked at her like she was crazy and she should have known when she ran to the gate to find Aakash, to just ask him who was he and why was he saying all these things? Should have known when she felt like the most hideous and helpless person in the world when he wasn't there and she kept staring at the gate as if that would bring him back.
Her hands shake when they reach to the zip of her bag she has not dared to open for two days. She thought she could handle it, she thought it would be okay to not know, she felt she should not know. But she can't sleep or eat, and the thought of celebrating Christmas makes her nauseous. And she can't anymore, she has to.
So she opens the bag even when it feels like an earthquake inside her, her hand finds those loose old musty papers and she takes them out carefully, she doesn't want them to tear more than they are. She wipes her face with the sleeve of her white sleeved sweater and looks at the roll of paintings bowed together with a silk string.
She touches on the rough edges, her hand lingering on the bow, and with a deep breath she opens it.