Nightfall ✓

Chapter 11

• chapter eleven •

Three days later, on a Friday, the No Art Class day, I went into the bathroom and stripped and stood under the hot water of the shower till it turned cold. Then I slathered on some moisturizer and went to sit on the couch in the living room at exactly five o'clock, because that was the time when the rays of the setting sun seeped in through the windows. Instead of reading like I always did, I lied down on the couch and stared at the patches of sunlight on the wooden floor, on the walls, on the carpets. I hated to admit it, but I felt lonely. The emptiness of the house was starting to get to me.

A little hesitantly, I took out my phone and called Stan, of all people, because if I was right, it was seven thirty in the morning there, and he would be the only one alive.

"Unhh?" His voice sounded sleepy, like he'd just woken up.

"Sorry. I thought you'd be awake."

"Yeah, well, I am now." I heard him shifting in bed. "Morning. By the way, do you know where the pin of that pump is?"

"Which pump?"

"The one which I use to fill air in my football."

"Oh. That. I'm sitting in another continent, you idiot, how do you expect me to know?" I said, even though I was the one who had hidden that pin just before leaving so that he couldn't fill air in his football. Hah, seemed like he had spent the past three months without it.

"Whatever," he said. I asked about college, and he told me that last week he'd set off the fire alarm and then gone for a long drive with his friends, and about a food fight he'd started in the canteen because of which he'd almost got suspended. Then he asked about my life, and I said that school was good and that I'd made some friends.

I didn't tell him that I had an exhibition this week, because I didn't like to talk to him about the stuff I loved, because whenever we fought, he used it to hurt me. Once, when he was angry with me, he went into my room and painted zig-zagging lines all over one of my favorite paintings. He's pretty heartless that way. When I saw it, I broke down and cried for an hour, till mom got some ice-cream to calm me down. That day, I hid all of my books, scared that he would tear them apart, and took off all my paintings from the wall and rolled them up and stashed them under my bed, hoping he won't find them there. And after that day, I shut him out and stopped telling him about the stuff I loved, so that he couldn't use it against me again. And I told him that I hated Bryan Adams so he won't call him names to annoy me anymore; and I told him that I'd broken up with Ryan, so he won't call Ryan a faggot.

So I just asked more about his college, and when he had nothing left to talk about, we hung up.

I felt lonely again.

Then I lay and thought about the exhibition, and the paintings I would make, and I started picturing the Cinderella painting in my head. I was itching to get started on it, but it was silly to start without planning the entire thing, so I made a mental note to ask Helen for some suggestions, and thinking of her reminded me that she had told us to look up Khokhloma art which I hadn't yet done, so I went to my room and placed my laptop on the table and for some time I read about the Russian folk-art till I was sure the information I had gathered was enough, and then I clicked on another link like I often did when I was researching. Then I clicked on another link, then another, and soon I had reached a website about human body, which had an essay about human memory on the homepage.

On the right side of the essay, there were images of other articles which were available on the website, but they were just images, and that too of a few lines of the articles, which was totally pointless, because I couldn't click on the image and visit the article, nor could I know the title of the article through the few lines which were available.