Emily D’Souza
I first noticed Mira on a Monday the way you notice something you’ve lost and then convince yourself it had been there all along. She was at the far end of the corridor, standing in a square of sunlight from the skylight, hair catching dust motes. I was fifteen, new to St. Augustine’s, and learning to walk like I’d always belonged. Mostly, it meant walking fast and looking at blue pinboards, not people’s faces.
It was assembly day. The principal preached punctuality, the choir missed a high note, and the sports captain reminded everyone to return cricket balls. When we dispersed, I drifted to the noticeboard pretending to study the timetable, really letting the tide of students carry me. That’s when Mira came closer, scanning the list of clubs. Same white-and-blue uniform as everyone else, yet it looked tailored.
“Are you joining any?” she asked, watching the map of after-school options.
“I’m new,” I said. “Maybe the newspaper club.”
“Good choice,” she said. “I’m in Lit. We sometimes share a room with the paper. I’m Mira.”
“Aarav,” I said, too softly, like my name might break.
The bell rang, a bright brass interruption. We stepped back, almost bumping shoulders, and laughed like strangers sharing a small accident. That was the moment the day shaped itself into a story.
In English, Miss Fernandes wrote “Voice” on the board and asked what it meant. Hands rose like flags. I didn’t raise mine. “Voice is not just how something sounds,” she said. “It’s the angle of the sun on a sentence.” Her class annotated the air.
At lunch my table was a cluster of almost-friends, boys who’d waved me over because there was an empty seat and I had the right brand of water bottle. They were practical: share the samosa, explain rules, reveal where the stationery shop would photocopy even during exams. Their laughter ran warm. Still, my eyes kept drifting to the far table where Mira sat with two girls, laughing into cupped hands.
After lunch came the hours where clocks practice deceit. In Physics, the ceiling fan hummed. Mr. Roy explained uniformly accelerated motion, drawing arrows like kites. I underlined important words twice, because organization felt like a spell against invisibility. When the bell freed us, I packed my bag with the ceremony of someone reluctant to return to the corridor.
The newspaper club met by a door with peeling paint and a crooked poster of last year’s edition. Inside, a dozen students circled two tables. A camera sat among pens like a hesitant guest. The advisor, Brother Joseph, handed out roles as if dealing cards. “We have space for a campus beat reporter,” he said. “Someone to notice.”
“I can notice,” I blurted, feeling heat climb my neck.
He smiled once. “Excellent, Aarav. Your first assignment: a column on the first week of term. Something small that becomes large.”
I nodded though my heart thumped like someone rattling a locked gate. I uncapped a pen and pretended to know how to begin. That’s when the door creaked and Mira slipped in, a little late, hair damp, as if she’d raced the rain.
“Lit meets here on Tuesdays,” Brother Joseph said. “You’re welcome to write quietly at the back.”
She settled in the corner, turned pages with the care of old letters. Only a table and a cathedral of newness separated us. I wrote the first sentence three times, crossing out twice. On the fourth try I kept it: “Sometimes a school is many cities, and your map is a rumor.” When I looked up, she watched the window, but her shoulders suggested recognition.
After club, the sky had turned the color of pencil eraser, soft and smudged. Buses lined the road. I walked toward the gate and would have kept going had I not heard, “Aarav! Wait!” Mira jogged up, breath clouding faintly.
“You’re the campus reporter now,” she said, as if it were an identity rather than a role. “That means you have to notice things. Notice this.” She pointed to the neem tree near the cycle stand. Its bark had split into a dark V, inside which someone had tucked a folded paper. “We keep small mysteries here. Notes, poems, dares. It’s silly, but also not.”
“Do you read them?”
“Only the ones addressed to ‘whoever notices.’” She lifted the note carefully. “Want to open it?”
We stood close enough to smell jasmine oil. Mira unfolded the paper. In slanted handwriting, a message: “When the bell rings, meet me where the steps forget to end.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked, smiling despite myself.
“The amphitheater,” she said. “The steps there merge into the field. They forget to end.” She looked at me, daring the day to continue. “Come on, reporter. Let’s see who’s talking to whoever notices.”
The amphitheater sat behind the library like a cupped ear. We walked there without speaking. Shadows were long and kind. On the lowest step lay a second note, anchored by a pebble stone. Mira picked it up and read: “Tomorrow, after last period. Bring a story.”
She laughed. “Whoever this is wants to play.”
“What kind of story?”
“Any. True will do.” She tucked the note into her notebook. “See you tomorrow then, Aarav. After last period.”
I wanted to say something clever, but the day had already given me a shape to keep. I nodded. On the bus home, the evening forgot to end. I wrote sentences in my head and lost them to tire noise.
That night, my father asked how school was. “Like moving to a bigger language,” I said, surprising both of us. Later, at my desk, I wrote about the skylight and dust motes, about corridors that become rivers. I read it aloud once, softly, to the quiet room and myself, before sleep arrived. I wrote a story I might bring tomorrow. At the bottom, I signed with only my first name and a small, hopeful question mark I pretended was a flourish.
The next morning felt sharper, like the air had been washed overnight. I packed my bag with unnecessary care, folding the newspaper club notes into the inner pocket, as if they were fragile. All through first period, my mind kept circling the amphitheater and the strange note about bringing a story.
By the time lunch came, my tray of rice and curry seemed more like a placeholder than food. The boys at my table argued over cricket stats, their voices overlapping, but my gaze kept tilting toward the Lit crowd. Mira was there, but she was scribbling in a notebook instead of joining the laughter. I wondered if she was drafting her own story for the note-writer’s game.
When the final bell rang that day, a nervous rhythm quickened in my chest. Students poured out of classrooms like colored marbles scattering across marble floors. I followed Mira at a distance until the corridor thinned. She walked quickly, skirt hem brushing against her knees, hair tied with a ribbon that had already loosened.
The amphitheater behind the library was emptier than expected. Afternoon light slanted across the cement steps, making striped shadows like a tiger’s back. Mira sat two steps down, notebook balanced on her knees. She looked up when I approached.
“You came,” she said, as if she had half-doubted it.
“You said it was tomorrow,” I reminded her.
