Friends and the Internet

CHAPTER-7

Squinting as dust fell into her eyes, Sarah scratched at the white tiles of the ceiling, groaning loudly. “Come on, come on, come out. Ah!”, the plastic wrapped bundle fell into the bathtub and she heaved a sigh.

Hair plastered onto her forehead, she wiped her face with her sleeve, slowly stepping down from the toilet before everything began spinning.

Grabbing tight to the water-tank, she panted, her foot still wet from where she had almost slipped. Sweat fell into her eyes as she pondered over her position; the last time she had been hunched over a toilet, all hell had broken lose.

And soon, the scorching and flaming red lava that had scalded her equilibrium, would no longer be a bother.

*******************************

If you asked anyone in Newton High about Ashley Simons, chances are that you’d receive a plethora of responses.

‘Class Valedictorian.’

‘Head of the Literary Committee.’

‘Editor of the School News-letter.’

‘The chick who’s always holed up in the library.’

And lastly, ‘Waitress at the Street Corner Café’.

If fate would have it, then Ashley would have been the protagonist in a 2000-esque teenage rom-com; straight-A student by day and Employee of the month by night.

Acrimonious would be a mild choice of words if Ashley were to be asked for her two cents on her state of affairs, but she knew better than anyone that if she wanted to go to NYU, she needed both – the money and the credits.

It was at one of her evenings at Street Corner that she had met Sarah. A book lying on the brunette’s table caught Ashley’s eye and she casually commented on how far and wide her searches for it had been.

Sarah’s eagerness to let her borrow the book had been met with a quizzical gaze. Stuttering, she had explained that she recognized Ashley because of her name on all the books she had checked-out from the school library. Sarah had been kind enough not to mention the fact that Ashley Simons' name was pretty much plastered all over the school’s literary territory.

Ashley knew Sarah by sight too, but had never approached her the many times she spotted her alone in the library. Ashley had learnt to maintain her distance from the juniors, lest her sister accuse her of ‘stealing her friends’.

However, when she spotted Sarah waiting for her shift to end, her puppy-like keenness incited Ashley to walk her home. Being new in town, Sarah admitted to the fact that Ashley was her probable first acquaintance. Glancing towards the girl that barely reached her shoulders, Ashley noted the constant wringing of Sarah’s fingers and for reasons unbeknownst, proclaimed herself to be Sarah’s very first friend.

Eight months later, what she had suspected to be a pity-friend was now almost as tall as her, and was helping her pack her belongings for her much awaited future in New York.

Ashley had been doubtful about the course of their friendship, but Sarah had grown to become a younger sister; the one she didn’t wish to strangle to death.

Hugging her tight, Sarah whispered in Ashley’s ear, ”Go live your life Rory Gilmore. Minus the boyfriend troubles”. She had earned a dig in the ribs for re-using Ashley’s own descriptive phrase back at her, but was soon pulled into another hug; reminded for the millionth time of her promise to visit Ashley any time she wished.

Almost three years later, Ashley was walking the length of her tiny apartment, her feet now adept at ghosting over the cracks that adorned the wooden flooring.

She had deliberately chosen a smaller apartment despite being offered not a lavish, but slightly bigger option than her current abode, but Ashley’s heart was set.

She had consciously looked for a small apartment; one which she could cram all her possessions into and leave brimming till the ceiling, so she wouldn’t even have the opportunity to complain of there being any space left. If her past had taught her anything, it was that a bigger house could appear very comfortable, but it could very easily be a façade, a specious skeleton with an obsolete heart; resonant of desolation.

Pouring the glass of water that had barely touched her lips into her potted sea lavenders, Ashley concentrated on the amount that fell over the purplish-hued flowers, eyebrows furrowed.

She had almost forgotten about the T.A. who had been talking her ear off until she heard a loud crunch, of what she assumed was a new bag of vinegar crisps.

“With the amount of people you’ve met thanks to your many freaking jobs, it’s not very difficult for me to identify your people- reading skills Ashley”, the smugness in his tone was louder than the sound of him munching down on five chips at once, and Ashley often wondered how many crisps it would take to lodge into her T.A's throat, subsequently choke and kill him.

‘And people-reading is the most sought after chops in an aspiring journalist’, Ashley mouthed the words, eyes scanning the crowded alley outside her window, which she had spent hours scrubbing clean. She had heard the same speech spouting out of his mouth five thousand times at five different times of the day, but here she was, yet again. Then again, tuning in to the same bullshit that people spewed over and over was something Ashley’s mum had trained her for very well.

Tuning out, was what she had learned on her own.

When the phone buzzed in her hand, Ashley’s face lit up as soon as she saw the caller-id and she spoke for the first time in forty-five minutes,” Hey George, I’ll call you later okay? It’s my mum”, an ambulance zoomed past, ”She’s in the hospital…..crying. Ok bye!”

Before he could protest, Ashley had already disconnected, nimble fingers redialing the latest number in her call-logs.

******************************

In another part of the city, Dave Rogers scrolled through his texts with screwed up eyes. The only source of illumination in the dark room was the LED light strips lined up against his wall and Dave’s lean figure was sprawled across the mattress, a thin blanket covering his bare legs. When a notification with Andrew’s profile popped up, he instantly clicked on it.

Andrew Locke – the guy he had never ever met in real life, but who had proved to be a steady pole in Dave’s tumultuous sea.

The very first time Andrew had typed out a message for him was on a sketchy global networking site. Dave had never intended to find an honest conversation there; most people followed the standard protocol of asking for the respondent’s age, sex and location, or the much savvier ‘ASL’ and stayed only when they received an answer with the initial ‘F’.

While it wasn’t the best brain stimulant, Dave had spent hours on the site, sometimes pretending to be a girl. Though when the other side offered him a combination of multiple ‘equals – to’ signs and digit eights on a silver platter, he bolted right out.

Dave also liked to believe that he wasn’t an overly emotional person; but when for the very first time he was asked ‘How’re you doin?’, something had stirred inside of him. Before he could say ‘sike!’, he had poured his heart out to an internet stranger.

And when they eventually moved forward, exchanging social media handles and then phone numbers, not once had Dave’s reflex of shutting the blinds and turning the lights off till the intruder deserted his haven, kicked in.

He had wondered why, and also what a guy like Andrew had been doing on that site. Andrew had provided an answer for the latter months later into their friendship.

The answer to the former, was an epiphany of Dave’s own.

A year later, Dave had also deciphered Andrew's stance regarding his question. He wasn’t especially bothered. After all, unrequited love was the stepping stone of every creator’s journey.

Heartbreak though, was a sneaky little bastard, weaving its way in and cementing its place before anyone could even think of the ‘e’ in eviction. And as Dave stared at his mostly blank laptop screen with only a single name reigning smack- dab in the middle; a name Andrew valued more than Dave could ever fathom, the ‘see you in 5 days’ text from him made Dave’s heart flip.

Flip face first into the rock-solid cement.

*********************************

Thousands of miles away, Sarah Thomas smiled at her phone screen. Attaching a kissing-face emoji with her text to Ashley, she felt the cold wind hit her in the face.

Five minutes later, the same tree that had borne the brunt of Keith Becker’s weight when he would climb into her room, watched Sarah slide her way down it.

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A/N - Hellew it's M again. This seems like a good enough place to end the chapter right? Ok sorry, probably not. But if you liked what you've read so far, please consider dropping a rating, it means a lot. Thanks a lot, see you soon <3