The New Girl on My Old Bed

I watched her from the empty bed across the room, struggling to find comfort in that rough mattress. I can relate to that agitation; even my first night on that bed had gone sleepless. But I’ve seen three other girls get used to it in the last three years; I’ve watched that grainy pillow mould into their heads over time. They always get used to it. Life at ACJ hostel makes you get used to a lot stuff.

She spent almost the entire night pacing the room, jamming numbers into her phone but never making the call. It had been a while since I’d seen someone not balling their eyes out on the first night. This new occupant of my old bed seemed like a tough cookie. That and a freak-show.

“Casserole!” she spoke to herself, wiping the sweat off her face, “This room is a bloody human casserole!”

I called it pressure cooker, I said, but casserole is good too.

Of course, she never heard me.

At around 3am, she fell asleep at the table facing the window, with her head bent at an odd angle. The stiff neck’s gonna kill you during the orientation tomorrow, I said. That reminded me of my orientation three years back. I never got to attend it. I was lying in the morgue of a hospital when that happened. 

The sky was just beginning to get lighter when she woke up. I watched her nibble at some home-made chips and stare off into the space through the window, looking intrigued. What’s so interesting out there, I thought, following her gaze, almost expecting to find some hot, shirtless guy hanging from the trees.

But it was just the creepy woods and a plain sky. Don’t tell me you’re the poetic type, I huffed. She muttered something inaudible and did what nobody ever did in this room. She opened the window. Don’t, I wanted to scream. Jesus, woman, don’t you fear the mosquitoes!

She then upturned her rucksack on the bed and out came the books: Poets of the Romantic Age, Wuthering Heights, bla-bla-bla. Great, a freak-show and a literature geek.

Picking up a notepad from the heap of books, she returned to the desk and gazed out the window again. OMG! She’s gonna write a poem on that insect-breeding, filthy forest.

But when she started scribbling, it turned out to be a letter to her mother. I saw that and Ammi’s face flashed before my eyes. She still cries to sleep at times, thinking of me. She still curses the unknown drunk driver who had run me over that morning.

The new occupant of my old bed wrote about the trees and the sea, never realizing that she was actually saying how much she misses home and how scared she is. She was just like my Ammi; her own feelings were beyond her understanding.

The alarm startled both of us back to reality. I stood in one corner of the room, invisible to her, as she got ready for her first day at ACJ.

“Ow, this stiff neck will kill me!” she whined aloud. Told you, I replied.

As she rushed out of the room, I felt kind of glad that she talked to her. It’ll almost be like conversing to her.