Chapter 1

I don’t know if it was infatuation that had engulfed me, or stupidity. It was intense and whatever it was, it was surging in me, like it was inside my veins, flowing along with the blood. A feeling. It was a mix of happiness and haziness, everything looking dreamy and unrealistic.

While I looked at her, a series of emotions surged through me. Mostly nervousness. A little anticipation. I was an excited mess, to tell you the truth.

My brother Jack came along and looked where I was looking. “So a girl got you staring huh? I’ll not stop you but be careful, I’m not good at heartbreaks.”

-“Right, come in and spoil all her aura, good job Jack, good job”, I said, not breaking contact from her.

She looked like one of those Greek Goddesses from the video games. It was almost like a halo hung above her head and the back of her eyes shined gold. She was real, and had her flaws, imperfectly cute eyes, freckles at the extreme corner of the cheek, the normal teen girl I could imagine. But I was stuck. Struck by something in her that I couldn’t completely place a finger on. She hadn’t seen me yet. But I looked on, trying to find out more about her just by looking, all little details, everything I could.

Converse sneakers, Nike socks, a small backpack which had peace logos and hearts stitched on, All-Star written at the top in blue of a bright pink background. She was the average teen, according to Jack, but I didn’t care. She caught my attention.

Soon, she walked away with her friends, giggling as they walked towards the end of the alley and turned right, and disappeared from sight. I sighed and looked away to see a bemused Jack looking at me and smiling,

“Woohoo our boy’s in love! I can smell it from this far away, there’s nothing else to describe it. You’re in love buddy, you’re in love. Little boy Nate has fallen in love!”

-“Uh shut up Jack”, I said as I gave him a little push and walked the way home, smiling from the inside. Jack caught up with me and we walked the way home, him pulling my leg over and over and I, being the good guy, defending myself over it. Jack was the kind of guy who would tease you about absolutely anything and forget about it as if nothing had really happened .

But I guess it is true. My heart was beating at the speed of a train just looking at her. By the time we got home, it had started raining and the bright daylight was replaced by a greenish-grey gloomy sky. Weather changes mood really quick, indeed.

The rest of the day went by boring and normal, like all days. The same old dinner, chores and football in the backyard. Me and Jack lived alone in our house. Both of us were in our teens, him an year older than I was, studying in the same high school and living in a good house with a huge backyard while our parents were held back in Delaware, because our dad couldn’t move as his work never allowed him to. Finding work outside Delaware for dad was a huge task, and a very difficult one too, so he left that effort and got us this place here in Brooklyn.

Everything was going perfect until today. When I saw her. My mind was thinking about her all the time. She was stuck there, the photograph sealed and embedded on the front page of the brain magazine, the back of her head, her dark-brown staring me down.

She was mesmerising on different levels. I didn’t even know her name yet, but I knew that she wasn’t leaving my mind easily, or for long. Jack forgot about the girl at the park by next morning and went on with his normal chores, while I was still in this feeling of bliss. Maybe it was the rain and the grey sky that cooled down jack from his mode of trying to pull my leg, but it certainly didn’t change my state of being lost.

It was two days later that I saw her again, near the university in the café, drinking coffee alone and reading a book. I looked at her for a while and the feeling of going down a roller-coaster rushed in. I kept looking, as she read her book and sipped on her coffee and soon walked out the café, her attention still on the book she was reading. I saw her walk to the high street leading to the subway station and then she disappeared in the crowd, a diamond hiding in a pile of coal.

I hit myself on the head to snap myself out of my staring and walked on to college. This isn’t going to work this way. I don’t want to just keep watching her all my life. Next time I see her, I’m going to talk to her. I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but yes, somehow.

I kept thinking about how I was going to pull it off all day. I couldn’t pay attention to class at all, I was so distracted. I kept imagining different scenarios where I was talking to her and things were going great and we lived happily ever after, but those were just dreams, and I had to get over them to the real life and actually go and talk to her.