“And it is.” She smiled faintly. “So, reporter, did you bring a story?”
I slid a folded paper from my notebook and held it out. She took it, unfolding with deliberate slowness, and began reading silently. My words looked childish now: a short sketch of corridors, skylight, and the way names can feel heavier than schoolbags. Still, she read to the end, lips moving slightly.
“It’s… different,” she said. “Not an essay, not a diary. Something in between. I like it.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, both embarrassed and thrilled.
She tore a page from her own notebook and passed it to me. Her handwriting was neater, deliberate strokes. It told of a girl who dreamed in colors, but every morning woke up with the colors faded. One day she found a wall in school where the colors returned when she touched it. “But she didn’t know if it was magic,” Mira had written, “or if she was finally learning to see properly.”
I looked up. “That’s… beautiful.”
“Maybe silly,” she said, shrugging, though her eyes searched my face.
Before I could reply, a shout echoed from the steps. A boy in senior uniform, maybe two years older, jogged down carrying a cricket bat. He looked surprised to see us. “You two part of the mystery note game?”
We both blinked.
“What game?” Mira asked.
He grinned. “Seniors started it last year. You leave notes in the neem tree, someone answers, then you meet at the amphitheater. Usually silly dares. Last time we had to write poems about the tuck shop samosas.” He laughed at the memory. “Anyway, if you’re continuing it, leave the next clue. Tradition.”
He waved and ran off before we could ask anything else.
Mira turned to me, eyebrows lifted. “So it is a game. Passed down like some secret festival.”
“And we’ve joined without meaning to,” I said.
“Then we have to keep it alive,” she decided, already tearing another sheet. She wrote quickly: Whoever notices, next story tomorrow, behind the music room where echoes hide. She folded it and stood. “Back to the neem tree.”
We walked together. The campus was quieter now, sun slouching westward. Mira slipped the folded note into the crack of bark and patted it like a sealed envelope. “Done,” she said with satisfaction.
On the way out, I asked, “Do you think others will join? That senior said it’s tradition.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But even if it’s just us, it’s enough. Stories are lighter to carry when shared.”
Her words trailed after me all the way home.
That night, I spread my books but ended up writing instead of studying. For tomorrow, I wanted something more daring, less like an essay. I wrote about a boy who found a watch that ticked backward. With every backward second, he forgot a memory he had once treasured. At the end, he was free of sadness but empty of joy. I wasn’t sure if it was tragic or hopeful.
I copied it neatly into my notebook, then paused. What if Mira didn’t like it? What if she thought it was trying too hard? I almost tore it out, but my hand resisted. Sometimes, courage is just refusing to rip the page.
The next morning, anticipation gnawed through breakfast and classes. During Chemistry, while others measured liquids, I measured hours. At lunch, I noticed Mira slip away early, probably heading to check the neem tree.
When the last bell rang, we met behind the music room. The building was quieter, corridors padded with silence. We found the wall where echoes lingered—the tiled one that sent back any sound like a quick mimic. Mira leaned close and whispered “Hello,” and the wall answered softly.
She handed me her story first: a tale about a boy who grew wings whenever no one looked at him, only to fold them back when observed. “Some people are only extraordinary in solitude,” she had written.
I read it twice, the words haunting. “It’s… lonely, but true,” I said.
“And your turn,” she prompted.
I gave her my backward watch story. She read, brows furrowed, then looked at me. “This is sad, Aarav. Why would someone want to forget even their joys?”
“Because maybe the sadness was heavier,” I said quietly.
We stood in thoughtful silence.
Then Mira brightened, pulling out another folded note. She’d already prepared it: Tomorrow, the stairs beside the science lab. Bring a story about beginnings.
“Beginnings?” I asked.
She nodded. “Every note has a theme. It makes the stories grow.”
I felt the pull of the game tightening like thread around us, drawing us into a circle only we could see. As we left the music room, our footsteps echoed twice—once in sound, once in memory—like proof the wall had heard us.
Walking toward the bus stand, Mira said, “You know, reporter, this game might end in nothing. The seniors may forget, the notes may stop.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But for now, it feels like something.”
She smiled at that, as though “something” was enough. And maybe it was.
The following day carried a sense of rehearsal, as if every hour was only practice for the final act near the science lab stairs. I tried to focus on the day’s lessons—mathematics twisting through algebraic fractions, history retelling empires like fading echoes—but my mind kept slipping toward the promised word: beginnings.
What counted as a beginning? A new school year, a new friendship, the moment someone learns your name? I scribbled phrases in the margin of my notebook: “first raindrop,” “first lie,” “first bell ring.” None felt complete. By the time the last period ended, I had managed a story that wasn’t neat but was mine.
The science lab stairs were tucked away, steep and concrete, always damp at the edges. Mira was already there, swinging her legs from the second step. She looked up and smiled, holding a folded page.
“You go first today,” she said.
I read hers. It was about a girl who discovered that her laughter could grow plants. She giggled near a cracked pot and suddenly a sapling sprouted. The story ended with her realizing she was terrified of sadness, because it could wither her garden.
“It’s magic, but also fragile,” I said.
“Isn’t that how most beginnings are?” Mira asked.
I nodded, then handed her my piece. Mine was about a boy who woke up one morning to find he could remember the exact moment of his birth, the pressure of light, the weight of air. He spent his life chasing the feeling, hoping to return to it, but never could.
She read quietly, lips pressed. “So he keeps running toward a door that closed long ago.”
“Yes.”
“It’s sad again,” she said, half-teasing. “Why do you make beginnings so heavy?”
“Because they always end,” I said, regretting it as soon as I heard my own voice.
But she only tilted her head, as though I had said something she might carry with her.
Before silence could stretch too long, Mira slipped another note into my hand. The handwriting wasn’t hers. My heart stumbled. It read: Tomorrow, the library balcony. Bring a story about secrets.
“Someone else is playing now,” she whispered.
“Another senior?”
“Maybe. Or maybe whoever started the tradition is back.”
We looked at each other with a mix of thrill and unease.
That evening at home, I sat at my desk, untouched textbooks open like silent judges. “Secrets,” I murmured. What secrets could I write? Mine were ordinary: the nervous tremor in my hands, the way I missed my old school, the fact that Mira’s laugh already rearranged my days. Too close to confess. So I wrote about another boy instead.
