6

"It grieves me to think there are people misunderstanding my heart on an issue.”

~♡~

I didn’t know what was wrong with him. He seemed completely fine when I talked to him last night. I was happy that things were going fine between us but he threw me out of his house in the morning.

I didn’t know if he even felt the need to help me when I fell. I thought he’d try to be a little more gentle and caring. I don’t know why he’s being like so mean again.

I decided to not go to school because I was going tired of all that was going on in my life. Moreover, I may have to face Parker, which I don’t want to do.

“You’re not going to school, sweetie?” My mom asked me when she saw me sitting in our backyard.

“No. I’m tired mom,” I said her.

She came to me and sat beside me. “You want to talk about it, Chloe?”

I looked up at her and smiled. “How did you know I need to share it?”

“I’m your mother, sweetie.” She said and smiled back.

I chuckled and took her hand. “I’ve been having a bad time these days, mom. And something really bad happened to me last night.”

“What is it?” She asked, worried, as she clasped my hand in hers.

I slowly pulled the long sleeve of my shirt and showed my injured hand. She gasped with shock and took my hand in hers to see it.

“Oh, my god. What happened to your hand?”

I ended up telling her everything that happened from yesterday till today morning. Initially, she was happy that Brett took care of me when I needed him. But eventually, anger built up in herself when I told her what happened today morning. I didn’t tell her that Parker did this to me. I just told her that I was going hurt while coming back home.

“I think I need to talk with him.” She said. “He should have stayed with you when he knew that he’s hurt you.”

“No, mom,” I said. “It’s not his fault. I stayed with him the entire night and he’s been really good to me. He took very good care of me. And I think he just needed some space today. I don’t want you to talk to him about it. If anything, just thank him that he took care of me last night.”

She nodded. “I’ll not talk to him if you don’t want me to. I just don’t want you to have troubles in your friendship. I want you to stay together.”

“I know,” I said.

Leaving the conversation at that, we moved on with our day. After a little while, I heard our doorbell ring. My mom was not home, so I had to get the door. Moreover, she said she’d not be here until late so I wonder who it is.

When I opened the door, Brett already had his hand fisted and hanging in the air, almost about to knock it again. When he saw me, he brought his hand down and shoved it into his pocket.

“Can I come in?” He asked when he found me rooted in my place.

“Yes, of course,” I said and moved back to make space for him. When he walked past me into my house, I locked the door behind me.

“I wanted to know if we could start working on that history assignment.” He said. “It’s a lot of work and we haven’t decided about anything yet.”

“Right,” I said. “I thought of the project and have a few ideas regarding it. We could start on it now.”

“Yea..”

“My stuff is in my room, so we better do it there. Wait for me in my room while I get something for us to eat.”

He nodded and started walking.

I said, “Take the stairs and turn right. Left side-”

“-First room with a pink striped door.” He completed it for me and the edge of his lips twitched.

“Yea.,” I said and nodded. He disappeared upstairs and the only sound that resonated was his fading footsteps.

I sighed and went into the kitchen to fetch some popcorn and a cranberry juice for us both. From what I remember, Brett and I always loved to have Cranny berry juice together. I just hope his preferences didn’t change.

When I went to my room with a tray full of food to eat, Brett was standing by my window, looking at the pictures of me. There were a few pictures of my mother, and a few when I was a kid and a few with him. I wonder if he remembers any of them.

Once we settled down, we started discussing the projects.

“So, what have you thought about the project?” He asked.

“Well, for urbanisation, I thought it would be great if we take something that no one has covered or most definitely wouldn’t have thought of. I thought we can take up the societies of young authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We can show the progress of the stories, from oration to manuscripts, and plays too well-established novels.”

“It’s a good idea.” He said. “But how do you want to portray the terms of progress in this?”

“I wanted to show a picture of how the idea of storytelling began. It started in different parts of the world and established the commonalities of views in various segments. Stories were created as a product of imagination and vast knowledge. People liked stories because they always had a possible happy ending. It portrayed virtuous leads and ideal societies. With such different roots, stories evolved and today, we’ve come this far in literature because of the introduction of novels.”

“That’s correct,” Brett said. “But don’t you think it would be a tiring task for us to clear the questions that would arise in terms of the subject? Our focus would be diverted to the literature of various languages, and that is far from concerning our project’s major requirements.”

