The door of the basement swings open. A woman walks out with a box, cups stacked precariously and a photo frame threatening to fall off. There’s only one bench here today with three seats. She sighs. She knows this bench. The blue tape on the third seat - attempt to hide a sharp piece of metal poking behind your hamstrings. But there’s another woman sitting already on the bench. Which means she’ll have to sit right beside her.

The seated woman notices her strutting forward, and flashes a polite smile at her before she sits down. She watches her tap her mule heels impatiently, leaning over her box, and herself glances at her watch. She fixes the flyaways in her hair, sitting straight, trying to not look curious about her box. She opens her phone. A few quick taps, a soft unlock sound. There’s nothing to see in her phone, though, and she’s promised herself to not reinstall instagram.

“First day?” the woman with the box asks.

The other woman is momentarily startled. She smiles in response. “Yep. You?”

She immediately regrets her answer. To her relief the woman with the box laughs. “No, quite the opposite actually. You’re waiting for your POC?”

“Uh-”

“Point of Contact. Have you been given your ID yet?”

The other woman nods more rapidly, getting it now. “Yeah, no, I haven’t. Apparently there’s a Windows outage or something.”

The woman with the box chuckles. “Yeah, fuck, that’s why I’m stuck here too. All systems are down and I can’t hand my ID back to them yet.”

“I didn’t actually think something like this was possible. I honestly thought it was some news clickbait.”

“Tell it to my colleagues. All they’ve been doing is aggressively texting on whatsapp their updates because Microsoft teams is struggling. One way to say goodbye.”

“I heard it’s an intern apparently?”

“God, I feel bad for the poor intern. Imagine crashing the whole world’s business on your third day at work.”

The other woman smiles. A moment of silence prevails. The other woman looks around, before sheepishly landing her eyes at one of the precariously stuffed photo frames. She squints, as if identifying where the familiar green patch of grass and white-red pillars are from.

“You, uh, sorry,” she starts, clearing her throat, “you went to Nirvana High School?”

The woman with the box turns her head, beginning to nod in surprise, before pausing. She spends a moment lingering at her face.

“Wait- Ishani?”

The other woman’s eyes widened. “Juhi? Juhi Desai?”

“Wait no way, I couldn’t recognise you at all, holy shit!”

Ishani half chuckles, still surprised. “It’s been, what, 12 years? You look so different - I grew so used to your rectangle specs and,” she points to her hair, “and your side parted bob - this long hair looks really good on you.”

“Even I couldn’t recognise you - your hair’s so straight now! And you have specs too, when did you get them?”

“Post 12th. Thankfully not a lot of power, but I hate how contacts feel on my corneas.”

“These look good, really suit your face.”

Ishani smiles. “I can’t believe this at all.”

Juhi leans back. She exhales, sinking into her seat, as if the discovery of this old time friend has added weight to her already full box. A few minutes ago, she was cracking jokes about the company to her colleagues - now ex colleagues - and secretly swallowing the grief of not meeting them again. A few hours ago, she was adding chia seeds to her haldi milk, wondering if this will be the last time she wakes up without a weight on her chest, at least for a while. And now it’s Ishani, Ishani Panigrahi from class 7F, 8D, 9A.

“To think we might have missed meeting right now too, had it not been for the windows outage,” Juhi replies, still in a daze.

“Right? Is it true though- everything is down?”

“Everything. I haven’t seen anything like this in years. My teammates can’t login, nothing. Fuck that, airports aren’t working either.”

“Damn,” Ishani sighs loudly, “seems like a fun start to my work here.”

“The one day I leave, everything falls apart. Like, just tell me you want me back, you know?”

Ishani looks at her, and they burst out laughing. Ishani watches her laugh, and notices the mark on Juhi’s eyebrow that she remembers from 9th grade. They were laughing that day too, in fact so violently that they didn’t notice this guy running past them and crashing into Juhi’s specs. She remembers her pausing to see blood on her eyebrow, and then resuming laughing till they reached the infirmary. She notices her double smile lines, the tiny mole above her lip, all the things that are now bringing back the memories of familiarity even more strongly.

“Are you still in touch with anybody, from school?” Ishani asks, after they stop laughing.

