The next morning mom was shocked to see my swollen eye and red cheek. I had tried to rub ice on it all night long and made sure I did not come out of my room before 10.00 am because that is when dad left for work. Mom was curious to know what had happened but she didn’t have to ask anything just the look in her eye was enough for me to understand what was going through her mind. So I told her a story that we had come up with and said that a few guys tried to steal money from Timmy’s friends and when we tired to stop them they hit us and ran away from there. I don’t know if mom bought my story or not but she didn’t say much afterwards and returned back to her chores in the kitchen when the phone rang and I ran to get it. Mom asked who it was and I said it was Tarun calling when actually it was Preeti who was very worried about the events of last nights and started throwing questions at me rapidly. I tried to explain it to her that mom was around and I couldn’t disclose much right then but everything was alright now and there was nothing major to worry about. She was not satisfied and said that she wanted to meet me tonight and see for herself. So I told her I will meet her at our usual place after tutorials.
So in the evening I went to the tutorials with a band aid on my forehead even though I wasn’t hurt there just to increase the affect of injury and get all the sympathy love I could get. After tutorials I went to our secret place behind the apartment in colony and waited for Preeti to come and shower me with love and tell me how proud she was of what I had done and how thankful her friends were. For around 25 minutes I strolled up and down the alley and kept peaking at the way where she was supposed to come from. There was no sight of her anywhere and I wondered what had happened. Finally my patience ran out and I went home dejected, disappointed and worried because never before had Preeti failed to turn up for a date.
I guess I wasn’t able to hide my disappointment at the dinner table because mom kept looking at me in a funny way. She looked to be angry at something but I wasn’t really interested in anything and kept thinking about how I was ditched. Next day while on my way to school I stopped at a telephone booth and called her place but her mom answered and I slammed the phone down and went to school. Throughout the day all I could think about was why hadn’t Preeti turned up to meet me. Bad thoughts ran through my mind and I even thought of trivial issues like maybe the band aid that wasn’t really required that had pissed her off. At cricket practice I did not bat or bowl and just stood there and yelled out instructions to the juniors taking out my frustration on them. I couldn’t wait for the evening when I could go to the tutorials and ask her what really had happened.
Usually when I get home I have my lunch and straight away head to my room to watch some TV but that day I sat in the hall by the phone waiting for Preeti to call and quickly answered the phone every time it rang but her call never came and I was dejected once again. I got ready earlier than usual and left for the tutorials and waited near the gate for Preeti to come with her gang of girls. All passerby’s kept asking me what I was doing near the gates like a watchman and all I did was smile meekly and said I was waiting for a friend to bring me my notes that he had borrowed. But going by my reputation I don’t think any of them bought my story.
Finally Preeti arrived and I was expecting her to be angry at something and throw a lot of tantrums instead she straight away came to me and started apologizing vociferously. I knew the ball was in my court now and my time to call the strokes so I asked her with a glum look on her face that I needed a very good reason from her for not turning up and apologizing just wouldn’t do. She looked surprised and told me,
“You’ve got no idea what happened, do you?”
I vaguely replied “no”.
She then narrated the events of last night and said that after tutorials when she was about to come to meet me, my mum along with Timmy’s mum had caught hold of her and told her she knew what was going on between her and me and asked her to keep away from me. She also warned her to never call me ever again and if she caught her doing so, the consequences will be extremely bad for her and she will even go to her parents and complain about this inappropriate behavior.
I was left stunned while Preeti was saying all this and shook my head in disbelief when the events of the last couple of days came rushing back to me. I realized that mom had eavesdropped in our complete conversation with the cordless phone she had kept in the kitchen with her and since then had been acting wierd. I knew now why she looked angry at dinner and hadn’t spoken much to me since then and that is when I recollected something. Dennis the menace, the cartoon character was a pretty funny kid but he did say a few things that made a lot of sense and that day I realized something he uses very often to be extremely true, “you can fool some people all the time and all people some of the time but you can never fool mom.”
Thankfully Preeti had taken it all very sportingly and our challenge in maintaining our relationship had increased ten fold but as all normal teenagers with their rebellious streak, the more they tried to stop us the better we got at doing it.