He discovered a locked chest in the attic. Each time he opened it, it held something different: once, a photograph of people he had never met; another time, a broken toy he remembered from childhood; and once, a note that simply said, “You will forget me.” The boy kept the chest locked after that.
It wasn’t perfect, but it carried weight.
The library balcony was quiet the next afternoon, sunlight filtered through dust-coated panes. Mira waited with her notebook, cheeks flushed with anticipation. On the stone ledge lay an envelope, heavier than usual.
We opened it together. Inside were two slips of paper. One had the instruction—Secrets. The other was blank, except for a small sketch of a bell tower.
“There’s no bell tower in school,” I said.
“Maybe it means the assembly bell? Or maybe it’s just a doodle,” Mira replied, though her tone suggested she didn’t quite believe that.
We read each other’s stories. Mira’s was about a girl who could hear the thoughts people whispered to themselves but not aloud. She heard her teacher reciting forgotten poems, her friend hiding tears, her mother counting debts. Eventually, she wore earplugs even when sleeping.
“It’s haunting,” I said.
“And your chest story?” she asked.
When she finished reading, she was silent for a long while. “It’s clever,” she said finally. “But what would you do if you had such a chest?”
“I’d lock it,” I admitted. “Some secrets aren’t safe even for their owners.”
She looked at me steadily. “Maybe you’re braver than you think. You still write them down.”
Her words stayed with me all evening, like the aftertaste of something sharp.
The next clue appeared on the neem tree again: Tomorrow, under the sports bleachers. Bring a story about fear.
I wanted to ask Mira if she was scared—scared of being seen, of the notes leading us somewhere unknown. But when we met eyes across the corridor, all I said was, “See you then.”
That night, I sat on my bed, pen hovering above the page. “Fear,” I whispered. My mother knocked, reminding me to study. My father shouted about turning off the light soon. I pretended to revise equations, but really, I was writing about a boy who feared silence more than anything. In silence, he thought the world forgot him. So he made noise constantly—tapping, humming, clapping—until one day he fell asleep mid-song. When he woke, the silence had grown so loud it swallowed everything.
I wasn’t sure if it was good. But it felt honest.
At school, whispers began swirling. “The note game is back,” someone said near the lockers. “Seniors must be reviving it.”
Mira and I pretended surprise, but inside I felt a secret glow. Our private ritual was becoming legend again. Yet there was unease too: who else was writing? Who else watched us slip away each afternoon?
By the time we reached the sports bleachers the next day, the ground smelled of dust and chalk. Sunlight made bars of gold between the wooden slats. A folded page waited on the bench. We read it first: Fear sharpens truth. Write honestly.
Mira gave me her story. It was about a girl terrified of forgetting her father’s voice, so she recorded every word he spoke. One day the recorder broke, and she realized she had memorized his pauses, his laughter, the texture of silence around his words.
I swallowed. “That’s beautiful, Mira. Painful, but beautiful.”
“And yours?” she asked softly.
I gave her the silence story. She read slowly, and when she finished, she looked at me differently, as though I had just opened a window she hadn’t known existed.
“You’re not afraid of silence,” she said. “You’re afraid of being invisible.”
The truth of it stung, but I couldn’t deny it.
The bell rang distantly, calling students to disperse. Mira folded both our stories into her notebook. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we follow wherever the next clue takes us. Even if it’s nowhere.”
Her voice was steady, but her hand trembled slightly as she tucked hair behind her ear. For the first time, I realized this game was no longer just about stories. It was about us—about what we were willing to reveal, and what we were afraid to keep hidden.
And beginnings, I thought, aren’t about firsts. They’re about deciding not to stop.
The next morning, rumors about the note game spread like chalk dust. Some said it had been started years ago by the debate club; others swore it was an elaborate prank from the drama society. None of the stories agreed, but all of them agreed on one thing: the game was dangerous.
“Last year,” a boy in my class whispered, “someone got detention for sneaking into the science block at midnight because of a clue.”
I wanted to laugh, but my chest tightened instead. Fear had already curled inside me like a question mark. What if Mira and I were walking into something larger than we understood?
In math class, numbers dissolved into shapes, triangles into staircases. By the time the final bell rang, I was already rehearsing how to say, “Maybe we should stop.” But when I saw Mira waiting near the bleachers, hair loose, eyes bright, I forgot my rehearsed caution. Fear, I realized, could also be silenced by presence.
A folded note sat pinned beneath a pebble. Mira lifted it carefully. The words were short, scrawled: Fear sharpens truth. Tomorrow, rooftop near the clock. Bring a story you’ve never dared to tell.
She looked at me. “That means personal.”
I swallowed. “That means dangerous.”
“Maybe,” she said, smiling crookedly. “But isn’t that what stories are for?”
That night, my room was both refuge and interrogation chamber. What had I never dared to tell? I thought of childhood embarrassments, secrets I had hidden even from myself: the time I cried during a cricket match, the letter I once wrote to a teacher and never sent. But none felt sharp enough.
Finally, my pen moved without permission. I wrote about loneliness—how moving schools had stripped me of belonging, how corridors echoed differently when you had no one walking beside you. I wrote about watching groups of boys laugh while I rehearsed laughter silently, just to learn the rhythm. And I wrote about the relief, startling and sweet, of finding Mira in a square of sunlight that first day.
When I finished, I was shaking. Fear wasn’t in the story. Fear was the story.
The next afternoon, the rooftop near the clock felt like a stage. The building was forbidden territory, accessible only through a side stairway that smelled of chalk and old paint. Mira was already there, leaning against the railing. The city stretched below, rooftops glittering like scales.
She held out her page first. “You read.”
Her story was about a girl who lived in two skins. One was cheerful, clever, admired. The other was heavy, filled with shadows. At night, she shed the first skin and sat with the second, terrified someone might see. “Fear,” she wrote, “is not of being unloved but of being known.”
I folded the paper carefully, my throat thick. “Mira, that’s…” I couldn’t finish.
She gestured for mine. I handed over the page, heart pounding like it wanted to jump free. She read slowly, eyes flicking, then stilled.
