April 2005

It was a week after the match that Vikram finally got a taste of his own medicine. He was sitting peacefully at lunch with Shruti and for some reason, Ruvee was there too, when Aditya walked in with plates full of food in one hand and a tray full of beverages in the other. It was a disaster waiting to happen and then, it did happen.

Aditya tripped and before Vikram could figure things out, two milkshakes, two cokes and two plates of noodles landed straight on him.

"I am so sorry." Aditya said immediately but when Vikram looked at him, there was no hint of apology on his face. In fact, there was no hint of anything.

Vikram got up, ready to launch himself into mortal combat when Mr. Jha walked in.

"Everything alright boys?" he asked and then looked at Vikram whose shirt was now a brown shade on the right from the coke and a pink shade on the left from the milkshakes. "Oh!" he let out.

"Aditya..." Mr. Jha said looking at the unapologetic football player, "take him to the locker room and get him something to change into."

Aditya nodded. "Yes sir." he said and yanked Vikram out of the cafeteria.

Vikram could feel every eye in the cafeteria boring on the back of his neck as he walked out of the place.

Once they reached the locker room, Vikram jerked his hand away from Aditya's and walked inside on his own.

"The showers are at the end." Aditya said as he stepped inside the locker room. "But you already know that, don't you?"

Vikram didn't answer his question. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" he asked instead.

Aditya watched as Vikram leaned against the wall not far from the door and took his shoes and socks off. His fingers trembled in anger as he tried to undo the buttons of his shirt. Now he would have to wash himself clean at school because of Aditya.

"Maybe I did." Aditya said, teasing. "Can you prove it though?"

Vikram proceeded to unbutton his trousers when he looked at Aditya who was sitting on one of the benches, right in front of Vikram and observing him.

"What the fuck are you looking at, fag?" he suddenly blurted out before even realizing what he had said.

There was a visible change on Aditya's face when he heard Vikram. It stiffened, more than before, if that was possible and then Aditya turned away almost immediately.

"Drop your clothes on the bench and clean up." He said. "I'll get you a pair of change."

Vikram wanted to say something, perhaps in the line of an apology but decided against it. Instead, he walked to the showers and turned the faucet on.

Warm jet sprays hit his body and he wondered why he hadn't taken a shower at school before. This was much better than the shower Vikram had at home. As the remaining traces of noodles and milkshake and coke washed down his hair, Vikram couldn't help but feel guilty about what he had said to Aditya.

It was rude and uncalled for. One of his good friends was gay for fuck sake. He would be so disappointed in Vikram if he found out what he had called Aditya.

He stood under the shower for five more minutes before turning the faucet off and walking out. Vikram had every intention of apologizing to Aditya when he saw him. Maybe even end this stupid game they had going on for making each other suffer, and for what? Shruti?

The past one month had been enough for Vikram to realize that she was not going to dump Aditya. And Aditya was not going to give her up either. It was only Vikram who had been stuck in this loop for no reason whatsoever.

Emerging out of the shower, Vikram looked around before spotting a towel hanging by one of the lockers. It was only when he pulled the towel away that he realized that the locker belonged to Aditya. Aditya was not back yet and his old clothes weren't on the bench either so Vikram decided to dry himself off while waiting for Aditya to come back.

He exhaled, hoping that Aditya would return with a spare change of clothes soon. He had already decided that the moment Aditya would walk in, he would flat out say that he was sorry for calling him a fag and for every prank he played on him. He would extend his hand in good sportsmanship and Aditya would take it and they would find a way to tolerate each other.

Once Vikram was done drying himself, he turned towards the locker to hang the towel again. When he opened the door, he saw a post-it stuck to the inside of the locker.

He pulled the paper out and swallowed thickly upon reading it.

Vikram's insides screamed in anger as he crushed the paper and threw it on the ground.

'Try getting out of the locker room now.' It read.

If Aditya thought Vikram would let him off the hook so easily, he was dead wrong. For people like Aditya and Vikram, their school books meant a lot. They had all the important things highlighted, the important chapters marked and were full of footnotes that had stood the test of time.

