Anyone Else But You... Read Online Free PDF

else to do, when Sahana entered with her friend.
     
    He sat on his chair again. He thought of all the ways of approaching her but decided against it.
    Not in front of her friend,   he thought.   Wait for the friend to go. Then, maybe. Till then , read the book. Yes. That is much better.
      He opened his book again, blankly staring at the page. He tried to read the first sentence . Makes sense,   he thought. He continued to read it, when he was interrupt ed by her voice. “Nice bookmark,” s he said.
      “Thanks,” R ishav replied with a smile, wondering why she , herself came to talk to him when clearly she was pissed a little while ago.
    “So you forgave me.”
    “What? ”Sahana asked, puzzled.
      “I said sorry. You walked off. But you are talking to me right now. S o you forgave me? ”
      “Well…you could say that. Everyone’s allowed one mistake. You made yours. And you are new. I didn’t want to give you a hard time. It’s difficult, I know. I’ve b een there.”
    Rishav raised his eyebrows wondering at how hotheaded she seemed a few minutes ago and how understanding she was now.
    “Thanks. It is pretty hard. What’s with the corridors, I don’t get. Why don’t they have signs? It’s such a confusing place .”
    She laughed. “I’ve been there too. I have changed four schools. This is the fifth. I always used to forget the way to my classroom, so this time I had decided to remember it. I remembered the way… and the number of stairs too. On the second day I ended up climbing the same stairs four time s . The first time I went , I saw the piece of paper above the door. 9B was w ritten on it. I went down again - c ounted the number of stairs. And then, came up a gain to find myself exactly at the same place. I d id this four times. Until this girl came and said ‘Sahana, where are you going? Our class is here’ . That was 9B. But actually it hosted 7D,” Sahana explained.
    Rishav laughed.
    “You were a stupid kid,” he said.
    “I was new, ok ay ? All th ese people were so intimidating that I was afraid to ask them. What if they took me to a corner and ragged me, like I had heard?” Sahana said with a defiance.
    “You were paranoid too,” Rishav said.
    “If you w ere there, you would’ve known,” Sahana said with a little hint of anger.
    Rishav tried to change the subject hurriedly; afrai d he would make another mistake, w hich he couldn’t afford to make.
    “So you came   here in seventh?”
    “Yeah. Bad year. Don’t ask,” she replied looking out of the window.
    “First year is always bad. It’s when you are getting the hang of things.”
    “Yes,” she said with a distant look in her eyes.
    A silence prevailed.
    “You better hope that your first year is not bad sinc e you have only two years here , ” Sahana said with a playful hint.
    “Well then I need someone who could help me get the hang of things around here,” Rishav said, with a hope that Sahana would get the hint of what he was trying to imply.
    “I can tell you what   not   to do. But ‘what to do’ depends upon which of the cliques in our school you wanna belong to, you know ? ”
    “ What is that supposed to mean?” Rishav asked.
    “See, we have a lot of groups in our school. There’s the ‘G eek and Nerd G roup ’ . These people are the ones who are in science a nd computers both. We have the ‘Council G roup ’ . These are th e ones who aspire to be in the Council of this school, o ver achiever s, basically. Then we have the ‘Gossip G roup ’ . You know, what th at group contains. We have the ‘Freak G roup ’ . This is where the non-academic and non-anything people are. And we have the ‘Middle G roup ’ . These interact with the gossip, a little bit of geek group, and with the council. So which one do you wanna be in?”
    “Let me think. Which one do you belong to?” Rishav asked.
    “None, ” Sahana replied with a shrug of her shoulders.
    “Huh? How is that possible?” Rishav