When she finished, she didn’t speak right away. The silence stretched between us, taut as string. Then she said, very quietly, “You wrote about me.”
“Not just you,” I managed. “About how you… changed the echo of the corridor.”
Her eyes softened, but she didn’t smile. “That’s the most honest thing I’ve read all week.” She folded the paper as carefully as I had folded hers, like it was fragile.
Before we could speak more, a shadow crossed the rooftop. A senior boy stood at the doorway, arms folded. “So it is you two keeping the game alive,” he said.
We froze.
He stepped closer. “Don’t look so scared. The game’s older than us. It belongs to whoever dares.” He placed a new envelope on the railing. “This one’s for you. Tomorrow, amphitheater again. Theme: trust.”
Then he was gone, leaving the smell of chalk dust and a trace of authority.
Mira exhaled slowly. “Well. At least we’re not alone in this.”
“But do we trust him?” I asked.
“That’s tomorrow’s question,” she said.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Fear throbbed in me like an untuned drum. Trust, the note said. But how could I write about trust when fear was so loud?
I thought of Mira’s story about two skins. I thought of my own about loneliness. Trust was maybe the bridge between them—the daring to place your story in someone else’s hands and hope they wouldn’t drop it.
So I wrote about a boy who carried a fragile glass bird in his pocket. Everyone told him to keep it safe, never share it. But one day, he placed it in someone else’s palm. The bird trembled but didn’t break. “Trust,” the boy realized, “is letting go even when you’re afraid of shattering.”
The amphitheater felt different when we returned the next day. The steps still blurred into the field, but the air hummed with something new. Another envelope waited on the lowest step.
Mira and I exchanged stories first. Hers was about a girl who taught her best friend to swim, even though she herself had nearly drowned once. “Trust,” she wrote, “is giving away the rope even if your hands remember the water.”
I gave her my glass bird tale. She read it and looked at me for a long time. “So that’s what I am?” she asked softly. “The hand that doesn’t break it?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
She smiled then, a real smile, unguarded. It lit the steps brighter than sunlight.
We opened the envelope together. Inside was a new slip: Final story. Tomorrow, assembly hall after dark. Theme: choice.
My stomach twisted. “After dark? That’s impossible.”
“Maybe that’s the test,” Mira said.
Her eyes held mine, steady despite the fear tightening around us. And in that moment, I realized something: fear wasn’t leaving. But maybe fear was meant to stay, to sharpen the truth.
Because the truth was this: I was falling into something bigger than a game. And choice—the word already weighed heavy—was waiting to ask us what story we really wanted to write.
The word choice followed me all day like an echo I couldn’t silence. It sat in my lunchbox, it hid behind equations on the blackboard, it hummed through the ceiling fans during history class. By the time the last bell rang, I felt as if the whole school knew we had been summoned after dark.
No one said it aloud, but rumors filled the corridors. “The note game is escalating.” “Someone’s planning a big finale.” “I heard the last theme is always the hardest.” Mira and I pretended not to listen, though we caught each other’s glances more than once.
“Are you sure?” I asked her when we left school.
“Not at all,” she said. “But choice is rarely about certainty. It’s about daring.”
Her words stayed in me all evening. My parents assumed I was revising for exams, but instead I stared at my notebook, blank page open like a dare. Choice. What story could hold that weight?
I thought of leaving my old school. I hadn’t chosen that—my father’s transfer had chosen it for me. I thought of joining the newspaper club. That had been a choice, though born more of accident than decision. But the real choice, I realized, was whether to keep walking into this mystery with Mira or to stop. And stopping wasn’t an option anymore.
So I wrote about a girl standing at a forked path: one led to a forest filled with light but no people, the other to a crowded city of noise but no sky. She stood there all her life, afraid to step forward, until she realized that not choosing was also a choice.
When I finished, my chest felt both lighter and heavier.
Night came reluctantly. The city outside my window blurred into neon patches. At 8:30, I slipped on my shoes and crept out, telling my parents I had to return a borrowed book. My hands shook the whole rickshaw ride to school.
Mira was waiting by the gate, her ribbon gone, hair loose. She looked different under the streetlights—older, maybe braver.
“You came,” she whispered.
“So did you,” I said.
We walked across the silent courtyard. The assembly hall loomed ahead, doors locked. But one door on the side stood ajar, as if expecting us. We slipped inside.
The hall smelled of wood polish and chalk. Rows of chairs sat in disciplined silence. At the front, near the stage, an envelope waited on the lectern. My pulse roared in my ears.
Mira opened it. Inside was a single line: Choice is the story you live, not the one you write.
We stared at it.
“That’s… not an assignment,” I said.
“No,” Mira murmured. “It’s a challenge.”
Before we could speak further, a voice echoed from the shadows of the stage. “Well done.”
We spun. A tall boy stepped into the half-light—one of the seniors we had glimpsed before, though older than we thought. His prefect badge gleamed faintly.
“You’ve kept the game alive,” he said. “Not many dare to follow it this far.”
“Why us?” I demanded. My voice cracked but I didn’t care.
“Because you noticed,” he said simply. “That’s the rule. The game only begins for those who notice the neem tree note.”
Mira folded her arms. “And what now? Another story?”
“No.” He smiled faintly. “Now you choose. The game can end here. You return to your ordinary days. Or—” He paused, letting silence deepen. “Or you become the keepers. You continue the chain next year, leaving clues for others.”
The choice sat between us like a live flame.
Mira looked at me. “Well, reporter? Do we step out of the story or into it?”
My throat tightened. Fear whispered leave. Curiosity whispered stay. But louder than both was something else: the thought of these afternoons with Mira, of stories passed like secret gifts, of how the corridors had shifted since she had said my name.
“I’ll stay,” I said.
She smiled, soft but steady. “Me too.”
The senior nodded, as if we had passed a test. He handed us a blank notebook, its cover worn smooth. “Then write,” he said. “The next generation will follow your words.”
And with that, he slipped back into the dark.
We stood in the echoing hall, the notebook between us. Mira traced its cover. “It feels unreal.”
“It feels… like ours now,” I said.
Outside, the night smelled of wet leaves. We walked slowly toward the gate, neither speaking. When we reached the street, Mira finally broke the silence.