Vikram knew for a fact that Aditya thought of his school books as gospels, just like Vikram did. And that was his next target.

Vikram waited as the classes flew by until it was time for lunch. That was the only time the students left the class without their bags on. And that was Vikram's hunting period. When there would be no one else in the room, Vikram would strike.

As expected, one after the other the students left the class to get to the cafeteria.

"Aren't you coming?" Shruti asked, turning towards Vikram.

Vikram shook his head. "I have a headache." he lied. "You guys go ahead."

Shruti nodded but didn't think twice about it. She grabbed Aditya by his hand and pulled him away. If Vikram had been staring after them, instead of pretending to be asleep, he would have noticed the glances Aditya threw his way as he walked out of the class.

Five minutes after everyone was gone, Vikram peeked out of his hands. The class was empty. He quickly opened his own bag and pulled out at least five bottles of ink from inside. He had presumed that one wouldn't suffice and when he opened Aditya's bag, he realized he was right. That boy literally carried all his books in his bag, not according to the classes of the day.

He also noticed how worn out his bag looked. It was tearing up from some places and the edges of the piping were coming out.

Wow! Vikram thought. Aditya really doesn't care about these things, does he?

Vikram went back to the issue at hand and felt glad that all of Aditya's books were in one place.

Opening the bottles of ink one after the other, Vikram began pouring it into Aditya's bag slowly, but carefully.

Soon, everything Aditya had inside his bag was doused in black.

Vikram smiled as he was done.

"How's that for payback?" he asked out loud, feeling pretty proud of what he had done. Now all he had to do was wait.

The bell rang for the lunch to end and slowly, everyone walked back into the class, including Shruti and Aditya.

Their physics teacher, Mrs. Tyagi walked in and commanded the class to settle down and open their books to page 71. Vikram stared in front of him, waiting, holding his breath in anticipation to see Aditya's reaction.

But nothing happened. Aditya didn't reach for his bag. Instead, he pulled his physics book out from the drawer under his desk.

Fuck, Vikram thought to himself. He hadn't noticed the books in the drawer.

The physics period started and ended without any revelations of exaggerated emotions. It was a major letdown especially because Mrs. Tyagi was very strict and she would have punished Aditya for disrupting the class rather than finding out who had done this to his books. It would have been a complete win for Vikram, if only he had glanced at the book in the desk drawer.

Mrs. Tyagi left and Mr. Jha walked in for the English class. But before the class began, Ruvee walked up to Vikram and took the empty seat next to him.

For a brief second, Shruti turned back, looked at Ruvee and then at Vikram before turning back to the front.

Vikram waited for Ruvee to perhaps explain what she was doing here but when she didn't say anything, a confused Vikram decided to ask the question himself. "Why are you sitting here?"

"You know we have an English assignment coming up, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

Mr. Jha asked for the class to settle down and open page 95 of their English Prose book.

Ruvee turned the page slowly. "So now that Shruti is with Aditya, I thought you'd need a partner."

"Are you asking me or commanding me?" Vikram asked, turning the pages of his own book.

"Whatever floats your boat." Ruvee said but Vikram wasn't paying attention to her anymore.

"What the fuck?" came a loud roar from just in front and all eyes turned towards Aditya.

Yes, fucking finally! Vikram tried to suppress a laugh as Aditya haphazardly searched through his bag to find all his books covered in black ink.

"Aditya!" Mr. Jha interjected. "Come with me!"

Aditya turned in fury to look at the obvious culprit but did not say a word.

"Did you do this?" Ruvee asked Vikram, more curious than shocked.

Vikram was trying his best to not laugh but it was starting to become impossible. Not only had Aditya's books been destroyed, but he was now also in trouble for cussing so freely at school.

"Vikram..." Mr. Jha said them, bursting his tiny bubble of happiness. "You too. Come with me."

Any residing humour inside of Vikram died. "What did I do?" he asked in protest.

"You'll find out soon!" their teacher said and gestured his hand towards the door.