Juhi looks up, in thought. “Uh, very honestly, nobody I guess. I lost touch with Koyal too, soon after she went to college. I guess I occasionally talk to Anubhav.”

“Anubhav?”
“Ah, we met in like 11th, he moved to our school. He was in my class and we became good friends. He moved to Mumbai afterwards, I think, but we still maintained contact.”

Ishani nods her head, visualising the face of this unknown persona. “That’s nice.”

“You? Any luck?”

“Same for me I think, nobody as such, except Fatima.”

“Ah.” Juhi nods her head slowly. “She was in 9E right?”

“Mhm.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“She’s a lawyer now. Not entirely sure what type. I think she’s explained it to me, but I keep forgetting to pay attention.”

Juhi half chuckles. “That’s literally what it felt like to be in Tamaghna sir’s chemistry class.”

“Oh my god,” Ishani replies, “I can’t believe I went a whole decade without mentioning his name.”

“Do you remember when he made us all stand outside the class?”

“Yes! He said we were screaming and making noise like a bunch of girls.”

Juhi rolls her eyes. “My god, it used to piss me off so much when he talked down to us like that. Do you remember him making us wipe the floor after we played water fight?”

“And with newspapers because we didn’t have anything else,” Ishani replies. She crosses her legs. “Now that I think about it, he only made the girls clean the floor - the guys only had to clean the desk and the board.”

“I didn’t know it then,” Juhi says, one of her eyebrows raised and a small angry smirk on her face, “but I know now what I wanted to call him. A dick.”

“Piece of shit.”

Both Ishani and Juhi exhale loudly, together. They look at each other and start laughing again.

“Why are you leaving though?” Ishani asks, after a while.

Juhi tilts her head, looking particularly nowhere. “I’m not leaving, per se. I’m moving to the New York office.”

“Oh wow, that’s really fancy - so like the big leagues?”
Juhi raises her hands. “Guilty. You?”

“Me? Uh, I guess, heard that these guys have a great cafeteria. Thought worth interviewing for that.”

Juhi shakes her head. “You will regret that. AWM?”

Ishani nods, hesitantly. “How did you-”

“Because that’s how they continue to stay in the company - they cope hard about the cafeteria. You’ll be okay though.”

“You’re pulling my leg aren’t you?”

Juhi can’t help but smile. “How did you-”

“You haven’t changed a bit in 12 years.”

Juhi continues to smile. “Do you remember when you fell for it in 8th grade?”

“I had never been that stressed in my pre teen life as that day,” Ishani replies. “When you told me we had social science the next day and not science-”

Juhi starts to snigger. “You have to admit that was pretty funny.”

“Not in the least,” Ishani says, smiling. “How did you know I’m in AWM actually though?”

“We get an email when new joinees join. I saw your name, but it didn’t occur to me for some reason that it’s you.” Juhi looks up at the ceiling.

After a moment, something clicks. She sits up, now to face her directly. “Oh yeah, it said Ishani Verma for some reason. You got married?”

Ishani shrugs. “My parents got divorced, so I took my mom’s last name.”

“Ah, because your father…”

Ishani nods.

“...with that neighbour…”

Ishani nods again.

“Right. I’m sorry. That couldn’t have been easy.”

“It’s fine, I feel like it never really fully affected me so it didn’t disrupt anything. I mean, at least emotionally.”

“When was it? Sorry, we can not talk about it actually, if it’s too much.”

“No, no,” Ishani says, waving her hand in dismissal. “It was, let’s see, in 2013 January, so 10th grade.”

“Oh, damn, you were still in Nirvana then right?”

“Yeah,” Ishani says. She unscrews the cap of a small Bisleri bottle - Juhi guesses that’s what they gave her when she arrived today - and sips some water. “I was honestly glad it happened. I was so tired of my dad apologising, my mom forgiving and the same cycle repeating again.”

“What did you guys do after that? I’m guessing that’s why you moved.”

Ishani nods. “We moved back to my grandparents’ house in Delhi. My mom was inconsolable for a few months.” Ishani looks down at her feet. “It was a lot harder on her than me. I had to start life afresh too - I joined a girls’ school there, did commerce and here I am.”

Juhi nods slowly. She drums at her box with her index finger.

“You? How was, you know, post 10th for you?”

