I’m huddled against the wall as a tide of lunch-going students presses past. I’m fidgeting with my sandwich bag, to give my hands something to do, when I notice that my watch is missing. I retrace my steps down the corridor, eyes on the floor, then check through my locker and bag, just in case it’s fallen off, but the thin black Swatch with my initials on the back is nowhere to be seen. I know I put it on this morning – right after brushing my teeth but before knotting my tie – because I have put it on at the same time every morning since year seven. It was a birthday present from Elsie, bought with money she’d saved herself, and the leather strap is solid and unbreakable.
I finally make my way back towards the Careers office, my heart feeling kind of wobbly. I don’t know why. It’s just a stupid watch. It’s generic, and replaceable, not a family heirloom or a priceless relic. But I still feel its empty place on my wrist, heavy in its absence.
Elsie is standing in front of the office, her arms crossed tight. When she sees me, her face breaks into a smile.
‘Rey! Heya!’ She skips towards me. ‘Thanks! I don’t know where you found it, but it’s great. Really.’
I stare at her blankly. ‘Huh?’
Elsie reaches into her bag. She emerges with a small, flat tin, roughly the size of her palm. It looks old, the metal worn and dented. The front has a painted picture of a handful of bright peaches, with a banner reading Peppermints from the Peach State. A giant flash in orange font, splashed across the top, reads Georgia.
Elsie glances down at her feet. ‘I know you haven’t exactly been down with my plans. But this means a lot. You know. That you’re trying to be supportive, in your own way. I just … thanks, Sophia.’
And then she rolls her eyes and ferrets around in her pocket. ‘Though, you know, the watch inside was a bit much. I get it, though, I think. Sentiment? Suppose it’s as sentimental as you get, huh?’ she says with a grin.
She holds out her other hand. My black Swatch dangles from her fingertips.
‘Elsie, I didn’t … I mean, it wasn’t …’
I have no idea what is happening. But then I catch a glimpse of her face, more open than I’ve seen it in ages. She is looking at me with nothing but fondness, in a way that I suddenly realise she hasn’t done in a really long time. And I find I can’t finish my sentence.
‘Sure. It’s fine. Um, thanks, Els,’ I say as I hastily retrieve my watch from her hand.
I follow her to our lunch spot, bewildered and disorientated. Elsie seems back to her normal, chatty self; meanwhile, the wheels in my brain spin and spin. It’s tougher than trying to comprehend the Meisner technique in Drama, as incomprehensible as the self-actualisation exercises the school counsellor once made me do.
I fasten the watch tightly around my wrist, and for a brief instant I’m convinced I can feel the memory of the ghost of a hand there. I can’t for the life of me decide if it’s welcome.
Another Friday night, and Elsie and I have come back to her place. This decision was made after we arrived at my house to find Mum and two of my aunties giggling over glasses of ginger wine in the lounge, and Toby scowling down the hallway. He’d managed to cover the entire hall runner in a carpet of notes, a loose-leaf flow chart of cramped writing. Toby was perched on one of the breakfast bar stools, overseeing his handiwork like a sullen lifeguard.
Elsie dissolved into guffaws. Toby gave her a sneer. I tried to intervene, asking him some innocuous questions, but my stock of fake cheer seemed to have finally been exhausted. Not that I think it would have made any difference. Toby’s reaction was to lock his jaw and shove his glasses even further up his nose, at which point Elsie wedged herself in front of me and asked Toby if the green-eyed gnome who lived up his butt was making him constipated. Toby’s response was to ask Elsie if her fingers were getting sore from hanging on so hard, to which Elsie replied, ‘my day was great, thanks, and oh, by the way, I’m still in the top percentile, wow it’s nice not hovering in the middle of the road’. Their laser-eyed stares were enough to give me a stomach cramp, so I quickly changed out of my uniform and rushed us both out of the house again.
We’re side-by-side on her bedroom floor now, having spent a couple of hours on our books, sporadically chatting, and watching romantic dance movie compilations that Elsie has saved on YouTube. Elsie’s brothers are blasting Xbox from the rec room, and the sounds of explosions reverberate through the walls. Strangely, the noise at the Nayers’ doesn’t actually bother me. Maybe I have become habituated, but the shouts and body slams rarely make me cringe anymore.
Eventually Elsie and I head into in the rec room, slumping on the couch with a tin of Pringles. Raj sprawls on the floor, reaching up occasionally to steal a chip. Elsie and Raj are absorbed in the third season of Gilmore Girls, while I am giving one of their dogs a belly rub and contemplating whether Perelman ever had to deal with the intricacies of Alexandrov spaces while simultaneously navigating a weird new … acquaintance? Friendship? Is that even what this is?
I wonder if Perelman would be any more adept at this interpersonal stuff than me? I think about the perfect, unembellished writing in the first part of his Poincaré proof, The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications. I think about his out-of-control beard, and his apparent obsession with bread. Somehow, I think interpersonal stuff might be low on his list of priorities.
The Nayers’ dog, Chuck, rolls onto my lap. He’s a giant ball of scruff with no regard for personal space, yet nothing about the crushing warmth of him makes me anxious. Not even when he shoves his face into my belly and pokes me in the eye with a paw.
Elsie’s house is the best; a menagerie of strays from her mum’s veterinary clinic, some of which have found their way to the Nayers’ fur-covered couches and never left. So many cats have passed through that Elsie and her brothers now bestow only generic names upon them: a stream of Whiskers and Snowys and Mittens. Battles for naming rights are reserved for the dogs. Elsie, always science obsessed, and Raj, who likes obscure fantasy references, have owned a beagle named Elizabeth Blackwell and a Shih Tzu called Orm Embar. Colin sticks to movie action stars, and their eldest brother, Ryan, in a period of cultural pride, once named a litter of abandoned Rottweiler puppies after members of the Indian cricket team, until he got accepted into medical school and decided he was too cool to care about dog names anymore.
The upshot is, Elsie’s house currently hosts an incontinent pug named Isabeau, an ageing Rottie named Sunil Gavaskar, and a springer spaniel, presently drooling on my lap, called Chuck Norris.
When I was little, I was desperate for a tiny piece of the Nayers’ life. There’s something nice about being around animals; they convey only the most basic of information, and they demand nothing but food and belly rubs.
‘Yo, whadup Pinky?’ Colin calls out as he wanders in from the kitchen, teetering plate of food in hand. ‘How’s life?’