Short stories, by memory.

Chicken moves over to take the currently vacant lot in front of me. I looked up from my homework to be greeted with a one of his trademark non-verbal cues; the usual toothless, sincere grin he makes when he’s about to start conversation. I smiled back in recognition.

“So, how’re things going with your prom date?”

I gave a nonchalant shrug. Sensing my hesitation, he decides to switch the topic and directed the focus towards himself. I appreciated his unspoken word of understanding, and listened intently as he gave update on how the pairings from previous student-couple shippings were doing at the time.

I took a glance to the back of the class where old soul Lion could be seen taking a light nap in his own territory, and Chicken’s eyes followed. At the time, sheer curiosity had gotten the better of me…

“So how are things between Rae and Lion?”

Chicken barely shook his head in slow motion before fiddling with a key chain around my pencil case.

“I guess that Rae realized,”

“Huh?”

It was then and there; when I had too begun to realize how so much and so little can change within such a short span of time.

This particular scene took place in the library where I normally hung out with Potato during our shared empty class slots. I still remembered flipping through the pages of a green covered booklet which consisted of brain diagrams and names of meanings of structures albeit I also remembered very clearly and am therefore very sure, that nothing had sieved through the depths of my long term memory. What cerebellum? Hypothalamus? Some hormone producing prefecture perhaps, only God knows.

Anyway, Potato had already known beforehand to not even try and beat the very much dreaded afternoon slump. Doing her signature move, she managed to plug in her headset by using her hair as a camouflaging curtain and simply pretended to sleep. Within her ear shot, it was music flowing into one ear and coming out from the other. And that also meant that I had to raise my voice to talk to her, bearing in mind that we were in the library.

That day, however, I was in the mood to talk about things; things concerning our circle of Turban friends. She then grabbed a pencil and began doodling at my past year papers stash. It was a habit of hers as she was never comfortable with looking at people in the eye while talking.

“Do you find that the people in Turban are somewhat similar to one another?”

Potato continued to doodle without giving a response. It took me a while to realize that she was doodling her responses onto the fore-edge of the past year paper stash.

“I don’t know,”

I continued on.

“I find that our kind of people really don’t express our concerns over something until if it’s requested for,” More doodling sounds persisted. “Especially people like Kiwi and Tomato,”

Potato remained silent, but her gaze never shift from the fore-edge, for which she would have dedicated so much of her time to by now. I can’t remember the exact details of exactly how the conversation took on from there; but I felt like I was having an open soliloquy as I continued to shift from one member to another of the Turban clan only to be synchronized with the continuous rattling of Potato’s pencil to the fore-edge.

By the time I finished, Potato had also stopped her doodling. My eyes slowly lingered across the body of the past year question booklet’s very thick fore-edge which read countless short responses, out of which the most memorable was:

“._.”

I looked up to a starry night sky, one of those you wouldn’t believe to be real even if you had seen them with your very own eyes. With everyone having to camp out on sheets of pure blue and orange canvas, I’ve never felt so connected to the surrounding nature; given the unusual nature of my surroundings during the time. Nevertheless it was a breezy, starry night; and I had never felt so consumed by wanderlust as opposed to the very day when I have set out for an outdoor camp with a troop full of people outside family relations, for the first time.  

Four-eyes was gazing out in the same direction, but with a look suggesting a different nature of wonder. He seemed isolated from everyone else. I approached him with the intention of getting him to guard my jacket to bring him back to earth. He shoved the yellow hoodie over his shoulder and continued to stone.

“Do you miss home?”

“My mum. She would be home alone until I’m back,”

“Hmm…” I tried to follow his gaze but eventually started to seek out something which caught more of my attention. All was still.

“I’ve never seen so many stars. Never knew what the city had hidden from us all this while, I guess we do share the same piece of sky, huh?”

Four-eyes smiled.