Juhi sighs sharply. “Wasn’t very different from my 9th and 10th to be honest. Just harder. JEE prep was the only thing my life had become for me.”

“Yeah, I remember how hard it was for you.”

“I feel like it’s so long ago, that it doesn’t feel like it ever even happened.” Juhi slides down her seat a little, relaxing her back on the seat. “My dad throwing my stuff around, my mom losing her shit regularly, me plotting running away - feels like such a different time.”

“But it worked out…?”

“I guess. 12th was the hardest. I’d never felt more isolated before, and after a while I started to get panic attacks before exams. I’d fall violently sick before any practice test. My father would get so angry about the money he spent on my coaching. My mother would tell me things-” Juhi swallows - “it just feels so dystopian to think about.”

They sit in silence for a moment, both seemingly deep in thought. The door swings open, and someone comes out. Ishani sits up, but the person walks right past without any intention of attending to them.

“Do you remember when we wanted to have our own fashion brand?” Ishani asks, half smiling, half still in thought.

Juhi half chuckles. “I was going to be the designer, you the marketing head.”

Ishani laughs. “Do you remember when we were so obsessed with F1 when they had that race in 8th grade in India? We thought we'd make a limited edition F1 merch.”

“Fuck, yeah, I remember praying every day that they have another race in India so that we could go watch.”

“I remember how much you wanted to go go karting that time.”

“Oh my god,” Juhi says, almost in disbelief, “I remember how much I had cried because my parents said no. How badly I wanted to go with our school gang.”

“Yeah, I remember how hard you were sobbing.”
“Do you remember when you said we’ll go gokarting together some other time?”

Ishani nods. “I do.”

“That’s the only reason I stopped sobbing.”

Another moment of silence, except this one felt more pregnant. Juhi holds her box closer to her, resting her face on the precarious arrangement of the objects sticking out. She breathes shallowly, looking at the picture of her and the full class in 10th grade, remembering the feeling of invincibility she’d felt at the time. She glances at her watch, and looks towards the door before resting her face on her box again.

“Do you still have your ID card on you?”

“Yeah,” Juhi replies. She shifts a little to pull it out of her back pocket. “Here.”

Ishani looks at it. “Wow, you look so different. And damn, head of global engineering, MSM. You really are in the big leagues.”

Juhi scoff laughs. Ishani continues to inspect her ID card.

“Why didn’t you call me after boards?”

Ishani’s smile fades. “What do you mean?”

Juhi continues to rest her face on her box. “You know, after 10th. I heard you had chicken pox. Why didn’t you call?”

Ishani chews her lip. “You know, with the chicken pox thing, and I was moving. And, I, uh, couldn’t find your number at all.”

“You could have asked someone from class.”

Ishani continues to look at the ID card. “I tried, but it was difficult.”

“You know the next time I saw you, it was on Fatima’s post on instagram.” Juhi dryly chuckles. “I had no clue what had happened to you with the chicken pox and the next time I saw you, it was on her post. Damn, instagram has come so far since that.”

Ishani sits quietly, pursing her lips. “Yeah.”

A moment of silence passes by. Juhi sits up. “Why didn’t you ever contact me again after that? I saw you have an instagram profile now.”

“Look,” Ishani begins, “it’s been a long time and I don’t think it’s worth going in that direction.”

“Right, no, of course,” Juhi says. “It’s just, I used to think of you as my best friend, and you kind of just went cold turkey on me, and I guess I never really understood it.”
“It’s..it’s not as simple as you think.”

“No, I should hope not,” Juhi says, half smiling. “We used to sit on the curb together and I’d rant to you about my parents, and you taught me how to make cold coffee, and we’d bitch about the dude, Malay, who was the class troublemaker. I’d like to think you didn’t forget all of that for something simple.”

Ishani grits her teeth. “I- it was because of my mother- she didn’t think you were, uh, a good influence.”

Juhi frowns. “Me?”

“The lady - the neighbour, who my dad, you know, cheated with, was your English tuition teacher I think.”

“Mrs. Ahuja?”

Ishani nods her head, chewing her lip.

“What the hell- I never realised-”

“Yeah me neither,” Ishani says, “till during boards. I used to tell my mom about your English marks always being really high because of her, and that’s how I found out.”

