Crowded Silence

3 | First Meet

One year, solid one year had passed from when I've been going to school without my brother. I kinda got used to it. But what felt strange was to discover the fact that I was never a person to confine myself to one group of people.

The first day I entered the school, I observed that students had their own group of friends and tend to hang out only with them. It's not like they don't talk with others, but they don't allow any extra member to join in with them.

As a new comer, it was obvious that a few days passed by with me talking to other students only about the classes, the subjects and so on.

As the days went on, I started to hang around with every group in my class. I was the only one in the class who knew every secret about all the groups.

They told me everything about themselves and I found myself giving them ideas if they came up with problems.

What bothered me was that I had no one to hear me out, my problems, my moments of joy, my fears, anything. But it didn't hurt much, as my writing was always there for me.

Every day after returning home, I'd wash myself up, have something to eat and sat to pen down my experiences.

I've always been like this, from the very time when I was capable of forming proper sentences. It's been my little tradition. But despite the fact of not getting to voice out my feelings, I loved my school and my teachers.

Yes, I loved my teachers. This school was considered for my admission because most of the teachers here were known to my mother, some were her classmates and some her seniors from school.

Within a month from when the school started, all the teachers were very much aware that I was Tyra's daughter, they were all so nice to me and I knew much better than not to take advantage of that.

Now I was in my 7th grade and today was Monday. A week has already passed since the academic year started.

It was our mathematics class going on in the morning when Mrs. Tyra entered our room with a girl of our age by her side. Yes, her name's Tyra, that's the same as my mother's. She was also a senior of my mother.

She spoke to Mrs. Yamila, our math teacher and gestured for the girl to take a seat and then left the class. Mrs. Yamila had some unfinished work of hers so she just went on with the class and didn't introduce the new student.

The bell rang and our math class came to an end. The next we had was our Physical Education hour, any game that involves physical activity was given permission to be played and over the year we had developed a great craze to play cricket during our PE hours.

We decided who will be our captains and then the captains started to pick their teammates, that's when a certain someone caught my attention and I no longer cared about whose team I'll be in. They always made sure that I played by their side, it was because of my fielding and batting skills.

I backed away from the crowd and approached the new student, who was standing under a tree all by herself.

"Hi, I'm Hanna, what's yours?" I asked, stretching my hand for her to shake.

She smiled, that stirred something inside me. Why was that? Maybe because the smile was genuine and was not a mask over any other emotion.

"Anna, it is." She said as she took my hand and shook it gently.

For a second there, I thought that she was repeating my own name, then it hit me, that's the reason that made her smile so brightly. Our names sounded similar, that simple thought brought a wide smile on my face. Why did I feel different around her when I don't even know her?

"You know Mrs. Tyra?" I asked.

I wanted to keep talking to her and this was the first thing that came to my mind. She nodded before answering.

"She's my aunt." She said.

"Oh, you know my mother's na___" Someone dragged me, from where I was standing and straight into the playground.

I was confused. What did just happen? It all came back to me only when a cricket ball was thrust on the inside of my palm. It was Fabiana Jones who dragged me here. I was in her team and am expected to do the bowling first.

I liked Fabiana, she was a bit different from the others, she never tried to get me to speak about my feelings, but made sure that the others didn't bother me with theirs.

But I was p*ssed off to be interrupted in between my conversation with Anna and it reflected on my game I guess, 'cause there was a line of wickets, now waiting to get to me on my batting. I'd blown 5 players in a row who had only taken 2, 3 runs, or nothing on the whole. 3 were stumped, 1 was run out and another was caught, by me if I might add.

We usually did one match in a day, 'cause the time period was enough only for that and always had to conduct the finals on whenever we got our next PE hour, but today all thanks to me, our team was done fielding and was already planning on who will be batting the first and the last, they always saved me for the last. Our target was 78 runs, yep 78! Again, thanks to me for blowing 5 wickets in a row. Since I was batting the last I excused myself and searched for Anna.

I found her near the stage on the playground and went to sit beside her.

"You were cool over there, like you're meant for it." She said with a smile.

I smiled back, as this was the first when someone apart from my family and teachers had praised me for something.

"Thank you."

"So...you were saying...something about your...mother, before that girl with the brown hair dragged you away...." She trailed off as if she was unsure of whether to ask the question, or not.

"I was saying that my mother's name is Tyra too and Mrs. Tyra, is her senior from school."

She stared at me for a second, or two like she had just realised something, before speaking.

"Never in my entire life did I ever think that I'd agree with my aunt."

"What?"

"You heard it right, we don't get along." She stated.

"....and what is it...uh...you know...this time that you agree with her?"

"You."

"Me?" I didn't understand, me? Had the aunt and niece been discussing about me? I probably had a confusing look on my face, which she noticed.

"My aunt said that there'll be a girl in my class, who is the daughter of her junior from school and her name sounds similar to mine. She said that I'll love the girl." I was taken aback upon the confession. Was she really talking about me? Am I worth it? I couldn't speak and was just looking at her, blank. She broke the silence. "Won't you be going for batting? Now that I've seen your fielding, I want to see you batting too."

"Only when you come along to watch it from the front line." I pouted and we both burst out laughing.

__________

Author's Note:

Finally here's how our besties met. Hope I was able to make up for the delay about revealing their past ^_^

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