Chapter 4 The Crush and the Crash

If silence had a color, Ananya often imagined it as deep violet - rich, still, bruised at the edges. That was how it felt in the corridors of Anand Academy. A thousand murmurs floated like perfume from expensive bodies and manicured lips. But none of them were for her. Until that day.

It began with a glance.

Aarav Kapoor - golden boy, cricket captain, whose parents owned half the city - passed her by near the library. His hair curled perfectly around his temples, and his smile could split sunlight. Ananya's heart stuttered the way a worn-out fan hiccups on power. His shoulder brushed past hers lightly - an accident, she told herself - but her breath caught and clung like mist on glass.

She went home that evening with her fingers trembling, hugging her bag like it held the universe. And in a way, it did.

Her diary was hidden beneath a false bottom - blue leather, pages edged with gold ink. In it, she wrote things she'd never say aloud. Not to her mother. Not even to herself.

He walked past me today. I swear, he looked at me. Not through me, not around me - but at me. Maybe he saw something. Maybe he... no. That's ridiculous. But God, if he ever touched my hand... would I even be able to breathe?

She pressed the pages to her chest. This was her haven - a space where desire was not shameful, where her thighs weren't too wide, where her voice wasn't lost behind louder girls and tighter skirts. Her fantasies were soft, slow, almost sacred.

She imagined Aarav leaning close to whisper her name, not with mockery, but curiosity. What would his fingers feel like tangled in her braid? Would his lips taste like mint and rebellion?

The very thought made her toes curl in her Kolhapuri flats.

But in the real world, the one painted in shades of cruelty and caste and class, she remained invisible. Until her diary fell out of her bag.

It happened on a Thursday. She had just finished scribbling a poem about Aarav in the last few minutes of English class. She was so absorbed, she didn't notice her bag gaping open as she stood up.

Mira, always watchful, always vicious, swooped in like a hawk.

"What's this?" she sneered, flipping open the diary.

"No!" Ananya lunged, but the word came out cracked and low.

Aarav's friends gathered like crows around roadkill.

"Let's see what our little 'scholar girl' dreams about," one said, loud enough to hush the room.

Then came the reading.

"If he ever said my name, I'd melt into the floor. His voice is honey poured over thunder. If only he could see me - not the outside me, but the real me, the one with fire in her chest and poems in her blood..."

Laughter exploded. It was sharp, cruel, endless.

Ananya stood frozen. Her breath wouldn't come. Her throat felt like glass shards pressed too tightly together.

But then - then she saw Aarav's face.

He wasn't laughing.

He looked... uncomfortable. Embarrassed. Not for her, but of her.

That stung worse than the mockery.

Mira kept reading, mimicking her voice in a cruel sing-song. Each word became a blade. Her private longings, her sacred space - desecrated.

And Aarav said nothing.

Not one word.

Something broke inside her, not like glass, but like bone - slowly, painfully, permanently.

She ran. Out of the room, out of the school building, through the gate. The sun slapped her cheeks, and her tears clung to her jawline, warm and humiliated.

She didn't stop running until she reached the alley near the government housing block.

There, she collapsed against the wall and sobbed. Big, ugly sobs. Her chest heaved. She wanted to scream, scratch her skin raw, disappear into dust.

And then, she heard it.

A soft thud. Footsteps.

She looked up, startled, ready to snarl at whoever dared follow.

But it was Aarav.

Leaning casually against the brick wall, thumbs hooked into his pockets. His eyes - so unreadable, dark like the monsoon sky before it breaks.

"You shouldn't have read it," she hissed, wiping her face.

"I didn't," he said simply.

She blinked.

"They did. I was outside. Heard enough to know it wasn't funny."

That wasn't what she expected. Sympathy? From Aarav? The boy who smoked behind the chemistry lab and wore his uniform like a protest?

"You think I'm pathetic," she muttered.

"No," he replied. "I think you're brave. You still believe people like Aarav Kapoor are worth writing about."

She looked at him then - really looked. His left sleeve was frayed. His eyes were older than his face. There was a scar on his wrist she hadn't noticed before.

"Why are you here?" she whispered.

Aarav didn't answer immediately. He looked away, as if chasing thoughts down a dark tunnel.

"Once, a girl wrote about me too," he said at last. "In another school. It didn't end well."

Something in his voice - low, almost too low - sent a shiver up her spine.

"What happened?"

"She trusted me. I didn't stop the others when they used her diary. It destroyed her. She moved away."

His jaw clenched.

"I see her in you."

Silence stretched between them, not empty, but thick with tension and something else - understanding... and something more dangerous.

"You're not invisible," Aarav said, stepping closer. His voice was velvet laced with smoke. "They just don't know how to see you."

She inhaled sharply. He was inches away now. Her pulse pounded.

For a moment, she felt beautiful - not because of her skin or weight or clothes - but because of how he looked at her. Like she was fire.

And she didn't know what scared her more - that he saw her, or that she wanted him to.