“Choice is the story you live,” she said. “So let’s live it.”
We laughed then, quietly, not to wake the world.
The next morning, the sun looked brighter, as if the hall’s secret had colored it. Life in school resumed: teachers, lessons, bells. But beneath the surface, everything felt altered. We carried the blank notebook like contraband, tucked deep in Mira’s bag.
At lunch, she leaned close. “We need to decide our first clue for the next players.”
“Already?”
“The game never sleeps,” she said, smiling. “That’s the rule now.”
I thought of the neem tree, the amphitheater, the rooftop. I thought of the first time she had said my name. And I realized: our stories were no longer practice. They were the beginning of something larger.
For the first time, I didn’t feel invisible. I felt chosen—by the game, by the stories, by Mira. And by myself.
That evening, while the courtyard emptied, Mira and I slipped the first note of the new cycle into the neem tree’s bark. It read: Whoever notices, meet where the bell forgets to stop. Bring a story about hope.
We looked at each other and smiled.
The choice was made.
The next morning, I walked to school with a secret buzzing in my chest: the first note of our cycle now sat hidden in the neem tree, waiting for whoever noticed. It felt strange, like placing a seed in the soil and wondering who would water it.
I checked the tree at assembly time. The folded paper was gone. My pulse leapt. Someone had already found it. Mira caught my eye from across the courtyard, her lips curving into the faintest smile. Neither of us spoke, but we knew—we were no longer just players. We were keepers.
By lunchtime, whispers began. “The note game’s back again!” “It says to bring a story about hope!” Students gathered in corners, eyes darting toward the neem tree, toward the amphitheater, toward shadows that might hide clues.
“It’s spreading fast,” I murmured to Mira as we walked down the corridor.
“That’s the point,” she said. “Hope isn’t small. It multiplies.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that I wondered if she already knew what story she would write.
After school, we met at the amphitheater. The steps were alive with chatter—more than half a dozen students had gathered, papers in hand. For the first time, the game wasn’t just ours. It was a circle.
A younger boy stood nervously on the lowest step and read his story aloud: a hope that his stammer would someday fade. A girl from senior year spoke about her dream to study abroad. Another wrote about her grandmother’s recovery from illness.
Each story was raw, imperfect, but together they filled the amphitheater with warmth. The air buzzed with laughter, claps, and a quiet reverence.
When it was Mira’s turn, she read about a girl who planted a seed in broken ground. Everyone told her nothing could grow there, but she watered it daily until one morning she found not just one sprout but a whole field of wildflowers. “Hope,” Mira ended, “is what grows when you water even the cracks.”
The applause was soft but real.
Then it was my turn. My voice shook, but I read anyway: a story of a boy who carried a lantern in endless night. At first the light seemed useless against so much darkness, but soon he realized it was enough for one step, then another, then another. And sometimes, another traveler appeared, walking by that same small circle of light. “Hope,” I concluded, “isn’t the end of darkness. It’s the courage to walk while carrying a flame.”
The silence that followed was heavier than applause. Then someone clapped, and the sound spread, echoing off the stone steps.
Mira leaned closer, whispering so only I could hear: “That was your best yet.”
Her words burned brighter than the lantern in my story.
After the gathering dispersed, Mira and I lingered. The others had brought energy, but now the amphitheater felt like ours again. We sat side by side, the notebook open between us.
“So,” I asked, “what’s the next theme?”
She tapped the page thoughtfully. “Hope has to lead to something harder. What about forgiveness?”
The word settled into me like a pebble dropped into water, sending ripples. Forgiveness. A story I didn’t know if I could write.
“Forgiveness is heavy,” I said.
“Exactly,” Mira replied. “Hope is light. We need both.”
She wrote the next note in careful letters: Tomorrow, behind the old gym wall. Bring a story about forgiveness.
We slipped it into the neem tree’s crack and walked away.
That evening, my room felt different. I opened the window, letting in the city noise, and stared at the notebook page. Forgiveness. Who had I forgiven? Who had I not?
I thought of my father, whose transfer had uprooted my life. I had pretended not to mind, but inside I had hated him for it, hated the way he called it opportunity when it felt like exile. Could I forgive that? Could I write about that?
I pressed my pen down, hard. Words came haltingly: a boy who carried a stone in his pocket, heavy with resentment. Over years, the stone wore smooth, until one day he realized he could set it down and still walk. The weight had been shaping him all along.
When I finished, I closed my eyes. The story felt both true and unfinished.
The next morning, the buzz was louder. Students speculated about the new theme. “Forgiveness? That’s too hard.” “I don’t even know what I’d write.” “Maybe I’ll skip today.”
Mira looked at me as we crossed the courtyard. “Some will drop out. That’s okay. The ones who stay are the ones who need it.”
Her calmness steadied me.
At lunch, we slipped to the amphitheater to check. Already, scraps of paper fluttered in students’ hands. The game had a life of its own now. Our secret had become a chorus.
“Doesn’t it scare you?” I asked.
“A little,” she admitted. “But hope always multiplies into something bigger than you expect. That’s the risk.”
She smiled at me then, a quiet smile, and for a second I understood what she meant. Hope wasn’t just in the stories. It was in the spaces between them—in the laughter, in the shared silence, in the way I no longer felt invisible when I walked the corridors.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying Mira’s story about cracks blooming into wildflowers, about her steady voice at the amphitheater. It hit me then: she wasn’t just a player or even a keeper of the game. She was the seed of my own hope, the one that had been planted the first day she said my name.
Choice, hope, fear, trust—all those themes weren’t just words for stories. They were threads weaving something between us. Something fragile, something dangerous, something alive.
I didn’t write it down, not yet. Some stories aren’t for the notebook. Some are for the heart to hold, trembling but unbroken.
The next day, behind the old gym wall, more stories would be read. Some would stumble, some would soar. And Mira and I would sit side by side, listening, adding ours to the pile.
For now, though, I closed my eyes and whispered the word like a secret prayer.
Hope.
The wall behind the old gym was scarred with peeling paint and half-erased graffiti. It wasn’t a pretty place, but maybe that was why the game had chosen it—imperfection suited the theme. Forgiveness didn’t bloom in polished spaces; it needed cracks.
