There's a law of physics that says an object in motion stays in motion. In the summer of 2022, fresh out of the prison of high school, my friendship with Parveen was a planet hurtling through space. We were a celestial body of inside jokes, late-night rants, and a shared, profound certainty that we were the only two sane people left on Earth. The momentum felt unstoppable. The trajectory felt infinite.
Unfortunately, another law of physics is that even planets have orbits, and ours were about to diverge spectacularly.
The period between graduation and the start of college is a strange, formless void. You're legally an adult but have the functional skills of a houseplant. You have all the free time in the world but no money to do anything with it. For us, this void was filled with the bureaucratic nightmare of college admissions.
"Mechatronics," I announced to her one afternoon over the phone, puffing out my chest. I made it sound like I was about to go build a real-life Iron Man suit. "It's the future. A perfect synthesis of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering."
There was a pause on the other end of the line, pregnant with sarcasm. "So, you want to build killer robots."
"They're not killer robots, they're 'automated solutions for advanced manufacturing,'" I said, quoting a brochure verbatim.
"Right. Killer robots," she deadpanned. "My parents will be so thrilled to know their daughter's best friend is orchestrating the robot apocalypse. What's your first project? A toaster that can feel hatred?"
"And what about you?" I shot back, ignoring the toaster comment, which was frankly a brilliant idea. "ECE? Electronics and Communication Engineering. You're going to spend four years learning how to make a better Wi-Fi router."
"First of all," she said, her voice dripping with mock condescension, "without my superior Wi-Fi router, your little hate-toaster won't be able to connect to the Skynet servers. Second, it's about communication. The intricate dance of signals and waves that connects the world. It's poetic."
"It's plumbing," I scoffed. "You're a signal plumber. I'm building the future. You're making sure it can get good reception."
This was our dynamic. I'd build a grand, self-important castle in the air, and she'd show up with a wrecking ball and a grin. She kept me grounded. I, in turn, gave her a steady supply of things to make fun of, which I was pretty sure was her primary source of nutrition.
The letters started arriving. We'd both be in Tamil Nadu, but on different sides of the city. Close enough to theoretically see each other, but far enough that it would require actual effort, a concept that is poison to any college student. The Great Dispersal was becoming real. Our single, shared path was splitting into two.
One evening, the weight of it hit me. We were on a video call, supposedly helping each other fill out some tedious financial aid form. In reality, I was watching her try to balance a spoon on her nose, and she was succeeding with infuriating consistency.
"It's going to be weird," I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
The spoon clattered onto her desk. Her playful expression softened. "What is?"
"You know. Not seeing you every day. Not having someone to tell that the physics professor looks like a garden gnome."
"Hey," she said, leaning into her camera. "We'll still talk every day. I'll still need you to explain why my laptop is making a weird noise, and you'll still need me to tell you that your fashion sense is a crime against humanity."
"My fashion sense is fine!" I protested.
"You own three identical black t-shirts and a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. You don't have a fashion sense; you have a uniform."
"It's efficient!"
"It's a cry for help," she said, but she was smiling. It was a warm, genuine smile that reached her eyes. "Don't worry, you idiot. We'll be fine. Our friendship isn't that fragile."
I believed her. I clung to that belief like a holy text. Our friendship wasn't just a high school thing. It was a fundamental law of my own personal universe. An object in motion stays in motion. Nothing could change that.
College started. The first few months were a blur of new faces, confusing campus maps, and the horrifying discovery that 8 AM classes were, in fact, a real and mandatory thing. The promised daily calls became daily texts. The texts became every-other-day memes. Life, with its relentless demand to be lived, was starting to exert its gravitational pull.
But we were holding on. We were adapting. We found our new rhythm. My rants were now about my workshop assignments and the professor who smelled faintly of mothballs. Her complaints were about impossible lab reports and the hostel food, which she described as "a culinary experiment gone horribly wrong."
The bond was still there. The trust was absolute. Or so I thought.
It happened on a Tuesday. I remember because I had just failed a surprise quiz in my Engineering Graphics class, and my mood was already scraping the floor. I was in my dorm room, scrolling through my phone, when a text from her lit up the screen.