Aditya walked out, soon followed by Vikram.

Once they were out in the hallway, Mr. Jha closed the door of the class behind him. If he thought this would prevent the class from hearing everything, he was very wrong. Because the windows right next to the door were open.

"You did this, didn't you?" Mr. Jha asked Vikram.

"No sir." Vikram said immediately.

"Don't try to fool me. Did you think I wouldn't notice what the two of you have been up to?"

Vikram gritted his teeth in frustration. If this reached his parents, he was as good as dead.

"Well, he was the one who stole all my clothes from the locker." Vikram said. "I had to hide in one of the shower stalls in the locker room till everyone went home and then I had to walk out of the school. In a towel."

A round of laughter followed from the room. Okay, so now everyone in the class knew about this.

"You locked me in the locker room for the first half of the qualifier match." Aditya said, turning to Vikram.

"You were the one who stole the reels from the darkroom."

"You sabotaged my date with Shruti with your fake sickness."

"I wasn't faking it you dumb bitch. I was actually sick."

"Enough!" Mr. Jha stepped in. "I've heard enough. Both of you need to control your mouths better." he said and rested his chin on his hands like he did when he was thinking.

Vikram suddenly began feeling like a nervous wreck. This was not good.

"Find me after school and I will deal with the two of you then."

With that, he walked back into the class, followed by Aditya and Vikram. For the rest of the period, no one spoke another word.

"You know you have the English assignment coming up, don't you?"

Vikram and Aditya nodded. They were now standing in the teacher's room with Mr. Jha and a couple of other teachers inside.

"Good." Mr. Jha said. "I thought long and hard about what the perfect punishment would be for you and seeing how you despise each other, I think I have just the right thing."

He turned around towards his desk and pulled a piece of paper out before giving a copy each to both Aditya and Vikram.

"These are the new board rules for the exam." Mr. Jha said. "There have been several complaints over the past few years that the board doesn't score students fairly in English so it was unanimously decided that only 50% of the total credit would be from the board exams. The rest 50% is divided like this..." he pointed to a particular line in the paper and Vikram and Aditya glanced over.

The new rule dictated that out of the remaining 50%, 25% was allocated to a project and the remaining 25% was allocated to the half-yearly exam. This was a good thing, as far as Vikram knew. Nothing about it reeked of punishment. Yet!

"That's great news." Vikram said.

Mr. Jha smiled. "It indeed is." he said. "Wait till you hear the rest of it."

"There's more?" Vikram asked, all excited and noticed from the corner of his eyes that Aditya was shaking his head.

"Yes." Mr. Jha said, taking the papers back. "There's more. The best part of this is..."

Vikram leaned in a little, to be able to hear it better. He had been stressing over the English paper for a long time now. You could swallow the Oxford dictionary and write an English paper and still get below satisfactory scores in the exam. Splitting the score would make things easier for Vikram and he couldn't wait to find out the rest of it.

"The best part is that for the project..." Mr. Jha began again, "you and Aditya will have to partner up."

If Vikram didn't respect Mr. Jha or the other teachers in the room, he would have cussed his way out of the school till he stopped breathing and there were no more cuss words left to use on Aditya.

"How the..." Vikram began in bewilderment but controlled himself, "... hell is this a good thing?"

Mr. Jha shrugged. "It is for me; to see the top students in my class keeping their differences aside and working together for this project, that's all I want."

"Sure." Vikram said, "If the project is for us to murder each other, I am sure we'd work together. Besides, I told Ruvee I'd be her partner."

"Yeah..." Mr. Jha said, smiling like a psychopath. "that's not going to happen. My word is the law here." He then turned towards Aditya who was oddly quiet in the situation. "Do you have anything to say, Aditya?"

"About what?"

"About partnering with Vikram for the project."

"Can I think about it?"

Mr. Jha smiled at Aditya too. "Of course you can't."

"Then I don't think I want to participate."

Mr. Jha pressed his lips to a thin line and slapped his knees. "Very well then." he said and a ray of hope rose inside of Vikram.