It took me days to plan the whole affair and how I would do it, how and when. It was like I was planning to steal the declaration of independence, like Cage had back in National Treasure. Well this was a bit trickier than that. So after days and days of walking to college and looking at her near the café, until she disappeared into the subway station, I finally gathered the courage to go and talk to her.

I had to stop myself twice to get over the twitching feeling in my hands and in the stomach, like I’m going up a roller-coaster that never goes down.

I was about to open the glass door of the café it opened by itself and I fell down in a crash. In all my thinking I didn’t read the “Automatic Door” hoarding outside. I got myself back up on my feet and slowly started walking to the table at the far end where she sat, the back of her head facing me, much like the first time I saw her.

As I neared closer, she suddenly got up with her coffee and turned around, bumping into me in this process, and dropping her coffee on my shirt.

“God, I’m so sorry, I just realized I had to leave and.. Hey wait, it’s you, the one who’s been watching me for days.”

I felt the burn from the hot coffee on my shirt but I stood dumbfounded as she spoke to me. I had no idea what to say, what to do, how to react.

She continued “I’ll get you some tissues and help you clean up first, this must burn as hell.”, and as she said this, she turned around and picked up a tissue from the table and handed it to me. I stood there and didn’t say a word, and just looked. After two minutes, I managed to utter a nervous and stammered thank you. She looked at me again in a little confusion, then smiled and walked away. My eyes followed her as she walked towards the door of the cafe.

She turned around as she was leaving and said, “I guess I know why you were watching me the last few days then. ”

People are trained here. Everyday. For years. Since their childhood, they're shown their goal. "That's where you have to be.", all the teachers say. They train them day and night, like military soldiers preparing for war.

The parents support the cause of the teachers and the society. The society defines all of it. It's funny why that is so, because the society is generally the medium of most miscommunication and bad blood. But that's the way it is.

There is no "other" place. The goal is all there is. And prepare for it is all they have to do. Don't do that, and you live in poverty and shame, in disgrace, again from the society.

The society does many things to everyone. Not all good, I daresay, but a lot of things, bad and good alike.

"The sine inverse function is nothing but an angle, in fact the smallest angle that has a given value as its sine." The teachers spoke to the children in one monotonous voice, explaining different types of things in their class, and the children noting it down and looking around to see if they're the only ones struggling to keep up. The ones who didn't know anything about what is taught inside the classroom looked dreamily at the teacher and wrote down the notes as if it was some gibberish that they were told to write. The ones who did understand, however, weren't much happier. There's always more to learn, all of them were taught. You can never be perfect, they were told. There's always a mistake you've made. What you do is not always the right way. Different is wrong. Different is a problem. They were taught that if you choose different, you won't get credit for what you do, even if you do it right. Do it as the teacher does, or don't do it at all.

Injured warriors fight this war for perfection, and those who survive are successful, and those who don't, outlawed. Fools. They don't matter anymore. They might as well not exist and nothing would change due to their non existence.

It's funny how most great minds of the world were ridiculed by the society at one point of their lives. They were told that they were not only different, their ideas were preposterous. They could be nothing in their lives other than useless, poor thinkers. The society rubbed on the faces the fact that they were conceptually flawed, and crazy, even. Believe me, half of the greatest thinkers of this world currently live in mental asylums.

The man who proposed the idea of hand washing was sent to a mental asylum. The man who proposed the theory of relativity later in his life, was called hopeless in his school days. The man who freed a country with non violent ethics and a system of respect and equality was thrown out of a train and was kept in jail for more than half his life. The man who ended the spell of apartheid in the country with the strongest constitution of the world was kept in jail for 30 long years because he chose to be different. It is said that the man who made fire was isolated from his clan because everyone thought he was crazy for rubbing sticks together.

Everyone who did something that the world can't live without now, was ridiculed by the people of the educated society, the normal crowd.

If thinking about innovation was not important, then we'd still be living in caves, rubbing sticks together wondering why you see a spark once in a while.