Ginger :: Friendship Untold Stories !

Day 1

First hour of the school, everyone sat in their positions facing the black board and eyes on the door. Ray was sitting right in the middle of the room and he was watching the blackboard. In another two months the summer vacation was due. Something good to hope for!

Its almost 9 past 5 minutes, English teacher was due to come and she never used to be late. Ray as his friends called him had the tag, Raymond Jose; class Xth B as in roman letters. Ramya had already cleared the board clean and it was black to the purest, with date and class name to the left box and subject of study on the centre and the Roll number and list of absentees on the right. She had made this into an art ever since she was elected as the class leader. And she was pretty when she used to do this. Ray always made sure that he was on his seat before she does this cleaning and writing part.

Teachers foot step were heard that made the back bencher's to stop the noise they were trying to initiate. Rajesh, Sujith and Manoj were the main guys there, the three back bench gangsters. They ruled the class and had their own gang wars sometimes with the rebels inside the class and otherwise they took it into other sections or seniors in the school. Ray never went in touch with them; he would simply slide by them and avoid an eye contact always!

Anna ma'am entered in with a set of white sheets and our English text book, this was that time of the year when we were to prepare for the models and then finally enter the main exams. As soon as she entered everyone stood up and sang "Good Morning Miss ", she nodded on this and smiled back with a soft good morning student's line. This is the routine which continued for the past 10 years of every child in this school.

So this wasn't unexpected, they had a test today. But Ray was trying hard to pick the English text book from the bag may be a final peak through the lesson before the test went out. But no, Anna ma'am started her glance through the class room, checked back at the list of absentees. Made a note of the count and look back at Ramya, she seems to be in spell as she gradually got up and went to ma'am wished her again and collected the white answer sheets and started distributing the pages from left, Ray got the paper after she had distributed 5 people already. He was trying to smile, but Ramya was too busy with her work that she rarely noticed this. It's not that she completely ignore him, she just made casual looks and smiles. But Ray quickly erased this sweet part and looked back to the teacher. She was making a final glance at the questions she had prepared. Everyone who had their papers were eagerly waiting for the questions to be distributed.

Finally that happened; she went on to write the first question on black board:

"1. Who does Lencho have complete faith in? Which sentences in the story tell you this?" 

Ray looked at the question, chapter 1; "A letter to God" glanced before him. He knew the story like the back of his head and he was quite sure about the answer. He was the first to scribble in back in the paper. The class was so silent that the even the heart beat was clearly heard to the next person. Everyone quietly started writing the answers as soon as teacher went ahead with the questions on board. Ray was sure that the gangsters were doing something nasty as he could hear the papers being crippled and thrown from behind. The class test went on peacefully but something nasty happened behind the benches and all students rushed in there. And to Ray's surprise, Rajesh was taken out from the mob bleeding right out of the classroom...

To be continued...

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