By the time Mira and I arrived, a small crowd had gathered. Not as many as the day of hope, but still more than I’d expected. Some students leaned against the wall, papers clenched in nervous hands. Others stood in tight clusters, whispering about whether they’d actually read aloud.
Mira scanned the group. “Fewer today,” she said softly.
“Because forgiveness is harder than hope,” I replied.
She looked at me, eyes flickering. “Exactly.”
The first to speak was a tall senior boy. He cleared his throat and read haltingly: a story about forgiving his younger brother for breaking his guitar. “It wasn’t just the guitar,” he said, voice trembling. “It was hours of practice, memories. But when I saw his face—so scared, so sorry—I realized the guitar mattered less than him.”
The group clapped gently.
A girl from my year stepped forward. Her story was about forgiving herself after failing a math exam. “I thought I had disappointed everyone,” she said, eyes downcast. “But maybe forgiveness begins with yourself.”
Heads nodded in agreement.
Then it was Mira’s turn. She unfolded her paper slowly, voice steady: a story about a girl whose best friend had betrayed her by sharing a secret. “She thought she would never forgive,” Mira read, “but one day she realized forgiveness wasn’t about trust. It was about refusing to carry someone else’s mistake forever.”
The silence that followed was deep. When she looked up, her gaze brushed mine briefly, and I wondered what secret wound in her life had fed that story.
Finally, it was my turn. My palms sweated as I held my page. I read about the boy who carried a stone in his pocket. “At first, the weight slowed him down,” I said. “He hated it, hated the one who had placed it there. But over time, the stone wore smooth, and he realized it had shaped his hand, his walk, his very strength. Forgiveness was not about forgetting the stone. It was about learning to walk freely without needing to hold it anymore.”
When I finished, no one clapped at first. Then Mira began, softly but firmly, and others joined.
After the gathering, we lingered at the wall. The others drifted away, leaving scraps of paper fluttering like leaves in the breeze. Mira crouched and picked one up, scanning it. “Some are too personal to read aloud,” she murmured. “But they wrote them anyway. Maybe that’s enough.”
I nodded, thinking of my own father’s transfer, the resentment I had pressed into my story without naming it. Writing had not erased the anger, but it had lessened its sting. Perhaps that was forgiveness—not erasure, but lessening.
That evening, as the city lights blinked on, I sat by my desk and thought of Mira’s story about betrayal. I wanted to ask her: who had hurt her? Who had left her carrying a wound disguised as ink? But I didn’t. Some stories we only hint at, never name.
Instead, I thought of the next theme. If forgiveness came after hope, what followed forgiveness? What grew from it?
When I met Mira the next day, she already had an answer. She handed me a folded note with her neat handwriting: Tomorrow, the stairwell near the art room. Bring a story about courage.
Courage. The word lit something inside me—fear’s twin, trust’s companion.
All day, I wrestled with it. Courage wasn’t loud; I knew that much. Courage was quieter, like a whisper that refused to leave. I scribbled fragments in the margins of my notebooks during class: “Courage is a hand reaching in the dark.” “Courage is walking even when you doubt.”
By evening, I shaped them into a story. A boy stood at the edge of a diving board, terrified of the water below. Everyone shouted at him to jump, but he froze. Then, instead of leaping, he climbed down and admitted he wasn’t ready. And that, too, was courage—the courage to choose his own pace, his own moment.
I closed the notebook and exhaled. Writing it felt like climbing down myself.
The next afternoon, we gathered in the stairwell near the art room. The walls smelled faintly of paint, streaked with old brush marks. Students filled the steps, their voices echoing in the narrow space.
One by one, stories were read. A younger boy told of standing up to a bully. A girl described raising her hand in class after years of staying silent. Another spoke about moving to a new city alone.
Mira read about a girl who picked up a pen after failing many times. “Courage,” she ended, “is not in never falling. It is in writing again with ink-stained fingers.”
Her words clung to me. When it was my turn, I read my diving board story. The group fell silent, then someone whispered, “That’s me.”
And in that moment, I realized something: courage wasn’t solitary. It multiplied when shared, just like hope.
After everyone left, Mira lingered on the steps. She looked at me and said, “Your story today—that’s how I feel too. Like maybe courage isn’t always about jumping. Sometimes it’s about staying.”
Her eyes held mine. For a breathless second, the stairwell was no longer crowded with echoes. It was just us.
Then she smiled, tucking hair behind her ear. “Tomorrow’s theme should be love,” she said softly, almost shyly.
The word struck me like a sudden bell. Love. The one theme we hadn’t dared yet.
I didn’t answer right away. My heart was too loud.
That evening, I sat with my pen poised, the page blank. Love, I wrote at the top. The letters looked enormous, dangerous. What could I possibly say?
I thought of the lantern in the dark, the glass bird in the palm, the way Mira’s laugh made the amphitheater glow. And slowly, my pen began to move.
The word love sat heavier than all the others. Hope, forgiveness, courage—those had been large but manageable. Love was different. It wasn’t a theme to write about lightly, not in a school where every whisper could be twisted into rumor. And yet, when Mira suggested it, she said it so softly that it felt less like a challenge and more like a secret shared.
All through the day, my notebooks filled with false starts. Love is a story we tell ourselves. Love is not the grand gesture but the small repetition. Love is the bell that keeps ringing even after silence returns. Each line seemed too much or not enough.
By the final bell, I still hadn’t finished my story. My heart pounded harder than exams ever had.
The stairwell near the art room was packed. The game had gathered momentum again, the word love pulling in curious faces. Some came to listen, some to laugh, some to dare themselves to speak. The air buzzed with anticipation, whispers bouncing against the paint-smudged walls.
The first story was about a boy who loved cricket more than anything. The second, from a shy girl, was about the love she felt for her dog. Another student spoke about the love of a mother’s food waiting after school. The crowd laughed, clapped, nodded.
But underneath the humor, I sensed something deeper. The word love pulled honesty from people, even when disguised as jokes.