"You can choose not to do the project but mind you..." he said and Vikram could sense a threat coming his way. "if either of you refuses to work with the other, neither of you are getting any score. That's 25% of the credit, going down the drain just because you can't do away with your individual egos."

ONCE THEY WERE dismissed, Vikram found himself walking towards his clubroom instead of the class to grab his backpack. Mr. Jha's words still twisted something inside of him. 25% credit was not a joke. His total score could be affected by it. He didn't care much about anything but he did care about beating Aditya again, and this time with his own abilities, not because Aditya was not up to the game.

There had to be a way out of this without having to work with Aditya. And Vikram was determined to find a solution.

Aditya did not come to the school the next day. Nor the day after that. For some reason, Shruti wasn't talking to Vikram either so he was reduced to having lunch alone and having no one to talk to at school, or after.

A week passed and Aditya had still not shown up at the school. It was not like Vikram cared but there was this tiny voice in Vikram's mind that told him that Aditya's absence was perhaps his fault. Vikram had tried to ignore the voice initially but it had started to get louder of late.

He needed to do something about it.

It was on the eighth day of Aditya's absence that Ruvee found Vikram during lunch.

"What are you thinking about?"

Vikram shrugged. "Nothing."

"Liar."

Vikram sighed as he slowly ate his lunch.

"Are you worried about Aditya?" she asked.

Vikram almost choked. "No, I am not." he said immediately. "Why the fuck would I be worried about him?"

"I don't know..." Ruvee said, taking the spoon from Vikram and digging into the food. "I thought you might be bothered by the fact that he hasn't shown up to school for the past few days"

Vikram scoffed. "As if I care."

"If you say so." Ruvee said and set the spoon down. "Listen..." she said and suddenly Vikram turned vigilant. She had this commanding authority about herself that was hard to miss. "I thought about this problem of yours- the English project..."

Vikram nodded, anticipating a solution.

"... and there is no solution." Ruvee said. "Mr. Jha knew what he was doing when he tried to put you two together for the project."

"He and I can't work together. I hate him and he hates me."

Ruvee put a hand on Vikram's. "Try and put that aside for a while."

"That's impossible."

"Well, you have to make it possible if you don't want to just fuck your grades up."

"How am I supposed to get in touch with Aditya? He's not even coming to school anymore."

Ruvee cleared her throat and leaned in. "I have something to tell you."

Vikram went near her, to make sure no one else heard them.

"I have been meaning to tell you... what you did with his books, was not cool."

Vikram jerked back. "You've got to be kidding me." he said. "Are you blind to what he did to me?"

Ruvee shook her head. "No I am aware, but that's not what I meant."

Annoyance was beginning to surface on Vikram's face. "What did you mean then?"

Ruvee let out a small sigh. "You shouldn't have touched his books, that's all."

Vikram wanted to laugh. Why was everyone thinking of Aditya as the victim? "Why is that, exactly?" he asked.

Ruvee lowered her voice. "Because he can't afford to buy new ones."

"I..." Vikram began because he was ready to refute her argument but what she said, rendered him speechless.

Ruvee saw that Vikram finally understood what she meant. "Look, I don't know the whole story but from what I heard, he hasn't been coming to school because he's working double shifts. Don't you know what went down in his family last year?"

Yes. Vikram knew, but vaguely. Like everyone else. Aditya's dad had passed away from a heart attack last year and since then, he was perhaps living with an aunt or an uncle of his. Vikram had even felt guilty about topping the class in 11th because he knew Aditya was going through a rough time, even if he never showed it. Vikram had been empathetic towards him for a long time. But then, when the school resumed, he beat the living hell out of Mohit and made Vikram lose his only other friend apart from Shruti. And Vikram wasn't even sure if Shruti qualified to be his friend anymore.

And just because of that, Vikram's hatred was back.

"What does that have anything to do with his books?" Vikram said.

Ruvee closed her eyes and shook her head. "Just trust me on this, okay? Find a way to fix this because you have to work together."

"Just tell me what it is." Vikram protested as he found Ruvee getting up, ready to walk away.