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This part will be in Vidya's point of view again!
"What are you EATING?" Mansi asked, warily eyeing the bag of grains I had brought from home for lunch on Monday.
"Power food," I explained. "Gayu says this stuff helps her get her brain in gear when she's got to put in a long night of studying."
Aditi wrinkled her nose. "It looks like something I used to feed the horses when I went through my riding lessons phase."
"This stuff doesn't taste that great," I admitted, biting into another mouthful of my dry, bland mixture. "But if I'm going to find my mystery guy this week, I need all the help I can get."
Aditi and Mansi exchanged a glance that I mentally characterized as "worried." But neither said a word.
"What?" I asked. "Did you find Mr. Beautiful? Does he have a girlfriend? Did he say he would never, ever consider taking a stranger to the dance, no matter how desperate and pathetic she was?"
Mansi grimaced. "Unfortunately, we didn't find him." She shot another glance at Aditi. "And to be honest, we don't think we're going to."
"Vidya, we think you might want to forget about this whole thing," Aditi added. "I mean, it doesn't look like your dream man is going to show his face again."
"And the dance is this Saturday!" Mansi chimed in.
"Maybe if you don't say anything about it, Reshmi and Sanya will lay off." Aditi's voice was mild, but her message was clear: You're doomed.
I heard what they were saying. I really did. But after my sister-to-sister talk with Gayu last night, I was more committed than ever to finding Mr. X. Still, there was no way I could search on my own. I needed to have my two best friends as resources.
But how could either of them understand what is felt like not to have a date for the dance? Mansi was going with Arjun—of course. And Aditi was going with Jai, who she claimed wasn't her favourite person but was incredibly cute nonetheless.
Just as I was opening my mouth to launch into the details of the plan Gayu had helped me come up with, I noticed two incredibly unfriendly individuals heading our way.
"Uh-oh," I muttered. I think I might be about to say something I'll regret.
"Hi Vidya." Reshmi greeted me. As always, she didn't try to hide the disdain in her voice.
"Hey," I responded casually. "What brings you two to this side of the cafeteria?"
As in all lunchrooms around the world, there was an unwritten law that the cafeteria was divided and subdivided. Students rarely ventured out of the area they sat in every day.
"We were curious...." Sanya said. "Has your date come up with an excuse to get out of going to the dance with you yet?"
Yep. Now I was POSITIVE I was about to say something I would regret later. But there was no way to avoid it. Not unless I was ready to give up the fight.
I fluttered my eyelashes and forced my face into an expression of total serenity. "As a matter of fact, he's completely psyched about the dance," I assured them.
"And he decided that the two of us should go to Cantina's before we make our entrance at the dance."
"How interesting," Reshmi responded, her eyebrows raised. "That happens to be where we're going to dinner."
"Then I guess I'll see you there." I couldn't believe how confident I sounded. It was almost as if I actually believed every word that was coming out if my mouth.
As Reshmi and Sanya sashayed toward their side of the cafeteria, Mansi scowled. "Those girls get friendlier by the day," she commented wryly. "They bring sunshine to everyone they encounter."
"Uh, Vidya....you do realize that you just dug yourself deeper into this mess, right?" Aditi asked, looking concerned.
"Before you two go through the blow by blow about why I should abandon my search for the mystery date, let me tell you about my plan," I set aside my bag of brain food and leaned forward to deliver the verbal blueprints of my new plan.
"We're listening," Mansi assured me. "But we reserve the right to declare you totally nuts and unable to make your own decisions."
Make this good, I ordered myself. Without Aditi and Mansi's help I didn't know if I would have the nerve to conduct an all-out search, my sister's brilliant idea.
"We know he isn't a student of Rainbow," I said. "And we know he doesn't hang out at the mall all that often."
"I'm with you so far," Aditi chimed in. "But you're not telling us anything we don't already know about him."
"However, he must go to a school that's close by," I reasoned. "Otherwise he never would have been at the mall in the first place." Now was the part where I begged them to help me. I took a deep breath. "All we have to do is check out the other schools during lunchtime and right after school, and eventually we'll find him—hopefully."
"Vidya, there are, like, ten high schools in our vicinity," Mansi pointed out. "Do you know how hard it's going to be to find him?"
"And remember...I didn't even get a good look at the guy," Aditi reminded me. "I'll be virtually useless when it comes to picking him out of a crowd."
What my friends said made a certain amount of sense. But not enough sense to convince me to abandon my project.
"What if Arjun was the guy we were trying to find?" I asked Mansi. "Would you still believe that looking wasn't at least worth a try?"'
"But I LOVE Arjun," Mansi answered, her face turning slightly red from embarrassment. "The only reason you want to find this guy is to prove a point...At least, that's what you said."
The truth was that my desire to find Mr. X now went beyond the need to save face in front of Reshmi and Sanya. I wanted to go the dance. And I wanted to go with him. There had been something about that guy.....I had seen him in my dreams several times over the past few days. I almost felt like I knew him.
