The calendar didn't remind me of the date. My body did.
It was subtle, like the smell of a book you haven't touched in years, or the sound of a familiar ringtone in a crowd. Something inside me — not my memory, but something softer — told me it was her birthday.
In another version of life, I'd have given her something. A small thing. Nothing extravagant — maybe a story folded into a paper crane. Maybe a long, stupid letter with two metaphors too many. Maybe a smile. Maybe just my presence.
But I wasn't there. I hadn't been there. And the truth was, I wouldn't be there this year either.
I was supposed to take a mock test that day. Physics and Maths, four hours combined. That morning, I sat by the edge of my bed in the hostel, staring at the cheap desk, the dull white wall, and the rusted iron fan spinning above me like it had something better to do. Pranav, my roommate, had already left. He had dreams, and he wasn't afraid of them. I had silence.
Instead of solving problems, I found myself solving a paragraph. The paragraph turned into a page. The page became a short story. Then another. I skipped the test. I didn't even feel guilty. Not then.
I imagined her blowing out candles. Maybe Yuvaan had organized something. Maybe she got home and her mom had baked a cake. Maybe she wore that yellow hoodie again — the one that looked like sunlight when the classroom lights flickered off.
I remembered her laugh.
I remembered how once she asked me what the saddest color was. I said grey. She said no, it was blue — not the sky blue, but the kind of blue that showed up in bruises. We never finished that conversation. So I wrote a story about a girl who painted her bedroom walls blue to forget the bruises inside her.
And then I tore the story out of the notebook and folded it into an envelope. I didn't write her name on it. I just kept it.
No one noticed I hadn't taken the test. Not that day. They were too busy pretending we were all going somewhere important.
---
The hostel's landline phone rang like it wanted to tear through time.
I picked it up on the second ring.
"Bhai. Kya haal hai?"
Yuvaan's voice was the same. Stupid. Loud. Sincere. He said he found my number in an old notebook. Said he missed my sarcastic face. Said he wasn't calling for anything special — "just thought about you."
That's how real friends talk, right? They never ask if you're okay. They already know you're not.
We talked about nothing important. How boring school had become. How Sharma Sir still said "shtudent." How Niya still liked that overpriced canteen tea.
That name—
It came and went like wind under a door. I said nothing. Neither did he. That's when you know the silence is mutual. It hurts both of you.
"She's okay, you know," he said eventually. "Niya."
"I figured."
"She talks less these days. Or maybe I notice it more because you're not here to fill the blanks."
I laughed. It wasn't real. But it wasn't fake either.
"You writing?"
"Trying," I said.
That night, I wrote a line in my journal: Sometimes, we call people just to make sure they still sound like memory.
I didn't cry. But something inside me broke quieter than a whisper.