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The soft strumming of chords reaching Noelle’s ears causes her to turn her head up from her algebra textbook and watch as Akarsha plays the guitar, struggling to compose a melody, but surprisingly having landed on a relatively pleasant tune.
Akarsha appears to notice the ever-present sound of scribbling on paper stop, so she too glances up from her instrument, only to meet Noelle’s eyes staring her down. She stares a lot like her mother —and Jesus Christ is Mrs. Lei scary as shit— which is absolutely terrifying. “Oh, uh, do you want me to stop?”
Noelle twirls her pen around between her fingers. She does that a lot during class, Akarsha has noticed. “No, it’s fine. I don’t mind,” she says with the tinniest smile pulling at her lips.
Akarsha nearly feels herself crumble, so she immediately breaks off eye contact and hastily answers with the first thing in mind. “Cool, uh, thanks!”
The scribbling continues, only pausing momentarily, and so does Akarsha return to her guitar. Admittedly, it’s not hers, but Noelle’s. Clearly it hadn’t seen much use; Akarsha had found it placed in the corner of Noelle’s room collecting dust, and she can’t help but wonder why, when she vividly remembers the countless hours Noelle had spent nearly every weekend trying to teach Akarsha how to play. It initially bore no results, much to Noelle’s disappointment, but somewhere along the line Akarsha began to practice during her own time, and, well, here they are now.
“Why’d you stop playing the guitar?”
Noelle doesn’t immediately provide an answer, but her hand stops moving, and a pool of ink begins to form on her paper as a result. She internally curses herself for the mistake and whites it out. “Well, it no longer interested me,” Noelle lies. Akarsha doesn’t pry, though she’s sure she knows. “Why did you start playing the guitar?” she asks, hoping to divert Akarsha’s attention.
“Dunno,” Akarsha says. “Probably ‘cause of you.” Pure honesty seeps in her words, but she doesn’t really mind.
“Really?” Noelle is clearly not buying it. She’s used to Akarsha’s shenanigans, the flattery that only appears right before she asks for a favour.
“Honest!” Akarsha’s voice sounds strained, like she’s trying to fight back a snort. She accidentally plays a particularly bad chord, and Noelle turns to look at her like she’s committed a crime against humanity. “My bad, Jesus.”
Noelle sighs and promptly returns her focus back on her textbook, except now, the numbers seem like gibberish, and the questions get more incomprehensible each time she reads one. Akarsha watches Noelle read the same exercise six times in a row, then huff, read it another time, and proceed to bookmark it for later. She continues playing before Noelle can catch her staring.
“This is insufferable,” Noelle comments, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I’m extremely bored.”
“Hi extremely bored, I’m dad.”
Noelle groans. “So very helpful, dad.” She stands up to fix her posture and stretch her arms. Akarsha tries to improvise a beat from the painfully audible cracks of Noelle’s joints, and earns herself another pointed stare.
“C’mon, it wasn’t that bad.”
Noelle nods. “Precisely. It was awful.”
“Dudedudedude, newsflash, why don’t you take . . a break!” Akarsha brightly suggests. “It’s usually what normal people do. When they’re tired. Y’know.”
“This is a first,” Noelle notes with a sly smile.
Akarsha looks up from her guitar, tilting her head slightly to the side. It’s not often she hears this tone of voice coming from Noelle, nor that smile. It’s a bit unnerving. “ . . what is?”
“An actually considerate suggestion coming from the likes of you,” Noelle replies without missing a beat, still sporting that same smile on her face.
“Damn dude, that’s iiiiiice cold!”
Noelle offers nothing more than a cold shrug before she sets a twenty minute timer on her smartphone. She grabs a notebook and pen from her desk and settles on her bed, resting her back on a pillow placed against the wall. She tries to write something, draw even, but with nothing coming to mind, she ends up trying to make a sketch of Akarsha. She has never been interested in drawing, barring the lessons her mother made her attend in sixth grade, but she can attest to the fact that she has indeed acquired some limited knowledge on the matter.
Naturally, the sketch ends up coming along rather amateurish, but if asked, Noelle could easily pass it off as something done on purpose to mock Akarsha, because it’d be a thing she’d actually do.
“Akarsha?”
“Yeah?”
Noelle taps the tip of her pen on the paper of her notebook for a few seconds. “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Knock yourself out, what’s up?”'
There’s a slight pause in the air as Noelle wonders how to phrase her question. The restless noises from outside do not cease, thankfully: there’s the voices of children playing on the street and the sound of a ball bouncing on asphalt, the occasional splashing of water as cars pass over puddles formed from yesterday’s rain, the crackling of autumn leaves as the wind passes by.
“Do you . . have a crush on anyone?”
Akarsha goes to answer, but hesitates. Maybe she’s just as unsure as Noelle is. “I don’t really know. Kind of?” She glances up, and her expression is one Noelle cannot read in the slightest. “Why? Do you?”
“No,” Noelle firmly answers, but ends up second-guessing herself. “I—, I mean, I can’t say. There’s this person, but I’m not sure.”
“Ooh, you into a classmaaaaate?” Akarsha asks with a devious smile.
“Excuse me for the wording, but, have you seen our class?” Noelle decides not to mention the expectations her mother has set on what kind of person she should date either. Older, wealthier, should be taller, have a prominent chin, his forehead shouldn’t be very large, his eyebrows should be neither too thick or thin, and so on.