"I just know that I won't be able to graduate from high school with a clear conscience unless I at least TRY." I responded, my voice soft and pleading. "Will you guys help?"
Aditi grinned. "Of course we will, Vidu," she assured me.
"We would both do anything for you—you know that."
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I had the two best friends in the world. And as soon as the three of us found Man with Soulful Eyes, I was going to give them each a huge hug and a big kiss. No first I was going to beg the guy to take me to the dance. Then I would give them a hug and a kiss.
I just hoped that moment would come to pass. Finding HIM had come to mean everything to me.
Aditi, Mansi and I had cruised the parking lots of every high school within a fifteen minute radius. We had checked out every fast food joint. And nothing. Not even a glimmer of the guy I had sworn to take to the dance.
Twenty four hours from now almost every girl in my class would be primping and preening, preparing for their big night. And I would be home alone, counting the minutes until Reshmi and Sanya used the cafeteria as a stage in which to make me eat dirt!
I turned back to the single sheet of paper on my desk. On it I had written a list of every place where I could realistically expect to find my mystery man. Now that all of the original places hadn't panned out, I was trying to come up with more options. Car wash, I wrote. But I knew I'd be struck by lightning, sitting at this desk, before I'd find him at the exact moment on the exact day at the exact car wash he decided to use.
"Vidya?" My teacher's voice broke into my thoughts.
I snapped my head upward and smiled apologetically.
"Uh, sorry, what was the question?"
He laughed. "There's no question, Vidya. I just wanted to inform you that class is over."
I glanced around the classroom. It was empty, except for a couple of girls who were redoing their lipstick before venturing into the hallway. Man! I had been so into my own head that I hadn't even noticed the loud shrill of the last bell. I was losing it!
"Thanks," I responded sheepishly. "I'll, umm, see you on Monday."
I grabbed my backpack from underneath my chair and sprinted toward the door of the classroom. I headed toward my locker, racking my brain for a good spot to search for my mystery man. Unfortunately, my mind was a big, fat blank.
"Maybe I should check out some schools father away," I said to myself, spinning the lock on my locker.
"Vidya!" Mansi appeared at my side and threw an arm around my shoulders. Her face was flushed, and she was grinning as if she had just discovered chocolate didn't have any calories!
"What's up?" I asked. "Did Arjun tell you he loved you for the 100th time—or are you just happy to see me?"
"THIS is up!" She pointed to a large, stuffed canvas bag at her feet. "You're not going to believe what I got!"
"What?" I asked. I hadn't seen her this happy since she got together with Arjun.
"I have in the bag last year's yearbooks for every high school in our area!" She practically shouted. "I had a brainstorm during my study hall, paid a visit to the yearbook editor...and voila!"
"I don't get it." I knew Mansi was going somewhere with this, but I couldn't quite connect the dots (or the yearbooks in this case.)
"All you have to do is flip through these until you find him!" She explained. "Once you see his picture, we'll know his name, his school and all kinds of other vital information."
In a flash it all clicked. If I weren't so excited, I probably would have fainted with gratitude. "Mansi, you're brilliant!" I yelled.
"We're just lucky that the yearbook editor keeps copies of all the other books for ideas." She responded.
"Have I told you lately that you're the smartest best friends a girl could ever hope to have?" I gave her a huge hug, then grabbed the first book out of the bag.
"Don't thank me yet," Mansi warned. "First we've got to find your guy."
Mansi and I knelt down on the floor and just went through the photos as fast as we could. Page after page of nameless faces passed by me.
Sure, I had seen him in my dreams, (a fact I was alone aware of), but there was a possibility that I had changed his face in my imagination. Could a normal man actually be as good looking as the guy in my dreams had been?
"Look through this one," Mansi advised, handing me the yearbook from another school. "It feels lucky to me."
I opened the book to the section that pictured last year's class of roughly three hundred juniors.
"Singh!" I shouted. "Singh!"
"You found him?" Mansi slammed the books she was holding shut and leaned over to look at the book in my lap.
"Where?"
"Sagar Pratap Singh," I announced. "Right here." I pointed to the small picture. Even in a two-by-two photograph, the guy was gorgeous. And he looked exactly like I had remembered him.
Mansi whistled. "He's cute, all right. And that's definitely him." She studied the phone for another few seconds, the frowned. "Vidya, is it really possible that a guy who looks like THAT doesn't have a girlfriend?"
I shrugged. "If he does, I'll just have to buy her off. Because now that I've found Mr. Sagar Pratap Singh, there's no way I'm going to let him turn me down."
"In that case, let's go find Aditi," Mansi suggested. "If we hurry, we can get over there before all the kids leave—and you're going to need all the moral support you can get."
My heart was pounding as I followed Mansi down the hallway toward Aditi's locker. Now that I knew Mr. X's name and school, I had only one problem. What was I going to say when I found him?
Whew! That was long too! Well she's found him now! 😛 Will try to continue soon!
Luv ya all loads,
Meera
Music Corner
Geet - Hui Sabse Parayee
Advocate Anjali Awasthi