Mira unfolded her page. The stairwell hushed. Her voice carried like a brushstroke across canvas: a girl who loved music but was tone-deaf. “Every note she sang was wrong,” Mira read, “but she kept singing because love wasn’t about perfection. It was about presence.”
The group clapped warmly. I stared at her, struck again by the way she could make words feel inevitable.
Then it was my turn. My page was still half-finished. I cleared my throat and spoke instead. “I don’t have a story written down,” I admitted. “But maybe love isn’t always written. Maybe it’s spoken when you’re not ready.”
The crowd quieted. My voice trembled but I continued. “There was a boy who felt invisible in a new school. Every corridor was an echo. Then one day someone said his name, and the echo changed. He realized love begins not when the world sees you, but when one person does.”
I stopped. Silence filled the stairwell. My face burned.
Then Mira’s eyes found mine. For a moment, she didn’t smile, didn’t look away. She simply held the silence with me, steady and unflinching. And in that silence, I knew she understood.
The applause that followed was soft, careful, as if the others sensed the weight.
After the gathering, most students drifted away, chattering. Mira and I lingered, pretending to study the paint stains on the wall.
“You didn’t write it down,” she said finally.
“No.” My voice was low. “Some stories are harder to trap on paper.”
She nodded slowly. “But you told it anyway. That’s braver than writing.”
Her words loosened the knot in my chest.
We walked together toward the gate. The sky was blushing into evening. For the first time, I wanted the walk to last forever.
At the gate, Mira stopped. “Tomorrow should be the last theme,” she said.
“The last?” I asked, startled.
“The game can’t go on forever,” she said. “Every cycle ends. And then a new one begins.”
“What theme ends it?”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “Maybe home.”
The word landed gently but firmly. Home.
That evening, I stared at my blank page again. Home. The letters seemed softer than love but equally dangerous. What was home now? The city I’d left behind? The house with parents who thought I was studying while I slipped into stairwells? Or was home something smaller, something that had begun in a square of sunlight on my first day?
I wrote slowly: a boy who carried home inside him like a folded letter. Every time he opened it, the words rearranged—sometimes a house, sometimes a person, sometimes just a moment of laughter. Home was never fixed. It was wherever he dared to unfold the letter.
When I finished, I traced the last sentence twice, as if engraving it.
The next day, the neem tree note was waiting, just as Mira had promised. Final story. Tomorrow, the library steps. Theme: home.
The whole school buzzed. Everyone knew the game would end there. For once, even teachers seemed aware but chose to look away. Perhaps they too remembered their own cycles long ago.
At lunch, Mira and I sat apart from the noise, under a banyan tree. She pulled her knees to her chest, notebook balanced against them.
“Do you think anyone ever really finishes the game?” I asked.
“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe it just changes hands. Like home. Like love.”
Her eyes caught mine again, and I realized the stories we had written were not just for the game. They were for us.
That night, I lay awake listening to the fan hum. Tomorrow would be the end, at least for now. I thought of every note we had read: beginnings, secrets, fear, trust, hope, forgiveness, courage, love. They weren’t random. They were a map, leading us here.
And at the center of the map was Mira.
The library steps waited, stone cool beneath the morning sun. Students filled them like an audience at a play. The air felt charged, final. Pages rustled.
But that—
That was tomorrow’s story.
The library steps had never looked so alive. Usually they were just stone slabs where seniors lounged between classes or where the janitor stacked buckets on rainy days. But that morning, they became a stage. Students gathered in clusters, clutching folded pages, eyes darting with the nervous knowledge that this was the last story the game would demand.
The sun slanted across the steps, turning them golden. I sat two rows below Mira, heart hammering as if it already knew this day would be carved into memory.
“Home,” someone whispered behind me. The word spread like a hush, settling over the crowd.
The first to read was a girl from Class Ten. She spoke about home as the smell of fried onions wafting from her kitchen window every evening. “Even if I move far away,” she said, voice trembling, “that smell will always be my doorway.”
A boy followed, describing how his home wasn’t the cramped apartment he lived in but the local football ground where he felt free. Another read about finding home in a group of friends, not walls. The steps echoed with laughter, sighs, and silences heavy with recognition.
Mira rose next. The crowd quieted, as if expecting something luminous.
Her story was about a girl who moved houses often, never staying long enough to paint the walls or memorize the cracks in the ceiling. “But one day,” Mira read, “she realized home wasn’t where she lived. It was who remembered her stories. And in that moment, she wasn’t homeless anymore.”
She folded her page, her eyes meeting mine briefly, and the weight of her words pressed into me.
When my turn came, my palms were damp. I unfolded my page and began.
“There was a boy who carried home like a folded letter,” I read. “Every time he opened it, the words rearranged—sometimes a house, sometimes a person, sometimes a laugh echoing across a corridor. Home was never fixed. It was wherever someone dared to unfold the letter with him.”
I paused, my throat dry. The crowd leaned in.
“And sometimes,” I finished, voice softer, “home was just hearing your name said by the right person, in the right light.”
I didn’t look up immediately. When I finally did, Mira’s gaze was steady on mine, unblinking, as if she knew the story had been addressed to her all along.
The applause rose around us, warm and insistent, but for a few seconds, it felt like silence, like the world had narrowed to the two of us.
After the readings, the steps buzzed with chatter. Some students argued about who had the best story, others swapped pages, still others just basked in the afterglow. The game had ended, but its energy lingered like the echo of a bell.
Mira touched my elbow. “Walk?” she asked.
We slipped away from the crowd, circling behind the library to where the courtyard lay quiet. The neem tree rustled softly, its bark still scarred by the place where we had tucked the first note.
“It feels strange,” I admitted. “Like closing a book you don’t want to end.”
She nodded. “That’s what endings always feel like. But endings are homes too, in a way.”
We stood there in silence. Finally, she pulled out the worn notebook the senior had given us. “It’s our turn to write the final entry,” she said.
I hesitated. “What should it say?”
She thought for a moment, then handed me the pen. “Whatever home means to you.”
So I wrote, hand trembling: Home is not where the story begins or ends. It is where the story is remembered. Whoever finds this notebook, remember us.
Mira leaned over my shoulder, reading. “Perfect,” she whispered.
