We had just turned 15, P and I. We weren’t born on the exact same day but our birth-dates almost flowed into each other or as she put it, segued. School was over and heat hung a sleeping curse over the town that afternoon. You could almost hear the shuffle of a dog’s feet from the other end of town. It was terribly quiet. We were lying on her bed, I hunched over an old magazine article which had jotted down the best possible way to rescue a damsel without resorting to violence, It was written very well, although the author was probably over-reaching with extravagant examples. She was painting her toe-nails. She did not particularly liked to do it but it was something she just had to do. In the previous year’s autumn fair a lady magician had blessed her with magical powers and immortality (she mumbled something about a bird’s flight). Our magician could not speak anything in our tongue except the word orange. She gave P immense power but in return she asked that P always keep her toenails flush with orange color.
Now I am not delusional neither am I trying to be cute but I am merely stating facts. I had observed the powers myself. Often when she felt bored, P would stop pedestrians in their track, she would fuse the light-bulbs which consumed too much power and even gave a florescent glow to mosquitoes just so that she could easily spot and avoid them. She abhorred killing. Soon after, mosquitoes guessed that they had been beaten thoroughly and since no evolutionary help seemed to come in near future they quietly left P’s house.
But not many people knew about her superpower. Anyways, she looked up after she was done with her nail paint and asked, rather more like wondered aloud, ” whether is it a good time to make a visit to the zoo ?”. I surprised at the suggestion added that I too was going to say the same. We put on our shoes and took the crawl path to the zoo. At the end of our street, we found the kid who was famous for spitting into every open drain hole in the whole town. He was in class two or three but looked mature for his age. Normally we would have ignored the spitting wunderkind but today we found him standing completely still. He had one arm wrapped around the electric pole and the other hand half placed into his denim shorts. He was looking like a sad bad-ass. I asked him, whether he would like to come to the zoo. He just grumbled something about having being given another forced haircut this morning. P ran a hand over his bald pate and stroked it lightly. The kid stopped complaining and ambled alongside. We made it to the Ice-cream corner in just over 15 minutes, which on a hot summer afternoon could be considered terrific speed, though I do not recall having rushed anytime during the walk. We woke up the Ice-cream guy but he out-right refused to serve us because of heat and went back to sleep. We just placed our hands over the ice cream stall and felt its cool. Our little companion rubbed his head all over it. After having cooled off considerably we resumed our walk.
By now, I had begun singing in a hoarse voice, I always sang in false bad voice and pretended that I was doing so in jest. To be honest, I was devastated for the want of a singing talent. We got inside the book shop at the gate of zoo. It had lots of little pocketbooks on animals. I picked one on antelopes and the kid chose one on pythons. P just drifted alone in the shop. I would not have noticed, had the boy not pointed it out. All the animals on cover of books as well as one on the posters of walls were looking, staring at P. We tried moving around the bookshop but their eyes were just hooked onto her. She even accommodated boy’s request to take several trips around the shop. She always gave the innocents their wants.
But when she turned her head back, straightened her right foot so that her toe-nail kissed the floor headfirst and spoke in an affected voice, “I am going to be a bird by next birthday, I am never going to turn sixteen with you.” She then also gave me something. A heartbreak.