“Wait I don’t-” Juhi rubs her nose, “Even if it was her, why does that make me a bad influence?”

“My mom didn’t want to be near anything or anyone that reminded her of my dad,” Ishani says, exhaling through her mouth. “And she got really freaky, she threw away petty things like towels and specs holders because my dad had touched them. She wanted to move as far as possible from the whole city, because she felt like everything had been tainted for her.

“I used to tell her you’re close with your English teacher, and how I wanted to join the same tuition so that we could both study together. Initially she used to say no just because she thought it was unnecessary. I tried convincing her, saying Mrs. Ahuja was genuinely really sweet and how- how much you enjoyed spending time with her. But yeah, that backfired.”

Juhi swallows. “And she thought-”

“She thought Mrs. Ahuja had poisoned your mind and that you would do it to me too. And it terrified her to her core.”
“But I’m not…her. You didn’t tell her that?”

“I did,” Ishani says, almost exasperatedly. “You think I didn’t? But she- I was so worried something would happen to her and she’s my mother, you know? I loved her so much that I couldn’t bear to force this on her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, then?” Juhi asks, quietly.

“I…I didn’t think you’d get it.”

Juhi takes a deep breath. “You didn’t even give me the chance.”

“It was my mother, Juhi, and-”

“No, I know that,” Juhi interrupts, with her palm raised, “and I would have understood that then. I would have cut off contact with you myself. I’d have walked away.”

“It’s easy to say it now-”

“No, Ishani. I thought you knew me.” Juhi’s voice cracks. “I’d have done anything for you. You knew I was mature enough then to know that family politics is difficult.”

“I am sorry,” Ishani says quietly.

“You’re sorry?” Juhi looks at Ishani directly. “You went cold turkey at a time when I needed you more than ever. I was so fucking alone during 11th and my dad would lose his shit every two weeks. He would throw my books out of the balcony. My mom would say she was cursed to be my mother. All over a stupid fucking exam, and I needed to be able to talk to my best friend.”

Ishani looks up. “You think it was easy for me? Moving to a different city, starting from scratch? Joining an all girls’ school where everyone’s been friends since first grade? My dad’s aloof, mom’s inconsolable? I was a child too. I didn’t know how to deal with my parents crying and fighting and people treat you so fucking differently when your parents are getting divorced like it’s your fault. You think I didn’t need anybody?”

“You had Fatima!” Juhi raises her voice. “Don’t tell me you and Fatima didn’t become best friends soon after. I would watch all her posts on instagram, see her facebook posts where she’d tag you, and I’d see you guys laugh at the same shit we used to laugh about.”

“Well, what do you want me to say? I’m not going to say sorry for getting a friend.”

“You stole a friend from me!” As Juhi says it, she realises how loud she is. Juhi can hear herself breathing harder. “You’re the one who left. As hard as it was for you, you always knew why you had to leave.” Juhi speaks more quietly now. “I’ll admit I was jealous, but I’m glad you were happy. But all these years, I lived thinking I’d done something so horribly wrong that I’d pushed you away forever, and you didn’t give me the dignity of closure. You didn’t owe me anything else maybe, but you owed me my closure.”

Ishani sits quietly.

“Every year, when your birthday passed, I’d cry,” Juhi sniffles. Her hand trembles slightly as she wipes her nose. “I’d think about all the small jokes we had, and I’d replay every one of our last moments trying to figure out what I did wrong. And nothing breaks my heart more than knowing you didn’t trust me enough to understand why you had to go away.”

Juhi clears her throat. She wipes the corner of her eye with her sleeve. She exhales through her mouth, and sits up straight.

“I did it for my mother,” Ishani says, sniffling. “It wasn’t my choice to make.”

“I know,” Juhi says, quietly. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry, Juhi,” Ishani says, her voice small. “I wish I could tell you how sorry I am.”

“I know, Ishani. Me too.”

Juhi rubs her temples. “I hope you have a good time at this place. There are good people here.”

Ishani nods, unable to speak. Juhi gets up from her seat, holding her box tightly. She begins to strut ahead in her heels.

A woman comes from the other direction, seemingly concerned. “The windows outage is still not resolved, sorry. You want to return the ID later then?”

Juhi exhales. “You can take it from that new joinee. I left my ID with her.”