It was four words.
I don't trust you.
I stared at it. I read it again. And again. The words didn't compute. It was like my brain was trying to solve an equation where X was a pineapple. There was no context. No preceding argument. No playful emoji to signal it was a joke. It was just a stark, black-and-white declaration.
My mind raced, frantically scanning the last 48 hours of our conversations. Had I said something wrong? Did I forget to call her back? Did I send her a meme she found offensive? I came up with nothing. We had been fine. We had been normal.
A cold, heavy feeling settled in my stomach. It was a specific kind of hurt, one I hadn't felt before. It wasn't the sting of an insult or the frustration of an argument. This felt deeper, like a betrayal. Trust was the bedrock of our friendship, the unspoken foundation upon which all the insults and jokes were built. Without it, we were just two people being mean to each other.
My first instinct was to call her, to demand an explanation. But a stubborn, wounded part of me took over. If she could just throw that accusation at me out of nowhere, then maybe she wasn't the person I thought she was. My thumb hovered over the call button, but I couldn't press it.
So I did the most mature, rational thing a nineteen-year-old boy could do: I ignored her.
For a full week, I engaged in a one-man cold war. I didn't text. I didn't call. I saw her name pop up in my notifications and actively swiped it away. Each day that passed, the silence grew heavier, more solid. The hurt curdled into a bitter, self-righteous anger. How could she? After everything, how could she just casually detonate a bomb in the middle of our friendship and walk away?
I was miserable. The world felt off-kilter. My rants had no destination. The funny things I saw throughout the day died in my head, untold. I was proving a point to an audience of one, and the only person I was punishing was myself.
On the eighth day, my phone rang. Her name flashed on the screen. I stared at it, my heart doing a frantic tap-dance against my ribs. I let it ring twice, just to maintain the illusion of control, then answered.
"Hello?" I said, my voice colder than I intended.
"Oh, thank God!" Her voice was a rush of relief and panic. "Are you okay? I've been texting you all week! I thought you'd been kidnapped by one of your killer robots!"
I was stunned into silence.
"Why haven't you been answering me?" she asked, her voice laced with genuine concern.
"You know why," I said, the anger flaring up again. "Your text. The one you sent last Tuesday."
There was a long pause. I could hear her trying to remember. "What text?" she finally asked. "The one about the new season of that show?"
"No," I said, my voice tight. "The one where you said you don't trust me."
Another pause, longer this time. Then, I heard a sound that completely disarmed me. It was a gasp, followed by a groan of such profound self-loathing it could have powered a small city.
"Oh my God," she whispered. "Oh, you idiot. That was a joke!"
"It wasn't funny," I mumbled.
"No, of course it wasn't! It was a stupid prank!" she exclaimed, her words tumbling over each other. "Kapil and I were talking about how serious you get, and he dared me to send you the most random, out-of-pocket thing I could think of to see how you'd react. I was supposed to text you 'lol jk' like two seconds later, but then my lab instructor walked in and I had to put my phone away and I completely forgot! I am so, so sorry."
The anger drained out of me, replaced by a wave of profound, bone-deep relief. It was a prank. A stupid, ill-conceived, terribly executed prank.
"I thought you were serious," I said, my voice small.
"Of course I wasn't serious!" she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice now. "You're the most trustworthy person I know. You're boringly trustworthy. Annoyingly trustworthy. I trust you with my life, you moron. Are we okay?"
A slow smile spread across my face. The world snapped back into focus. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. My friend wasn't a traitor.
"Yeah," I said, leaning back in my chair. "We're okay."
"Good," she said. "Now, about your fashion sense…"
We talked for another hour, falling back into our old rhythm as if nothing had happened. We were fine. We had weathered our first real storm. As I hung up the phone, I felt a renewed sense of certainty. Our friendship wasn't just strong; it was indestructible. We had proven it.
I was an idiot.
The storm hadn't passed. It was just the eye of the hurricane. And I was standing right in the middle of it, smiling up at a clear blue sky, completely oblivious to the winds that were about to tear my entire world apart.