The final bell rang, scattering students to buses and bicycles. We walked together to the gate. For once, neither of us hurried. The road stretched ahead, dusty and ordinary, but it didn’t feel ordinary at all.
At the gate, Mira stopped. “You know what I realized?” she said.
“What?”
“The game gave us themes. Beginnings, secrets, fear, trust, hope, forgiveness, courage, love, home. But maybe they weren’t just stories.”
“What were they then?”
“Lessons,” she said simply. “Ways of living.”
Her words sank into me like roots.
That night, my father asked how school was. Usually, I’d mutter something vague. But this time I said, “It feels like… home.” He raised his eyebrows but didn’t press further.
Later, alone at my desk, I flipped through my notebook. Each page was filled with fragments—lanterns, glass birds, seeds in broken ground. Together, they were more than stories. They were a map of everything Mira and I had shared.
I wondered if, years from now, someone else would find that notebook and feel the same fire. Maybe the game would survive us. Maybe it already had.
For now, though, I closed the book and whispered her name to the quiet room. Mira. And the echo was enough.
The next day, the library steps were empty again, just stone and shadow. But when I passed them, I smiled. Because home wasn’t the steps, or the tree, or even the notebook. Home was what we had made between us. And that—
That would not vanish.
The game had ended, but its echoes remained. Corridors felt different now, as if each wall carried fragments of the stories whispered against it. When I passed the amphitheater, I still heard the applause after Mira’s wildflower story. At the old gym wall, I imagined the flutter of unspoken forgiveness. Even the neem tree, ordinary as it looked, seemed to lean closer, listening for secrets.
But endings don’t announce themselves neatly. Life in school went on: teachers scrawled equations, friends traded gossip, the canteen sold samosas. To everyone else, the cycle of the game had closed. To Mira and me, it had only shifted.
The morning after the final gathering, I found Mira at the library steps, sitting where we had read about home. She wasn’t writing. Just staring at the stone, her hair catching the sun.
“You’re early,” I said.
“So are you,” she replied, smiling faintly.
I sat beside her. For a moment, we didn’t speak. It was enough just to be there, where the stories had found their end.
Finally, she asked, “Do you think anyone will remember us? Or will the next cycle erase our names?”
I considered. “Maybe not our names. But our words. They’ll live in the notebook. That’s enough.”
She looked at me then, serious. “But I don’t want it to be just the notebook. I want—” She stopped, biting her lip.
“You want what?” I asked softly.
Her gaze didn’t waver. “I want this to matter beyond the game.”
Her words followed me all day. Beyond the game. I had thought the stories were the point, that the themes were our anchor. But Mira was right. The real story was not in the notes, not in the applause, not even in the notebook. It was in the space between us.
That evening, I sat at my desk, restless. The notebook lay closed, heavy with finality. I opened a blank page in my own journal and began writing—not for the game, not for the crowd, not even for Mira to read. For myself.
I wrote about the first day, the skylight and the dust motes. I wrote about the note in the neem tree, the rooftop near the clock, the silence under the bleachers. I wrote about courage, forgiveness, and love. And I wrote about Mira’s voice, steady and bright, threading through all of it.
When I finished, I didn’t cross it out. I didn’t hide it. I let it stand.
The next afternoon, we met again—this time behind the music room, where echoes lived. Mira had brought the notebook. “I think we should leave it here,” she said. “For the next players. The echoes will keep it safe.”
We tucked it into a hidden ledge, the worn cover blending with dust and shadow. Mira touched it once, almost reverently. “Goodbye,” she whispered.
“Not goodbye,” I said. “See you soon.”
She smiled. “Always the reporter. You can’t resist the last word.”
As days passed, the game faded into legend again. New rumors sprouted. Some said the seniors had orchestrated everything. Others insisted a teacher secretly guided it. Mira and I stayed silent. It wasn’t our secret to explain anymore.
But our story didn’t fade. It grew in the ordinary moments: walking together to class, sharing tiffins during break, passing notes not in trees but under desks. Small things, but real.
One afternoon, after club meetings, we sat under the banyan tree. The campus was quiet, sun melting into evening. Mira leaned back against the trunk, notebook in her lap.
“Do you ever think about the first theme?” she asked suddenly.
“Beginnings?”
She nodded. “It feels like a lifetime ago.”
“It was only weeks,” I said.
“Funny how time bends when you fill it with stories.”
I looked at her, at the way the light fell across her face. “Maybe that’s what stories do. They stretch moments until they become forever.”
She turned to me then, eyes steady. “So what’s our forever, Aarav?”
The question startled me. But I didn’t look away. “Maybe it’s this. Not the game, not the notebook. Just… us.”
Her lips curved into a slow smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
The bell rang in the distance, sharp and familiar. Students spilled into the courtyard, laughter rising like a tide. Mira and I stayed under the banyan tree, unmoved by the bell’s command.
For the first time, I realized the game had taught me its final lesson: the bell may mark time, but it doesn’t decide when a story ends. We do.
Weeks later, the neem tree sprouted new notes. Curious students gathered again, whispering about a new cycle. Mira and I walked past, exchanging a glance. We didn’t need to join. The game belonged to others now. Our story had moved beyond it.
Still, as we passed, Mira brushed her fingers against the bark and murmured, “Good luck.”
And I thought: maybe that’s what love is. Not holding on to secrets, but letting them ripple outward.
On the last day before exams, I found Mira at the amphitheater. The steps were empty, the field beyond humming with crickets. She was sketching in her notebook this time, not writing. A simple drawing: the neem tree, the amphitheater, the library steps.
She looked up when I sat beside her. “A map,” she explained. “So we don’t forget.”
“We won’t,” I said.
“I know. But still.” She tore the page carefully and handed it to me. “Keep it.”
I folded it into my notebook, feeling the weight of it. Not heavy like a stone. Light, like a flame.
The bell rang then, startling the silence. For once, we didn’t rush. We just sat, listening as its echo rolled across the campus, long and lingering, as if even the bell didn’t want the day to end.
Mira turned to me. “When the bell rings, it means stop. But maybe for us—”
“—it means begin,” I finished.
She laughed, soft and certain.
And just like that, the story we had lived—the story the game had written through us—settled into something larger than endings. Something that felt like forever.
