The Reunion - 5 - Settling In

24^th September 2000

Strange, no one’s treating me like the new girl anymore. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m still sitting alone though. All the girls already have a pretty strong group formed and I don’t fit anywhere. Every time its our class teacher’s class, Anjali slips back to sit with me and as soon as the class is over, she goes right back.

Anjali introduced me to some of her friends. There was Sagarika, Anjali and Sagarika were inseperable. For the one class that Anjali moved back to sit with me, she always had Sagarika in tow. I don’t mind. I quite like her, she’s soft spoken, calm, the exact opposite of Anjali, who is quite like the hurricane actually. Nikita is another girl who seems to be a little like me. I mean, I have spoken to her only once. But we really clicked.

The worst part about being the new girl is remembering all the names. I mean, its easy for all of them to remember my name, they just have to remember one name. I have to remember FORTY!

From what I can gather, its Nikita’s birthday soon and she’s throwing a big party. I hope I’m invited, but why would she call the new girl? She hardly knows me.

Anyway, the teacher’s here. Later.

25^th September 2000

Still no invitation. But that’s fine. Even if she doesn’t invite me, its okay, because if I was in her place, I wouldn’t have invited someone I didn’t know. Today Sagarika shifted her place to sit next to me. We’ve been having a blast the past couple of days. The other day, during Math class, we played Bingo. We kept our heads down and kept mumbling random numbers, everyone assumed that we were studying. It was so funny! Even the teacher fell for our little trick. Each time he would pass by, we would pretend to pour over our books and then get back to the game.

We had a hard time convincing everyone that we were, in reality, playing a game.

I just realized something funny about this class. The girls and the guys, they just don’t interact! Its sort of taboo. I asked Sagarika about it, and she too had no convincing answer. Just some phase the guys are going from, she had told me.  It apparently started when they moved to this grade. How weird is that? My old school was hundred times better.

Nikita and Anjali are the few girls who talk to the guys and there too, their conversation is limited to a couple of sentences at the maximum.

On another note, mum’s here finally. So things are settling in around the house too. Of course, she’ll keep shuttling between the two cities for some time, but we have more or less moved. Makes me kind of sad. I had hoped, that mum or dad would realize that they didn’t want to stay in the new city, but nothing of that sorts happened. Mum actually loves it here, so does dad.

I like it here, but I preferred it back there. Where everybody knew my name.

26^th September 2000

O-h-k-a-y!!!!! There is another new girl in class!!!!