19th August 2017

P R E E T I

"Let's sit down here and wait for the rain to stop", I suggested and sat down on a chair. Juleka nodded her head in agreement and sat down on another chair, right next to me.

We were stuck. It was raining heavily so I pulled Juleka into a music shop. We were also separated from our group because when we were about to cross the street, the signal turned red. We tried calling them up but the network was down.

"So, what do you think of my brother?", Juleka asked.

"W-what?", I asked utterly confused as to why she asked me this question, out of the blue.

"What do you think of Luka?", she asked again and raised an eyebrow.

Why did I have to stutter?

I mentally facepalmed at my own stupidity.

"He's nice. I think he loves to crack jokes since he does that all the time. But when there are too many people in one room then, Luka stays silent. I don't know why though", I said whilst my eyebrows furrowed at the last sentence. There was something that always bothered him. The way his behaviour used to change from the jokester kind of guy to the silent one was quite odd.

Juleka heaved a heavy sigh. I looked at her and she started speaking in a low, sad tone.

"Luka wasn't the silent type before, at all. Cracking jokes, making sarcastic comments and pranking me or Mom was something he did often along with Dad. After... Dad passed away, he just... stopped. No jokes, no pranks. He started being so quite that often people forgot he was there in the room. He was always there for me and Mom whenever any of us had a mental breakdown. The most disturbing thing that happened was that, neither Mom nor I ever saw him cry. Luka shed a few tears at the funeral and that was all he did. He used to lock himself up in his room saying that he wanted to practise a few notes on his guitar. Sometimes, I pressed my ear to the door of his room thinking that I might hear him sobbing, alone but I only got silence as an answer."

Juleka brought her knees closer to her chest and placed her chin on top of it.

"Things got back to normal after Christmas. He started joking around and having fun. Though he kept his mouth shut if we were in a conversation with our relatives. Luka shrugged it off and said that he just wanted to act mature and not crave attention like a five-year-old baby. How mature can you be at the age of ten?", Juleka asked the rhetorical question and looked at me.

Occlumency.

Luka's good at doing that. Just like he has the gift of empathy and can read people's emotions like an open book, he can also hide his own emotions and shut people out whenever he wants. But that's not healthy at all. Keeping your emotions locked up in a bottle isn't okay. One day that bottle would break and he wouldn't be able to control himself or his emotions anymore.

"Have you tried talking to him? Or perhaps have his closest of friends tried to talk to him as well?"

"Millions of times. But he wouldn't open up to anyone", Juleka said and her gaze fell to the floor.

"He was the closest one to Dad. Even more than me. Luka was the one who suggested that we should dye our hair like dad used to. He obviously chose to dye the ends of his hair in aqua colour, Dad's favourite."

I placed my hand on her shoulder and she gave me a small smile but her eyes still had a hint of sadness within them.

We just sat there in silence. Sometimes the tranquillity offered by silence was better than the comfort tried to be provided by words.

"Preeti?"

"Yeah."

"The rain stopped."

My head immediately shot up and I looked at the windows. The rain had indeed stopped.

"Let's go and find the others", I said and got up. Juleka and I walked out of the shop. After a few minutes of walking here and there I bumped into Abhinav.

"Preeti! Thank God you're okay!", he said and engulfed me in a hug. I nervously laughed because he was hugging me too tight and I was unable to breath.

"Oh eh- sorry", Abhinav said and let go of me so that I could breathe, finally.

"Juleka! Preeti! Both of you alright?", Mrs. Couffaine asked us and we both nodded. She hugged the pair of us as if I was a part of their family as well.

Aisha patted me-a bit too hard-on my back and said, "Knew you both will be alright."

I saw Luka hug his sister and the expression on his face clearly portrayed how worried he was for her. When they broke the hug, Luka threw away the worried expression and replaced it with a smile in the split of a second.

Why hide your true feelings from the ones you love?

He looked at me and I nervously smiled at him, god knows why. I was caught off guard when he wrapped his arms around me and whispered in my ear, "I'm glad you're okay too."

A light shade of pink dusted my cheeks as I felt his hot breath fanning over the crook of my neck. I returned the warm gesture and when we broke the hug, I think I saw a little blush creep up his cheeks.

I wonder why.

After narrating our incident and the reason because of which we lost touch with them, we all started on our way back home. In the bus, I sat on a seat near the window and looked at the trees, with wet leaves glistening from the recent showers. I loved the pleasant after effect, the rain brings about on nature.

"It really does look beautiful", Luka said as if he read my mind. He took a seat right next to me and smiled at me.

"By the way, thanks for looking out for my sister", he said, giving me a gentle close eyed smile.

"She's my friend and I always look out for my friends."

Luka chuckled and we immersed ourselves in a deep conversation for the rest of the bus ride. I wanted to ask him about his father and find out for myself whether he really needed someone to talk to, but I went against it.

It's a question for another day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi!

So this part of the book is actually inspired by a real life incident with a very close friend of mine but, now we aren't on good terms anymore since I let her make friends with the wrong sort of people... *sigh*

She was my first ever 'girl' friend (my first friend in school was a boy who was her cousin) and her father passed away in 2012 and nobody in our school knew about it. She kept it to herself and didn't even tell me despite us being close friends. 3-4 years later I got to know about her father and heard that her Mom also married another man. She wasn't okay with it as she didn't want her father to be replaced by someone else.

I tried to talk to her about it and know how she's truly feeling because I somehow knew she needed someone to talk to but she always kept changing the topic no matter jow hard i tried...

I won't reveal her name cause I don't want to. If ever you're going through a difficult time then please talk to your loved ones about it and don't shut them out.

P.S. Fan art credit to enma_shikiten on Insta/Twitter.

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