She was awakened by the constant buzzing. With a groan, she reached out to dismiss her alarm, but the screen looked different. Brighter. Groggily, she peeked at the screen only to find out she was receiving a call. Her thumb hovered over decline, a flutter of apprehension stirring within her. The caller ID flickered, igniting a tumult of emotions within her core. Shit. It couldn’t be. There had been a pit in her stomach since last night. Maybe this was the reason why- this anticipation, this anxiety.
Hangover-ridden head throbbing, she went over the events of the day. She had made sure to call him in the morning and give him a breakdown of her schedule according to which, she should be in comparative politics at the moment and he never called twice. It was an unspoken rule only meant to be broken in extreme situations, she assumed. Why was he calling her then? He couldn’t have gotten to know, could he have? Looking at her tabletop littered with buds and bottles, she racked her brain to think about who would’ve told him. No one. That’s what it replied. It was a completely foolproof plan. She had run it through multiple checks and emerged unsuspected in every scenario. He couldn’t know or had he known all along?
Maybe he was calling about something else. “Something worse,” her brain whispered. Maybe it was her aunt. Her aunt had been in the hospital for a while now. Treatments had failed as she had watched a once jovial woman wither and shrink. She had a bad dream yesterday. That had to have been a bad omen. A warning. But they had told her she was getting better. Had they lied? Why would they do that? Maybe so that she could get the job done with complete focus. “That’s not fair to you,” her brain argued. Of course she knew that but they were just trying to get the job done. Maybe he was just calling because the situation could not be concealed anymore.Maybe he wan- that’s when it struck her.
He had found her notebook. The red one. The one with her secrets. Who she met, where she went, what she did in her free time. She had covered her tracks meticulously, not leaving a trace of her presence or her activity. Phone records, whatsapp chats, stains on her clothes- all washed away. She had erased and hidden the pieces of the puzzle only to hand him an entire cheat sheet.
In the dappled light filtering through blinds drawn tight, she glimpsed her fate with chilling clarity. In the light, she could see the bleak and dark call awaiting her. She would be called back. Her position here would be taken away from her. Everything she had worked so hard to secure would be snatched. She would be reduced to nothing. Reduced to the frail under-confident girl willing to take whatever she got to pave her way up the ladder. A harbinger of impending doom cast its shadow upon her, threatening to dismantle the carefully constructed facade she had so painstakingly crafted. The self she had tired herself to bury was now returning with its ghostly whispers and reclaiming its position.
With each ring of the phone, her resolve faltered. She knew she had to pick up but before that, should she wash her face? She should, right? It would make her voice less groggy and what if he could smell her through the phone, hear her heavy breathing, feel her palpitations spike? At this point, she could feel the walls of the room physically closing in on her. Light headed and anxious beyond any explanation, she tried to control her spiralling with whispers of “Relax” “You’re okay” “They do not know anything” “It’s just a call” all while her brain cursed her for not being more careful. This was not how her day was supposed to go. Five rings and a million shaky breaths later, she shut her eyes tight and pressed accept as she brought the phone to her ear.
Releasing a shaky breath, she whispered, “ Hi dad, what’s up?”
“Hi darling,” came the heavy voice laced with endearment.
Two of the pools of muddled-up thoughts that were gripping her brain earlier melted at that voice. That voice which, as a rule, she would hear only once a day (hence her spiral). That voice which would make her want to burrow her way into the ground but would also make all her worries burrow themselves away with a single sentence.
She zoned back into the conversation just in time to hear him say, “ You sounded a little distant and upset earlier today so I’ve sent you a cheer package. It should reach you in a day or two so don’t be lazy and please go to the mailroom. Don’t let life bog you down and just smile. If nothing else, the package will definitely make you do so. Okay bye, I’ll get back to my meeting now. Love you shona. Miss you.”
And just like that, the voice disappeared and there was silence in the room. ‘Huh, that was rather anticlimactic,’ she thought to herself. She shook her head. All those pools of anxiety and anticipation melted into a warm fuzzy feeling in an instant. A minute ago, she was cursing herself for being stupid and now she was cursing herself for being stupid enough to let herself spiral. This man could really scare her to death but God oh God, was he just a cute old softie at the end of the day. Maybe the pit she had been feeling was just simple old nostalgia- the sickening feeling you get when it hits you all of a sudden that you won’t see your parents for yet another 3 months. She shot her dad an ‘I love you’ text and drifted off to sleep with a big smile plastered to her face….this time to dream about her cheer package!