Catherine Part 1

Posted by Soumya Mukherjee at 12:03 PM On to the Previous Post

I see her. Well, not in the way you'd imagine. But I see her. I say this while telling you that I see her what she does. An identity that she hides.

I mix words. My sentences are short, but my thoughts are messy and long. Once I saw Catherine bring a fruit salad to campus - lots of it - in her lunch box. She ate it very quickly, in a matter of seconds. She sits alone, she is charming but she still does that, and manages to hide from everyone else. She is strong. I have seen her move a car once it was a bit dreamy, to be honest.

There used to be a boy we liked. Catherine used to love her I think. 

But that boy stopped coming to school a few weeks after Catherine arrived. We used to say 'Suraj just disappeared!' and it did feel like it.

Suraj and Catherine were never seen together, though. Suraj was a friendly guy and was an excellent runner. He'd run with the wind, no sweat wasted. And he never tired out. 

I mix observations too sometimes, my bad.

 But I remember this one cloudy day when we were practising a 100m sprint in school. The track was not good. It was slippery to be very honest. One was sure to fall if they ran at their usual best speed. 

Four boys tried a run. Everyone else fell but Suraj did not. 

One thing really caught my eye: Suraj ran faster that day and it was a little cinematic to watch him do that.

My mind confuses slightly this time, but it felt as if he was trying to keep slow and he was failing. It was as if he was trying to avoid being seen to run this way.

Why would he feel that? 

It's fine right if others watch the star athletes do well in school?

Suraj disappeared the next day. It's been a year since then. And now Catherine, it seems to me that she is trying to avoid being seen too.

I read fiction a lot. I have grown up with the whims of Stephen King's characters. I am just experiencing something similar whenever I come to school. And I never skip my school days you see.

Catherine, why are you such a private person? Is someone watching you?

Is someone watching, us?

<to be continued>