'So, dear sleepy child,' said the teacher, her comment aimed obviously towards me. 'Would you be willing to tell me what the division algorithm is?' I'd heard that before, but I couldn't come to terms with my head so as to recall what it meant. 'No idea,' I said, realizing soon that it wasn't quite the time to be frank. 'Oh,' she retorted. 'This brilliant child here does not know about the division algorithm! Tell me kid, did you ever pass the 5th grade?' I didn't like the way her tone dripped with sarcasm. A lot of my classmates did though - some of them laughed. I wanted to answer back, but then I realized it was rhetoric. I surrendered. 'I'm really sorry ma'am. I wasn't paying attention... I have a headache.' I hoped she'd believe me. 'Okay, okay, you sit down,' she replied instantly. 'Make sure that doesn't happen again.' I sat down, nodding.

   I looked at my watch again. God, all of that and so much more had happened in only fifteen minutes! Was my watch even working? I remember I'd read about how Einstein once said, that the closer you get to light speed, the slower things move around you. If that were true, and I can only assume it was, I was travelling about a few kilometers slower than light speed. Maths was getting unbearable. I told the teacher that my head was about to burst, and excused myself so I could go to the medical room. And if you've ever been an over-pressurized, over-burdened student of a middle class family, or have known one, you'll know what they do when they excuse themselves to go outside.

   I walked down to the fields, the gentle drizzling of rain elating me. I sat down on the foyer stairs, thinking about what to do. Was I gonna go back to class after a while, back into that numerical hell? God, no. Going back to class was way out of the equation. I climbed up the stairs, onto the first floor of the foyer...

   

   What the brightest of minds that the school had produced didn't know, was that there were shafts attached to the foyer. And what the teachers with the highest IQs had never really cared about, was that those very shafts were used by the students to indulge in a rather unacceptable form of recreation - smoking.

   The shafts weren't my most frequented place - I'd hardly go there once or twice a month. Smoking wasn't a habit... it was more of an occasional energy drink. I got my pack from under the Control Room on the roof of the auditorium. Nobody cared enough to search for things under it, or maybe the cleaners were just lazy. I'd always wondered if I was right in assuming that the cleaners took cigarettes, but the number of cigarettes had noticeably decreased since the last time I'd seen it. I lit one up. The shaft was soon filled with smoke, and instead of feeling suffocated, I felt liberated - like I wanted to lose myself in the shafts; to disappear like the smoke; to vanish into thin air.

   I tried to make sense out of the smoke that rose from the cigarette, but all in vain. There was no definite shape, no specified direction - it just went wherever it felt like. Another reason why I liked cigarettes: it reminded me of freedom time and time again. It's as if the smoke was freed from the cigarette after it was burnt. I don't know how much time I spent pondering, but I do know this - sometime between being fascinated by smoke and relating it to liberty, I started thinking about her...

   I don't know when it happened... It just did. All I remember is looking at her... and staring, with my eyes wide open. I longed to see her everyday at school since then. She looked like a goddess, an offspring of Aphrodite. Her eyes, underlined with Kohl, were too expressive; too alluring for me to not look at whenever she was in my vicinity. Her hair was carefully tied into a pony most of the time, and I'd always wanted to smell them, but God hadn't been fair enough to give me a chance. I'd go crazy whenever she opened them, too. And her smile. God, she had the most infectious smile anyone could possiby have. When she laughed, she beamed. She glowed. And I wished I could have that look for myself. To look at her whenever I had the desire. To laugh when I felt like crying....

   I was sure that wasn't going to happen, though.

   On her birthday, I'd chosen to give her a gift anonymously. I slipped in a CD of Taylor Swift's Fearless into her bag just before school ended and hoped, silently, that'd she like it. The next day she came and told all of her friends that she loved it. I got the news from one of our mutual friends. I hadn't smiled like that in months, years maybe. I had never felt so genuinely happy.

   After a few weeks, this close friend of mine, who also happened to be one of hers, told me something I prayed wasn't true: She liked someone else. 'How much?' was all I'd managed to speak, fighting all the emotion that was stuck in my throat; holding back all the tears that were now struggling to run down my face.

   He shook his head.

   And then I was sitting in a shaft, smoking a cigarette with slow, long drags, and wondering, just what the fuck had happened to me?

   In introspect, I'd never thought of myself as a guy who'd obsess over some girl, and be enough of a wimp to not even tell her about it. In retrospect, how I could feel for someone so much, was something that I was yet to discover. I almost cried when I got to know that she liked someone else. Ha! Felt so incredibly stupid then. Not to mention ridiculous. It felt insane, yet somehow innocent. I realized that it was just another one of those phases that I had to go through in life; another change of trains before I reached my destination. Of course I'd take my  own sweet time to move on. My face had a childlike smile pasted on it, and I knew... she was just another one of them. Just another star shining in the sky. Not the sun.

   I stubbed out the cigarette, and the bell rang, marking the end of another period. I realized I hadn't heard the bell ring for the beginning of the second Maths period. Gosh, I must've been thinking real hard. I really was: I'd finally decided that she just wasn't worth all the time I had wasted on her; that it was time to move on.

   And come to think of it, all of that happened in just another maths class.

                                                         -x-x-x-

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of pure fiction.

It's been over a goddamned month and I haven't had the time to write. Screw you Xth Grade! You're making me sad, and angry, and dejected, and pissed - all at the same time. I didn't even know I could feel all of that at one time. It sucks. It' a downward spiral - and goddammit I don't care if the circles are concentric!

It's literally impossible for me to be paying attention in class all the time. Why should I anyway? Geography? Should I fucking care if the winds are blowing from south to north or east to west? Should I care if there's bhangar nodules in black alluvial soil? I'm sorry, I have tried. And I have failed - repeatedly. Over and over again.

My parents keep telling me not to waste this time, these years. They say it can either make you or break you. I say I've been broken way before all of it even started. But that doesn't matter - I'll sacrifice a little. After all, if you don't make sacrifices, you'll never be a true man. Not to me atleast. All this stuff about being an engineer and studying science and scoring marks and doing this and doing that is eventually gonna make me crazy. They're gonna have to move me. The men in white coats will take me away.

And, my guitar. It just lies there - the dust feeding on it, on it's strings. Nobody can see it, but I do. It cries, wanting to be held, to be felt. And I? I drown myself in my books.