“True,” I said. “But we don’t have to indulge ourselves in the various dialects. We can surely avoid certain points and aspects that would focus on literature and language. We’ll show how novels or writing had become a major source of communication between various trading societies and businessmen. Trade expansions have been carried to various parts of the world through the different art forms and prints by the local men. That is a direct result of progress.”

He nodded. “Right.” He rubbed his face. “My idea was similar to yours. But, I guess yours is perfect for our assignment.”

“I’d like to hear what you thought.”

“Well,” he started. “Mine is closely related to yours, but I thought of entirely a different segment. What you included was writing, showing the prowess of the local men, but in my terms, I wanted to project the idea of progress through print culture.”

“That’s interesting.”

“We can discuss how the written evidence could be portrayed in the form of many scripts, letters, wall arts and paintings. With the development in various sciences, new inventions introduced to us different forms of literature, as in the opera, theatres, cinemas and of course, lyrical ballads and plays.”

“I think I have a better idea,” I said. “It would be perfect if we could mingle these two segments to show the product.”

“You want to interlink the novels and printing cultures?”

“Yes,” I said. “We can project the impact of the spread of technology and how social life and cultures changed with the coming of stories and print culture.”

“And how these two industries were interlinked, just like trade, and how this allowed employment and thus, leading to urbanisation of the locales,” Brett said.

“Yes,” I said.

We kept talking and discussing the projects until it was almost 9. We didn’t realise we had so many strikingly different views and how we even managed to find the similarities in our ideas. We noted down the points that were important and promised to put in the effort to make this work.

But the problem arose when we had a clash of how we’re going to present it.

“I still think it would be better if we write it, Chloe.” He said. “Almost everyone is going to type the text and submit and since our ideas are unique, our project would look impressive if we can write the whole thing.”

“I.. I can’t,” I said.

I can’t tell him why I couldn’t write. I can’t let him know the reason for my failures. He’d judge me.

“Why?” He said. “Why don’t you just write a few pages. I’m sure it’s not going to take a lot of time.”

“My.. my style of writing... It’s not impressive..” I said.

He looked at me for a while. Then he pulled out a piece of paper. “Write something on this paper. I’m sure your handwriting wouldn’t be that bad.”

~♡~

Brett.

I don’t understand why she’s not confident about her handwriting. I’m sure the matter is something else because we have been arguing over this matter for the past fifteen minutes. In our course of the discussion, she hasn’t been this insistent. But now, she’s almost against my idea of writing it. It’s not like I don’t value her opinion but she’s hiding something from me.

And I need to know why she is hell-bent on not writing the thing. What is wrong in it?

When I forced her, she pulled out a piece of paper and wrote whatever I narrated her. When I saw her paper, it was like I hardly understood anything she wrote. Her handwriting was a mess and she was often confused with certain alphabets.

Instead of d, she wrote b and for certain spelling that was similar to others, she ended up writing them. Her frequency was inaccurate and her words ended up in different patterns. I knew she was thinking that I’d judge her so I didn’t respond.

I simply said that we can talk about it tomorrow, to which she agreed. I carefully took the paper in my pockets and headed out.

While leaving, she asked me to inform her mother that she will be going to sleep and will skip dinner for now. I agreed and went down. I found her mother in the kitchen.

“Hello, Mrs.Morgan,” I called her. “Can I have a minute with you?”

She smiled. “Of course, Brett. But where is Chloe?”

“She said she’d go to bed now. She’s not hungry.”

“Oh.,” she said. “What is it that you wanted to talk about?”

I showed her the piece of paper where Chloe wrote. Mrs.Morgan frowned when she saw it but when I informed her about the whole thing, she nodded as if she understood.

“I don’t know why Chloe is doing this, Mrs.Morgan,” I said. “She will be going to university next year and this careless behaviour of hers wouldn’t take her anywhere. She should at least try to improve her writing. She can’t be this irresponsible.”

“Brett,” she said. “It’s not that she’s not trying to improve. You don’t know what she’s suffering from.”

“I want to know it, Mrs.Morgan,” I said. “Why is Chloe being like this? Her grades have fallen and she’s almost careless about it. It’s like she is not even worried about her life.”

“Don’t speak whatever comes to your mouth, Brett.” She said. “You don’t know how hard my daughter works and how broken she is right now. She is always worried about her career and despite working so hard, she never gets good grades. But she is trying her best. So don’t ever judge her.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs.Morgan,” I said. “But tell me what the problem is.”

She had a look on her face that clearly said she was in an inner battle with herself. But anyway, she gave up, “She’s dyslexic.”