New friends in basement

With her heart in her mouth, she walked in her class and though nervous, her strides were confident and sure. She had mastered the art of ‘fake it till you make it’ long before. She wasn’t nervous to attend the class, she did a lot of times, but the problem today was that she had to start a conversation.

Gulping down the saliva that gathered in her mouth, she looked at all the empty desks she could sit on. She was a first-bencher by heart but first-benchers don’t talk in classes so she chose the bench on the third row. Not first, nor last, just right in middle.
As she sat down, she saw a girl with beautiful black curls and a huge backpack sitting down next to her.

She was on the chubbier side of the scale with eyes as brilliant as diamonds. Her black eyes seemed to shine and her chocolate skin was so perfect, she seemed to glow.

Now, this is a woman of intimidating beauty.

She took a deep breath and gathered enough courage to greet her with a hello and a smile that didn’t look like a weird stretch of yoga on her face.

“Hello” smiled Shreya.

“Hi!” smiled her partner, showing her brilliant white teeth. Was there anything that wasn’t brilliant or shining on her?

“You have a beautiful smile,” Shreya thought aloud.

“Thanks. Your smile is very cute though, wants to make me smile too, especially the little rabbit teeth you have”

She smiled wider as she thought, Fake it till you make it does work. Her smile looked genuine, yay!

‘Of course, it does, you’ve been faking it from… your birth, was it?’, piped in her snarky and rude subconscious who Shreya ignored promptly.

They introduced themselves officially, both of them obviously knew each other’s names but now they knew that the other one knew their name too.

Shreya hadn’t noticed how beautiful Bharti was until she had to force herself to talk to her but now that she had, she wanted to know her skincare because damn! Her skin was on fire!

The professor – a balding old man – entered just then and started his lecture. He didn’t even bother wishing them and droned on about ‘Management in business’

The whole classroom, of about 50 people, was chatting and laughing, and some were even using their phones. The buzzing made Shreya scoff in distaste, the man who was apparently teaching them management didn’t even know how to manage his class. Pathetic!

“Yes, but I wouldn’t blame this man. He tried managing this set of students, but he soon gave up when he realized all the rest of the teachers had given up too1” said Harsha.

“This is why I don’t like attending classes. There’s nothing to learn, just mindless banter”

“It is a great hangout place, Shreya”, pointed out Harsha.

“Maybe”, she shrugged and turned her attention back to the board.

In a very mock-hurt tone, Harsha placed a hand on her chest, wounded and said, “What? You don’t believe me?”

Shreya didn’t know what she could answer to that. She didn’t like it? She hadn’t experienced it? She didn’t have friends to hang out with? Before she could answer though, Harsha winked, “Meet me in the interval and you’ll know”

When the clock struck 12, they gathered their bags and left for lunch. Shreya’s usual ‘go-to’ was the washroom where she’d sit for 90 minutes drinking water, clicking selfies and waiting for the classes to start again.

But today, she was going to the cafeteria with Harsha. She was going to place full of people who were laughing and smiling and cracking jokes. She wanted to be one of them, but she never thought anyone would want to be with her.

She shook her head as she pushed away all her little insecurities and forcing a smile on her face, turned to her right and asked, “So what is it that I’ll know?”

“Patience, girl, patience. You’ll know when you see it”

She puffed up her cheeks and tagged behind her, trying to stomp her foot while not looking like a complete fool.

She failed, of course.

But a bigger ‘fool’ moment happened when she realized they weren’t going to the cafeteria but somewhere entirely else, they were going to the basement parking – where people didn’t really park.

The parking lot was a huge dimly-lit place where 6 cars were parked in a circle. On each car lied pizzas, colas, chips, desserts and humans. There were about five of them, three guys and two girls.

As they walked towards them, Harsha called, “Hey guys!” while a confused and nervous Shreya tried giving polite smiles to their shouts of hellos.

Harsha jumped and sat on the empty car front, pulling Shreya along and then the introductions started.

“Guys, this is Shreya, who you obviously know,” said Harsha. Shreya scrunched her brows at that, how would they know her?

“And Shreya, this is” Harsha paused and turned towards her wanting to point them out for her.

“Amy,” said Harsha as she pointed to a skinny girl with fire red hair and pretty freckles on her nose.

“Dev” she pointed to a huge tall guy with a cute round face and brown messy curls.

“Ritika” a fair and curvy girl with hazel eyes who looked like she could rock any outfit.

“Manish and Aman – they look like they are twins but they are not, they are just huge fitness freaks”, she said as she pointed at two guys who looked like they lived in a gym. They had muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. They had wavy golden hair and a jawline so sharp you could cut paper with it.

“Hey, Shreya! I follow you on Instagram and I love your style. I love your pictures. I love you”, gushed Amy, the skinny one.

“Thank you so much”, replied Shreya with a huge smile but a little shy in her eyes.

Awkward was in the air, a new person had joined their group who seemingly didn’t have a lot in social skills. Harsha clapped her hands loudly and said, “She doesn’t have a pizza, so let’s each give her slice and start the game”

Shreya listened attentively as she laid out all the rules.

The six of them played this game regularly – with an occasional extra. Whatever food of choice, they’d play a round of Truth and Dares. With pizza they played six rounds for six slices– If you pass a round, you eat a slice; if you don’t, you give away your slice.

With an exciting smile on his lips, Dev said, “I’ll start. Not to worry Shreya, we won’t be too hard on you. Truth”

“He always chooses truth, always. That should be against the rules”, whined Manish as he pointed a finger on the huge tall man.

Ignoring him, Ritka leaned forward and asked, “When you said truth, what was the one thing you didn’t want us to ask you?”

Dev glared at her and gave away a slice of his pizza. With a triumphant smile on her face, Ritika bit on ‘her’ slice of pizza.

“Shreya, your turn”, said Harsha and asked, “Truth or dare?”

“Truth”

“Are you single?”, shot Amy at once, hardly able to contain her excitement in her little body.

“Lame”, groaned the four of them while Shreya answered, “No” and bit on her slice of pizza.

“Who?” asked Amy again.

“One question only” replied Shreya cheekily.

Amy groaned while the rest of them laughed.

Though she felt a little awkward when she came, she was feeling a lot more comfortable now. She knew their little secrets, had seen them do funny dares, had even danced on a random tune once and laughed with them.

She felt good, happy, free. She couldn't believe she had found new friends in the basement.

Never knew socializing could be this fun, she thought as another question was shot at her.

“Who?”, asked Amy, positively bouncing on her heels.