“Dear Diary,
I never had a friend like her before, if I can call her a friend, that is. I never had a friend, period. At least not one who would try to understand and empathize with me like she did or dare to challenge my hitherto unchallenged courses of atrocities, anyway. I have countless yes-men and flatterers all around me, some wannabe boyfriends too thanks to my father’s elevated social position but not a single genuine soul like her to keep me tethered to the right path.
We started on a very different note as two girls from so very different social strata normally would. She treated me like the wealthy brat I am and I deemed her and her opinion unworthy of consideration. Life rolled smoothly until we were at loggerheads one fine day at a college mate’s birthday party.
Can’t say I remember the day too well but I can definitely remember how it started. You see that day I had had a few too many drinks to remember the chain of events very clearly. But I think some stupid first year was taking photos and he stepped back right onto the hem of my dress, tripped and spilled my drink all over me. I was apoplectic with unnatural rage. I held the scum by his collar and tried slapping him while my friends devotedly threw abuses at him for being such a slob. Before my slap could connect, however, he was wrenched from my grasp and a firm grip met my upraised wrist. The next thing I knew was being doused in ice cold water from the nearby champagne bucket and my cheek stinging with a resounding slap. That got my attention all right as everything snapped back into focus. There she was, face screwed up in rage, readying herself for another assault on me. The sheer impossibility and humiliation of the situation got to me after I was half dragged half pushed out of the party by my peers while she was engulfed by a very different crowd, some cheering her courage and others thumping her back for showing the prodigal brat her place. On my way back from the mayhem, through the haze of anger that burned me from inside out, I gleaned from the babble of conversation around me that the first year I assaulted was her cousin brother.
After a restless sleep over the night’s events my better self grudgingly acknowledged that I could probably forgive her for defending her brother and that it was not very decent of me to assault him either. What was I even thinking! The sleep also did something else. It kindled in me an interest about her. I suddenly wanted to know her better.
It took me more than 6 months of reforming my attitude, avoiding my usual crew and following her daily routine to finally get her to talk to me without a snide comment or negative remark. And I realised to my delight that I had transformed into someone I barely recognized. I was no longer shunned by my classmates and juniors and much to my abject dislike, my circle of stooges grew too large to handle, for stooges they were, shimmying up to me with requests for favors hiding up their sleeves. Well, becoming approachable to commoners has it’s disadvantages after all. But if it got me to know her a little better, it was worth it. All these new faces were just the same but her who wanted nothing and requested nothing of our growing acquaintance except that I change my attitude towards people and stopped treating them like dirt beneath my feet. And so I tried my best, for befriending the girl who could fearlessly slap me.
In all the months of knowing each other, she never once failed to lend me an ear when I needed one, never having anything of her own to confide in me. So I guess I should have taken her seriously when she suddenly called me up last evening to say that she felt that she was being watched. I knew she was home alone since her parents were out of town and credited her fear to that, assuring her that it was just a figment of her imagination. After all she had never stayed alone. Had her grandma not been so ill and had it not been for our upcoming exams, she wouldn’t have had to either. She was insistent in spite of my best efforts to pacify her. At last I guaranteed her that she is welcome to come over to my place should she feel any more uncomfortable than she already did and we could group study for the next day. She thanked me and disconnected and that was the last anyone I know heard from her.
When she didn’t turn up for our exams the next day and did not even bother switching on her phone, I decided to take a detour on my way back from college. Her place was flooded by neighbours, the ladies crowded around her sobbing mother and the men discussing endlessly about what could have happened. Apparently, she had disappeared from behind closed doors. Every door was locked, her bed had been slept in and yet not a trace of the girl who had called me frantically not 12 hours ago. What else could I do but silently pull out of her drive?”
I put my diary down, wondering what her parents would be doing now. Where would they deduce their daughter has gone to? They would ask me obviously but that they haven’t yet. That might again be credited to dear daddy. Law usually knocks our doors as the last alternative. I lay on my bed a few more seconds debating on whether I should confide in police that she called me after midnight from her landline, paranoid with fear, to inform amidst sobs that her cell phone has gone missing from her bed and decided against it. It’s useless to invite unwanted attention. I had had far too much of that ever since I started mingling with her and her ragtag companions.
I jumped lightly off my bed and felt something cold against my feet. It was a cat collar, the locket reading “Amber” still attached to it. I procured the fluffy gambolling orange kitten from our garden while I was strolling there with my friends. Feisty little orange thing it was. The first time I approached her, I remember her scratching the back of my hand and drawing blood. My friends laughed themselves silly at my inability to handle such a tiny thing. I still have the faint scars from that accident. However, I decided to adopt it and brought it home. I had her eating out of my hands in no time. It stayed in my room, slept with me in my bed, day and night, with or without the collar. Not that she had a choice given that she had a broken paw from a lawnmower accident shortly after. Coincidentally, it was the same paw she scratched me with. Talk about irony! My parents marvelled at how well I cared for the limping beast till one fine morning she was “accidentally” mauled by my dear hounds, in the same garden where I first met her when I “accidentally” abandoned her during our regular morning walk session which that day “accidentally” coincided with that of my hounds. Can’t say why I keep her collar around but she should never have scratched me in the first place. Bad things seem to happen those who cross the paths of insolent brats, be it by design or by accident.
I sighed at the flood of memories and picked up the cold tray of food on my dresser. I have freshly procured a new pet, a replacement for Amber and she hadn’t had any food since last night. I can’t let her starve to death before I had had my fun now, can I?