"Bhai Ek cup chai lana." I speak in urdu so that the waiter of this dhaba understands, which means a roadside eatery, where we eat and drink chai and biscuits. I asked him to bring me some chai because my head might explode In any second.
I've been out the whole day, looking for something that can help us get through this, Mr Faisal didn't even let us finish. maybe he thought we were one of those who make up false reality for attention. we'll be kicked out as soon as Ayat gets forcefully married, my saving wouldn't last a month, I made Ifan a promise that I'll get Ayat out of here but we can only pay for the admission form with this amount of savings, she can't compete a whole four to six year course with it, I made that plan because I thought we'd succesd in convincimg Mr Faisal, and I plan on full filling it but how? how am I supposed to handle everything on my own? I'm sleep deprived, dehydrated and exhausted, I went to several places to find us a job but everyone in town refused to help. Everyone dislikes this fucking crackhead uncle thus they continue to have beef with us even though we've done nothing to them. One day I'll show them who I really am and they'll fear me then But who am I kidding, God I hate it here. I cover my face with my hands, rubbing my eyes, someone taps on my shoulder I turn to look, its Ifan.
"Where have you been?"
"Bro don't ask. ever since Mr Faisal kicked us out I have no hope." I sigh and slip down my posture as If I'm melting.
"Don't say that, we'll figure it out somehow"
Ifan scoots his chair towards me.
"Don't come near me you smell like fish" I pinch my nose, he does fishing as a part-time job, far from the middle town area. It's the only place he could find where the owner didn't had bad history with his uncle.
"Fishes are nice, come on let's order chai" Ifan cups my elbow.
"Nuh you go ahead I've already drank too much for today" I close my eyes to give them a rest.
"Fine by me" He gestures the waiter to bring some chai while I slip even more exhaustingly from my chair.
"what's with you today?" He screws up his face.
"I don't know its just my plan to-" Ifan's moblie notification cuts me mid sentence. "It's a missed call from Ayat." Ifan checks "She never calls unless-" We both look at each other- oh No.
We run to our house which is not very far so after four to seven minutes we Manage to arrive, there's a car parked outside of our house.
"We don't own a car." Ifan looks over at me, with disguts in his eyes.
"Could be Guests? I say
Guests? Ifan says.
"GUESTS!!" We rush through the door banging it open, an old lady and an ugly man are sitting comfortably while Aunt serves them biscuits which can only mean one thing, we see Ayat sitting in between them with her dupatta covering her head.
I look at their Uncle.
Asshole.
The guests, They're here to ask for her hand, I'm late again.
just like I was too late to save my mother from that fire.
Uncle stands up and looks at us with his eyebrows pulled down "leave!" He commands us, as if he can.
"What? No" Ifan speaks up to him which only makes him angrier, He steps infront of Ifan and I come in between covering Ifan with my left arm. We're gonna have to let this happen for now in order to get Ayat out of here, otherwise if we get kicked out now then We won't be able to help her afterwards, though even the thought of her getting away makes my heart wrack. I shove Ifan aside to the kitchen. "What are you doing Sam?! We have to stop this! are you freaking kidding me?!"
I sush him "We're gonna have to wait, we can't get against him now after all these years, our whole run away plan is going to be ruined" I insist "I don't care about that plan! all I care about is my sister and she's crying her eyes out." his lips curl inwards. "if you care about your sister you wouldn't act so impulsively. Don't be so stubborn" I insist some more, He trusts me so he backs up. Two hours went by making every minute unbearable. Everyone leaves happily, the ugly fucking man is too happy for his own good, I'll punch him in the face if he ever shows his disgusting face again, I'll even spit on him and I'll spread dog poo on him like butter- let's just calm down.
Aunt is clearing the table and uncle took out his bottle from under the sofa as soon as the guests leave.
Asshole can't even wait for two hours.
Ayat runs upstairs.
Change of ideas, we can't wait any further, that'll only ruin more of us.
I place my hand on his shoulder.
"We're leaving for the city tomorrow."
. . . . . . . . . . .
-Play "challa" by A.R. Rahman, on Spotify.
"You got everything?" I zip my bag.
"Yea you?" Ifan grabs his bag and puts it over his shoulder, I nod.
I'd say we're both pretty good locking, me with my dusty brown hair, and Ifan with his almond brown hair. My eyes are more foxy and his are doe. I get slight dimples when I smile, and Ifan is bit more on the British side. We're both tall, broad. Me more than Ifan. But all that matters is that we make a good pair of team.
Before we leave Ifan stops by at Ayat's door, checking to see if she's okay, I took a peak, too. She's sleeping, it's 5 aclock in the morning, we sneak out from the back door and got to the train station as quick as we could, The train will take us straight to the central train station of Mapleton City, in about two to three solid hours. These past moments of us sneakily managing to come here went by so quickly that we didn't had the chance to speak about anything else.
"tickets are that expensive? I never knew" Ifan draws the curtains open.
"Thats because we've never been to the City" If according to our solution we find a suitable job for ourselves we can pay for our bills and Ayat's fees, most probably. I don't want to sound not optimistic, I'm someone's hope and I can't let them think otherwise, I don't know why I burden myself, maybe because it keeps me occupied because I'm too scared to face my own thoughts. "When we head back home we'll visit Mr Faisal again" I scoot over.
"Wait- what? Didn't they specifically told us not to come back?"
"We'll go just in case."
"Why are we here than?"
"For back up" I fix my collars.
"So we're risking Ayat's life for back up?" He says in disgust.
"We're risking everything for her, otherwise if that wasn't the case we'd still have two whole more years for a bigger picture to plan. you do realise we're not twenty-one yet, we're barely nineteen We can't get my fortune legally."
