Hey!
Sorry for the late update. I have got a eye infection. You guys could have got this update on 28th June but I needed to dally it as the doctor said not to do anything that includes to much “eye attention.” Again I’m so so so sorry for the late update.
Here:
I’ll tell you to read this chapter carefully as one of the events in this chapter will end the story. So read carefully.
Every life has one true-love snapshot. For Abhi, it came on a warm September night after a thunderstorm, when the boardwalk was spongy with water. She wore a yellow cotton dress (As shown in the montage) with a red Barrette in her hair. Abhi didn’t say much. He was so nervous he felt as if his tongue were glued to his teeth. They danced to the music of a big band, Long Legs Delaney and his Everglades Orchestra. He brought her a lemon fizz. She said she had to go before her parents got angry. But as she walked away, she turned and waved.
That was the snapshot. For the rest of his life, whenever he thought of Pragya, Abhi would see that moment, her waving over her shoulder, her dark hair falling over one eye and he would feel the same arterial burst of love.
That night he came and woke his older brother. He told him he met the girl he wanted to marry. His brother just groaned and said him to go to sleep.
Wrrrssssh. A wave broke on the beach. Abhi coughed up something he did not wanted to see. He spat it away.
Wrrrssssh. He used to think a lot about Pragya. Not so much now. Sohe was like a wound beneath an old bandage, and he had grown more used to the bandage.
Wrrrssssh.
What was shingles?
Wrrrssssh.
Sixteen minutes to live.
No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.
The end of Abhi’s story was touched by another seemingly innocent story, months earlier-a cloudy night when a young man arrived at Ruby Pier with three of his friends.
The young man, who’s name was Nicky, had just begun driving and was still not comfortable carrying a key chain. So he removed the single car key and put it in his jacket pocket, then tied the jacket around his waist.
For the next few hours, he and his friends rode all the fastest ride: The flying Falcon, the Splashdown, Freddy’s Free Fall, the Ghoster Coaster.
HANDS IN THE AIR! One of them yelled.
They threw their hands in the air.
Later, when it was dark, they returned to the car lot, exhausted and laughing, drinking beer from brown paper bags. Nicky reached into his jacket pocket. He fished around. He cursed.
The key was gone.
Fourteen minutes until his death. Abhi wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Out on the ocean, diamonds of sunlight danced on the water, and Abhi stared at their nimble movement. He had not been fight on his feet since the war.
But back at the Stardust Band Shell with Pragya – there Abhi had still been graceful. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to summon the song that brought them together, the one Judy Garland sang in the movie. It mixed in his head now with the cacophony of the crashing waves and children screaming on the rides.
“You made me love you-”
Whsssshhhh.
“-do it, I didn’t want to do I-”
Spllllaaaashhhhhh.
“-me love you-”
Eeeeeee!
“-time you knew it, and all the-”
Chhhhewisshhhh.
“-knew it….”
Abhi felt her hands on his shoulder. He squeezed his eyes tightly, to bring the memory closer.
12 minutes to live.
“Scuse me.”
A young girl, maybe eight years old, stood before him, blocking his sunlight. She had blonde curls and wore flip-flops and denim cut-off shorts and lime green T-shirt with a cartoon duck on the front. Aditi, he thought her name was. Aditi or Editi. She’d been here a lot this summer, although Abhi never saw a mother or father.
694 words.
Again I am so sorry.
It’s a short one and plus I didn’t update for a long time.
What could I do? My eye is getting better as well as I typed this hiding from everyone.
Is my mother gets to know she will not let me out of her sight.
I am sooooooo sorry.