Akarsha lifts her hands up defensively. “What, you don’t like good old me?” Noelle’s brain scrambles for a response: I think I love you, Akarsha, and that’s the issue. “Fair enough, alright! But, well, you gonna tell him at least?”
“It’s complicated,” Noelle answers with a sigh, raking her hand through her hair. It could ruin our friendship, and there’s a lot to consider besides that, too.” A lot of risks to weigh, a lot of possibilities, scenarios swarming Noelle’s mind and tipping the scales. The uncertainty that comes with this kind of topic is what had always deterred Noelle entirely, and this would’ve stayed the same had it not been for the one person who had managed to stir all of Noelle’s internal calculations: Akarsha.
Akarsha is a wild card. She’s unpredictable, like the swing of a double pendulum, like the ebbing of tides. She comes around with the strangest jokes, falls silent when it’s least expected and perks up to chime in with something entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. In short, Akarsha leaves Noelle confounded: just when she thinks she has accounted for every contingency, Akarsha is there to prove her wrong. And in any other case, Noelle would think she does it on purpose, but this is just how Akarsha has always been. There’s nothing to calculate with her. Nothing that’s definite.
She contrasts directly with the things Noelle likes. Noelle loves mathematics because equations are not subjective, not left to chance, but black and white: you can either be right or wrong. There is no grey area. She regards mathematics as a domain in which she does not have to express her opinion, but rather, simply find a singular correct answer based on logic and theory, matters she also finds vitally important to her life.
And Akarsha is . . none of that.
“Yeah, okay, but think about it, what if it goes well?” Akarsha leans back on her chair. “You’re . . awesome, and skilled, and pretty! And a bunch of other things that I’m not going to mention because it’ll fuel your forehead-big ego.” Noelle has to squash the little flutter of something in her stomach upon hearing the aforementioned comment about her forehead.
“Are you saying my forehead is large?”
Akarsha resists the urge to correct Noelle with ‘comically large’. “Me? What? No! Never!” Akarsha exclaims, having to fight back a laugh. “Listen, okay, my point is, if he rejects you, he’s missing out. I say go for it and whatever happens, happens. You get me?”
Noelle heaves a deep breath. “I’ll . . have to think about it.” She looks down at her textbook and notices several giant scribbles of black ink on the paper that had begun to bleed on the next page.
She decides she’ll watch Akarsha play instead.
Noelle notices a lot of things in the process, not things noticeable to the average eye, but Noelle is in love with Akarsha, so it’s no surprise how she manages to flawlessly catalogue such information, let it weave itself in her mind, around her fast-beating heart.
She notices how the warm, afternoon sunlight spills lazily between the white curtains of her room and how Akarsha looks divine bathing in it and its intricate softness outlining her figure like a halo. It’s a view that tears Noelle at the seams: Akarsha is glowing, and she doesn’t even know it. She’s like the sun; extravagant but beautiful in its nature. She laughs like it’s the first time she’s had a reason to —a laugh so delightful that the clouds above stop drifting by to watch— and smiles like it’s the last time she’ll be able to. And she’s beautiful. She’s so beautiful Noelle thinks she could gaze at her forever, if only to immortalise the sight in her memory.
“So, what exactly are you playing?”
“Uhmmm . . ” Akarsha can only shrug. “I don’t really know? just some chords I thought of,” she says, staying silent for a particularly long moment. “I have, like, an idea? Like a song in my head, you know, but it just won’t come out the way I want it to, which sucks,” she explains, looking up at Noelle, hoping for some sort of helping hand.
“I . . believe in you?” Noelle says, quietly.
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Yes? Is that supposed to be a question?”
Akarsha grins brightly as she extends the arm she had over the guitar forward and turns her hand into a thumbs-up. “Damn, thanks Frenchman!”
Noelle scrutinises Akarsha’s hand and says absolutely nothing, choosing to instead scoot over to the edge of her bed and stand up to approach her. “Well, what does the song sound like?”
“Kinda like, uhhhh . . ” Akarsha starts to hum, stringing together a haphazard melody. Noelle listens in a surprisingly attentive fashion.
“I could try replicating it, if you’ll allow me," she offers.
Akarsha seems surprised at the notion, but immediately hands Noelle the guitar. “Oh, hell yeah, go for it.”
Noelle takes it from Akarsha’s hands, carefully, as if it’s an centuries old relic, though she’s unsure why. She hasn’t played the guitar since she was a child, but the memory of it still lives in her muscles, and she’s able to mimic the tune, nearly pitch perfect. Akarsha seems particularly impressed. Awestruck. She extends her arms for Noelle to return the guitar, and languidly strums the same chords the girl had played, eyes lighting up like she’d struck gold.
Noelle feels the sudden dryness in her mouth. She doesn’t think she can help herself anymore. Not when they’re this close. “Akarsha?”
“’Sup?” Akarsha doesn’t look up, her eyes now softly shut, humming along with the song. It doesn’t matter how a minty breath faintly clings on her face. It doesn’t matter that it’s coming from Noelle, standing just inches away from her face. Nothing matters. The world could end. But some things are just more important.
“Can I kiss you?”