Three, 60 Degrees - Veer Kamdar

Veer Kamdar

Author

Three, 60 Degrees

Antonio was having dinner with his two best friends on a round table, at a place where lightings and balloons were the decorations and it was just the three of them. Antonia’s phone tooted a notification. Antonio glared at the disturbance, it was a message from an unknown number. He accessed his phone and read. The content proved to be surprising for him. He spoke something, monotonously, with no expressions to one of his best friends, while the other was already in tears of guilt and shock. Then Antonio spoke nothing further and left. His walking away, had already apprised the unaware best friend about the happening. The extrovert woke from his nightmare, Antonio had his eyes wide open. He rose from the comforting position, resting one hand on the bed and the other attempting to wipe away the sap on his face. He moved away from the bed, way differently from how the dream had moved him. The direction of dream, led him to just not consider it as a random imagination. He wasn’t able to get over it. Two days later, Antonio Marcus Lutz walked towards his classroom, aiming for the door with the label “Class 9-C” on it, with a logo of the best school in Vatican City, “Austin International School”, nonchalantly on the outside. He stepped in the classroom, approached the 25th and last bench of the class and placed his bag on it. Alike the last two days he had not been very friendly, expressive and talkative to anyone in the class, rather he had been rude to some of his classmates and occupied in his thoughts, unlike the other days. Its not that no one noticed this and let Antonio be the way he carried himself to be, instead everyone in the class was onto making a matter of concern, which might not be wrong. His classmates were worried for him, as he was kind of, the leader of the batch. This was surprising for others, not for Antonio, that his two best friends weren’t over reactive about it, instead they often tried to run away from the situation. It was recess time, Antonio’s favourite. He walked across all the conversations, laughs, giggles and ideas popping in the classroom, towards Stacey, who was standing in the corner, displaying a science module. His heart wasn’t thumping hard, he was clear with what he was doing, he was nor confident neither concerned much

about the outcome, when he was going to first time talk to one his best friends, in two days. He went to Stacey and asked, “How did you think I would never get to know”? Antonio’s heart was swollen after coming face to face, with the truth of his truth being expelled out of his trust and represented amongst the ones, who were Antonio’s friends, not the ones he trusted, not the ones who made a substantial part of his school life. Antonio thought Stacey would walk up her memory lane with a bag of guilt on her shoulders, but she did not display any sign of guilt or a need for forgiveness. Replacing that with tears of belonging, she exclaimed, “Oh this is the part where you want me to say a sorry to you, but you know what? My fate is a better writer than you”! Antonio felt like the cookies, which were dipped in sizzling vegetable soup instead of a glass of milk. He now surely had adrenaline run in his body. He clearly did not understand… What was she speaking? Why? Has she lost the knowledge of what means what, in the volcano suddenly erupted in her body? Stacey took a deep breath and continued, “You won’t be able to give me such an opportunity anymore, more than me being sorry it’s good for you to be thankful to the fact. The fact that I am leaving”. Stacey fell into tears, she couldn’t escape the border of, “I am leaving” and she couldn’t utter anything further. She felt, she had Tourette's syndrome and she couldn’t stop saying, “I am leaving and going away”. Stacey loved her school, though she wasn’t the best at studies, she just enjoyed the idea of school. She loved studying at school, spending time with her friends, especially the best friends that she had. She loved her teachers, the recess time, the events, everything. For her to leave her school, was like a rabbit leaving his carrots. Stacey had been strong, since the two days of her getting to know about the geographical leap coming up in her life. Even when her two best friends weren’t there with her, she just kept avoiding the domination of feelings on her last days of learning, in the school. She considered the ruckus in her best circle of friends, as one of her last learnings from the Austin International School. Wiping her eyes Stacey said to Antonio,” Try to meet me at the PT ground after the last period.” Moving away she just said, “One last time make efforts for me.” Almost all lobes of Antonio’s brain were facing turbulence, he just couldn’t accept that he walking from the dinner table was nothing in comparison to Stacey’s walking away. He was a positive person, he thought that he better forget about the leaving. He warned himself, that he had time till the last period to forget the negativity and spend the last moments with her best friend with a shine of buoyancy. The last period ended, Antonio walked towards the PT ground, with an eerie mixture of feelings that he hadn’t felt in years. All of them had completely, forgotten about the reasons which had led them to not talk to each other for those two days. They talked, they felt, they cherished, they imagined, they reminded, they commented, they regretted, they tried to forget, they wrote, they cemented and eventually ended. Stacey said,” Before we part, I made something!” She pulled out a medium sized, common looking and brown coloured photo frame. Then a second photo frame and then the third one. Each of them was a framing of a drawing made of oil pastels. It had a visual of three kids holding hands. After removing all three and handing them. Stacey said,” One for An, one for me and one for Esme.”

Veer Kamdar