4.3
Nobody knew how the book came to be found in the school library; it was a mystery. For Anjana, it did not matter. She was just grateful to have discovered it there, tucked away on the bottom shelf in the history section, near to her feet, as if somebody had deposited it there to test every earnest seeker. It was a hardback book, in an uninspiring cover, the letters on the spine all faded, returning to obscurity like invisible ink. Why it had caught her attention was another mystery, unexplained like that urge that had forced her to approach the despised one yesterday afternoon.
Upon reaching down to investigate it, she had dropped to her knees to finger through its pages. She remained there unmoved for half an hour, kneeling on the dusty beige carpet. Only cramp in her right shin had caused her to shift to a chair at the end of the row of shelves, where she remained until half past ten, perched on the edge of her seat with the book clasped firmly in her hands, just beneath her face. It was only at the start of morning break that she had thought to ask the librarian if she could borrow it, whereupon she learned that it was an imposter library book, masquerading as an educational volume, an alien in their midst. There was no record of it on the brown computer terminal, nor did it have a lending card. It was an undocumented interloper that should never have been there. Even so, she was instructed to bring it back once she had finished with it, lest its rightful owner return asking about lost property.
Now she found herself seated at a study desk in the corner of the common room, marking every paragraph she had found pertinent with whatever scrap she could lay her hands on. It was as if the author of the book had read her mind, dispensing advice to soothe a pain within. It was as if each sentence was speaking to her personally, caressing her inner disquiet.
‘I’m confused, Anjana.’
These words came from nowhere, tearing her away from a poetic passage that had utterly absorbed her. Her gaze jolted up from the page, she found a friend scraping a chair across the floor, only to shove it against her desk.
‘Why did you walk home with that Ben Johnson idiot last night?’ demanded Satya, plonking herself down on the grey plastic seat.
Pulling the lid from her pen, Anjana ignored her and began scribbling down notes on a single page torn from the back of an exercise book, copying down the rhyming paragraph in full, which she decorated with green ink flowers and annotated with thoughts of her own.
‘Yeah, I saw you,’ she added, attempting hopelessly to read her scrawl upside down.
‘And am I answerable to you?’ asked Anjana, glancing back at her, annoyed.
‘You told me to stay away from him.’
‘Oh yes, I know, Satya. We’ve been over this a hundred times already. Don’t you ever get bored? You’re irritating me now.’
Anjana turned to another page, bookmarked with the wrapper of a Highland Toffee Bar, and took to summarising the penultimate paragraph. There had been nothing about the cover of the book that could have attracted her to it, so unlike the glossy titles that had surrounded it, but now it captivated her. Absorbed in each passage, pondering ideas she had never considered before, this first reading seemed an urgent quest. She could not wait to share these extracts with her mother after school, to read them aloud and probe them for meaning.
‘Well why don’t you ask me what my problem is?’ cried Satya, dragging her chair even closer to her desk.
Before her, Anjana heaved a wearied sigh. ‘I think I have, Satya,’ she moaned, ‘Loads of times. But you’re not saying, are you?’
‘Well ask me now.’
Anjana let out another riled gasp, shook her head from side to side, and turned to the last page she had marked, this time with a flattened dandelion leaf. In her notes, she simply wrote down the page number this time, encircling it with two rings of red ink.
‘Well I’ll tell you,’ said Satya, ‘Then you’ll understand.’
‘Go ahead,’ grumbled Anjana impatiently, ‘Surprise me.’
Pulling herself yet closer to Anjana’s desk, Satya pushed her feet underneath it until their knees almost touched. She thought back to her first day at her new school, when both Balvinder and Anjana had warned her about the friendly boy who had seemed to have come to her aid. She recalled, too, how she had initially ignored them because he had been the only person to have been nice to her that day. ’You said he couldn’t be trusted and warned me to stay away from him,’ she remembered. ‘I wish I’d listened to you, because you were exactly right. It was just like you said.’
‘What was?’
Satya leaned towards her, shielding her voice with her hand, lest they be overheard. ‘Boys,’ she said cryptically, ‘you know boys.’
‘I know boys what?’
‘You have a couple of conversations, and all of sudden they’re chasing after you. That’s what that loser did. Just because I was nice to him a couple of times, he told all his friends he fancied me.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ murmured Anjana. ‘I’d be flattered.’
‘It’s what happened next,’ she said. ‘I told him I’m not looking for a boyfriend. Told him I wasn’t interested. And just because of that he got his mates to sort me out. And they would’ve done something horrible to me, if I hadn’t fought them off. All because that stupid little loser couldn’t bear to hear what I said to him.’ She glared at Anjana. ‘So of course, I don’t like him. I’m allowed.’
Quickly, Satya glanced across the room at the companion she had left behind five minutes ago. ‘Yeah, so you can tell Siti Noor that nice little Ben isn’t so nice after all, is he?’ she whined, pointing at her. ‘No, he’s a spiteful little toe rag.’ She flashed her teeth at Anjana, snarling aggressively. ‘So you can tell Noor, maybe instead of lecturing me about being nice to him, next time she can think twice. I’m not a spiteful person. I treat people with respect. I’m nice to people. But when they treat me like that, I’m sorry, I’m not having it. I don’t have to be nice to someone who got his friends to punish me because I wouldn’t say I fancied him. That’s just sick, if you ask me. It’s twisted.’
It was with regret that Anjana realised the book would have to close now. Her dialogue with it had come to an end, her inner conversations ceasing, cut short by her friend’s merciless descent.
‘So say something then, Anjana,’ grumbled Satya, ‘Go on, say something. Explain it to me. If I don’t understand, explain it.’
Anjana put her pen down, twisting it into its lid. Peeking back at her, she settled the cover back down on the fragile tome and set it aside, hiding it beneath her pencil case. ‘I’m sorry this is what you’ve been carrying with you all this time,’ she whispered, ‘You should’ve said something. Then we would’ve understood. We could’ve dealt with him.’
‘Unlike him, I don’t need to get my friends to sort everything out for me.’
‘Well I am going to deal with it,’ Anjana told her.
‘No, don’t. I’m not asking you to, and I don’t want you to. I’m simply explaining why I don’t like him, because you and Noor are doing my head in. I’m tired of hearing he’s not as bad as you yourself said he was. Because he is, Anjana. No, in fact he’s worse.’
‘Assuming you’ve got all this right,’ offered Anjana meekly.
‘Oh yeah, of course, because I just imagined what they were going to do with me,’ cried Satya, shaking, ‘And you wonder why I didn’t tell you before.’
‘I was just asking. Sometimes wires get crossed.’
‘I was there, Anjana. They tried to pin me to the ground. They told me everything. I didn’t imagine it. I was there.’
Hearing her, Anjana began to feel sick, a painful ache pushing up her windpipe, causing breathlessness. She could feel all the optimism she had been feeling draining out of her, displaced by that involuntary noxious dismay which pulled tears from her eyes. For a while it seemed she might say nothing at all, only for her words to burst out of her unforeseen. ‘Well I am going to sort him out,’ she cried resolutely. ‘He won’t know what hit him.’
‘I just told you I don’t want that,’ protested Satya, ‘I’m not sinking to his level. I’m just telling you so you understand. That’s it. End of story. The end.’
