AARIFA POV
Aarifa’s bereaved soul rested in the attic for days. She thought winter was the worst following the incident on the lane across her house but that spring followed the darkness. The broken glass window greeted in the chilling heartless breeze that showed no mercy killing her skin cells remembering her of her beloved mother Rosie who said cold goodbyes and disappeared in thin air, nowhere to be found ever again. It was well established now in heart that her mother was a witch.
Being a teenager and only child, she struggled to gain confidence in her mother. Rosie loved Tessa more than she ever did her. However, she had invested so much, trying to get mother’s attention and even befriended Tessa at early age just so she would get to see her mother more. Being naughty and chaotic was something that she adapted seeking attention that she lacked at home. Martian and Rosie were mostly unavailable for her since she was ten.
With defence class and Tessa’s interest in microbiology, Tessa spent a lot of time with Rosie. The lioness shaped Tessa into a more organised human like herself that she never could do with Aarifa. She didn’t call her mother lioness out of nowhere. She was proud of her mother for everything she did for women empowerment. Although, she failed at being there for Aarifa when she needed her mother.
Aarifa looked at the rising sun breaching the fog in the day and braking dog in the moonlight. She had never seen this side of Manali before which was dark and terrifying. In the night silence covered the horizon and she heard agony inside her louder than ever. Three person she really cared about in her life—Rosie, Tessa and Amir, weren’t with her anymore. Her father, Martian, barely talked about anything. He carried his own burden. She usually saw him struggling to cook food for which she felt bad to leave it untouched.
She once in a while looked at the lane where Eva was killed. That was no longer just a lane she would take to my school or Tessa’s house. Sometimes when she gazed out, she saw her standing there on the lane in that yellow raincoat, staring at her. The way she scowled at her; the grief engulfed her tearing her inside out. Months had passed since that incident on the lane which killed Eva last December and sent Tessa in coma.
The rain had cleaned the road and police and media had deserted the lane long ago, clearing off any physical evidence of atrocity that happened that night. The world had moved on; once face of media, Eva, forgotten. Newspapers would change Eva’s face with some other girl once in a while, from cities, villages, even the worst possible places. She was supposed to move on, too and she was getting over it. Only then, she lost Rosie.
All of this started with Eva in a sense. She was root of all of the curiosity inside Aarifa about homosexuality. The changing openness about sexuality had its demerits for teenagers like her. She had no complaints about it that people were finally accepting homosexuality, even in country like India but it set both hers and Eva’s doom. She desperately tried to find what she couldn’t get at home.
For a teenage girl like Aarifa, it had become an obscure tradition to come out as gay. She never wanted to do that. She had seen girls do that just for fame but it was an egregious slap on faces of person who were truly gay. It was hard for her to find a boy who would truly love her. She had thought of this before, to find a girl, for they seemed more sensitive to her. But all this time at school, she had put a mask on, hiding all her insecurities under bullying attitude. Those smiling faces she would see at school were in fact cursing her from inside.
Aarifa was completely against impersonating as gay but that November after Diwali break, a storm came in her life. When Eva came back to school after vacation, she was totally a different person. She met a girl named Elizabeth on the break. As far as Aarifa knew, Eva was lonelier than her before this, a sole reason for to feel some relief in her life, a mare reason to believe she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t loved.
“So, you are into girls now?” Asked Aarifa to Eva, on a strange day at school.
“Not really. I am just figuring out what I like.” Eva replied, gesturing at a boy in the corridor.
“Is that really necessary? You have been checking out that boy. You are probably into boys.” Aarifa was confused. It bothered her that Eva no longer left alone like her. She felt lonelier than before.
“Let me tell you something. The time have changed. We can like what we want. Yeah, I think that I like boys but how can I be sure if I don’t have taste of both girls and boys. It’s good to make some foolish mistakes than regret and live a sad romance-less life. I understand that I might actually like boys but there is fifty percentage chance that I might like girls.” Her voice was talking to Aarifa but other parts of her body were engaged in that boy.
“Don’t you think, if you liked girls, you would know it....