"It's not her fault she's in that situation"
"I know, of course not, she's just a kid, that is why we are here." I tell Ifan all the possibilities of the plans and ideas that might work or get us out of the drain. Either way we'd have to risk it all. The whole journey goes by in a flash and we reached where we needed to. The central main City of Mapleton. A rustic, charming and rural sitting. It's amazing how a place just a few hours far from our town made this much of an advancement. A city full of lights they say, but we're here in the morning, it's crazy how we small town people don't get to see how huge the world actually is, I wish We didn't had to come here in this scenario, I wish it was a different shape, and not such crisis, than we must've had fun.
But it seems quite hard to stay here.
Trust me when I say we couldn't last three hours here without getting rushed, bugged, shoved and mugged. But besides the whole city street experience, we gave job interviews but I wish some older people were to guide us before stepping in here.
We have no idea what we're doing.
I wish someone had told us how this isn't the way things work, how No one offers jobs to minors!
How did I miss such basic Criteria.
I had to figure out everything on my own, I thought we just give them application, and we're hired, what the heck is this whole degree thing about? I don't even know what fields are there to choose, I thought they'd just interview us but it's a damn negotiation.
If you were to ask me, the truth is we filled three to four online jobs applications with fake data of course, my friend Chad is an expert in making ilegal documents, I don't understand tech and stuff so I let him do his thing, my hands are shaking as the HR manager lady is reading our portfolio, she looks up at us. "It says you can speak various languages, I'm impressed, can you introduce yourself in French?"
What
the
fuck
chad!
What even is French? All I know is that there's French toast and French fries, how am I supposed to introduce myself in French. Ifan pushes my elbows but I say nothing, we're both looking at her with a wide awkward grin on our faces.
"So?" The lady says.
We say nothing.
And we got rejected.
They said lying in portfolio is a crime, good thing she doesn't know we were about to be drug dealers. We went through the whole crime procedure, ended up in a police station, As resumes are not official, legal documents, it is not technically illegal to lie on a resume. But many companies request applicants for an official company job application, which is an official, legal document. Lying on such a document would therefore be illegal. It was a whole lot of mess but we somehow managed to get away with a fee fine, because we're minors, minors in a way because we're not twenty-one, Which is the legal age to beome an adult. but our money got wasted.
The money I theift.
Applying for a job wouldn't even had us hired yet we applied, if we were twenty-one we would have faced way worse consequences.
We got lucky.
Beginners luck I guess.
But before all of this happened One hiring manager even said.
"We're sorry Mr Gaydon and Mr nick but we can't help you guys. We need professionalism in our work boys, we can't hire just anyone with an interview, we'd need a degree from where you graduated, you filled the forms online to schedule dates right?"
What
What
What?
"The thing is we can even work as genetors if you just hire us" Ifan clears his throat, almost close to begging. The woman shut closes our files.
"Is that supposed to be a joke Mr nick?" She sighs and puts her hand over her face.
"That is why I don't let small town people come here." she mumbles under her breath.
"Excuse me?" I respond so quick my breath got left hanging. Not the disrespect! Humble yourself lady.
"Security, get these two out of here!" she orders..
"wait- no hear us out"
We got kicked out. again. for the fiveth time in a row.
We're sitting down on a street, near a stall of spicy corns. "Those corn smells good" Ifan sniffs, inhaling the food. "go buy them" I give him a slight push. "I wouldn't"
"why?"
"I'm alargic."
"Then don't smell it."
"I can't stop myself, and plus Thanks to you we got kicked out again, We can't apply! we can't eat corns! What can we do!" Ifan groans irritately.
"You can't eat corns, I can" just to clear.
"You can't stay in your senses" Ifan mocks me. "Well you can't-"
"Would you kids like some corn?" stall man cuts my defence. We look at each other
"They do look good but I'm gonna have to pass on that sir" I tell the old man.
"Why? get them. you can eat them." Ifan tries to insist.
"I can't do that to you."
"What do you mean?" Ifan squints his eyes.
"If you can't have it, we can't have it" I smile.
I wouldn't do or in this case eat something that bothers Ifan, specially not in front of him, it's crazy how You can always see a clear reflection in Ifan's eyes, it's like he's always so sincere, that's how I know he'd never leave me.
"Bro what are we gonna do!" he throws his hands.
"Oh for crying out loud, stay silent" We'll either need a degree, diploma, or a certificate that shows we're at least some what close to being educated and aware, we are not skilled, or professional nor did we had experience in Any field, we aren't even eighteen+ this shit is hard. And this is only about the bigger jobs where we applied for.
Even the smaller business, shops and Wheres rejected us, we can't be that bad. We were even ready to be a waiter, taxi driver, or security graud, if it wasn't urgent we would have waited till we were capable and strong. Nobody in Cities listens.
It's our sob story, you listen when we tell but no, they just have to be mean.
I mean sorry we only have desperation and not a degree.
"It's getting dark, we should head back, uncle would figure it out and plus we can't leave Ayat alone for this long, she'd panic." Ifan picks himself up and gives me his hand, he's right we must head home now. I give him my hand and he pulls me up. Gotta catch the train now or else we'd miss it, we don't wanna do that. The stars are making their appearance, I used to always talk to my mum when they showed up, but I've never felt this way about my dad. I promise my ma I'll find out what actually happened that day, I swear to God if someone did that to my house on purpose, I'd watch them burn in the flames they created in me and I'd light them on fire while they beg for mercy and I won't even be sorry. They will be the ones coming to me. And I'll be the one making them regret their decision, day after day.
Call me a villain.
Call me a miscreant, or a foe. I don't care.
It's better than pity and being pathetic at least.
I'll figure something out for Ayat.
For her I need to.
For her, even if it means being a rascal.