Equation

√3 = 1.73

❝ Lose your dreams, and you might lose your mind. - Mick Jagger ❞

They were quiet, frozen in their seats: eyes rolled upwards at us and fingers clutched around spoons loosely, letting a drop or two of the soup drool down from its embrace.

"Mom. Dad," I started slowly, "this is Damien. We're classmates." I smiled, awaiting a response and sticking a strand of hair behind my ear. Neither of them parted with her lips.

"And," I continued, before any embarrassing situation could hold its grip amidst us. "We're doing a group study thing, so..." I trailed off, almost stammering with my words. I rubbed my hands behind my back and took a quick glimpse at Damien - who stood in a smiling reverence and appeared to be mocking me for my impotent conversation skills.

"I'll be here almost every day," Damien completed it for me, all of a sudden. "Unless of course, we have a game of ball being telecasted."

"Well, in that case, young man," dad began, placing his elbow on the table, "you should especially visit us on those days so we can catch up the game together."

Damien's eyes gleamed with approval as he bent forward to extend his hand for a shake. "That sounds great, sir." While my dad and Damien were busy exchanging laughs and football moments, I looked over to mom and she returned me with an eye roll which screamed 'men will be men'.

"Now, spit it out!" I said after I practically shoved him into the room and closed the door with a loud thud behind me. I was furious.

Lifting his hands in midair, Damien started defensively, backing away from me till the back of his leg hit the bed. "What?" he cried. "I did tell you in the bus about it. And I very well know that you heard it as well, since I got your angry look." He shook his head.

"And I clearly remember saying you that it's not going to happen," I said, with his explanation not helping.

"Oh, I thought that you were just mad at the moment." He dropped lower and took a seat at the bed. "Guess you're equally just as mad now."

"I said, I can't help you with school. I need to figure out mine first." I breathed out a heavy sigh and looked back at him.

"Now that there," he said, lifting his index finger and pointing at me, "is a very selfish thing to do: to help your best friends but not the ones who you haven't talked to. Come on!"

And that was absurd. It had never been about friends. But it was about me, at least now. And call me selfish but I needed a break, an escape. "Seriously?" I said.

I was starting to regret my words like I usually did and just looked at him hopelessly. Hoping that in some frame of my fate, he would understand my position and my feelings. The room fell silent and all that could enter the room was the sound of the insects racketing outside in the lawn.

Somewhere, I guess, he deciphered what I wanted and I wanted to reciprocate it as well, but it never happened. I grabbed a chair, flipped it so that the back-rest would face me front and took a seat.

And then, he spoke.

"Okay, now that I'm here, you can at least teach me something. Anything." Taking a more serious note, he continued, need reeking from it. "I just hope to pass this time or... I'm done."

This time, I was up for no argument. I was exhausted and probably filled with guilt and shame. Moreover, the eagerness in his desire was compelling and soon, I found myself not in a position to reply. But I did anyway, taking in a deep breath. "Look, I really understand what you mean but this time," I paused. "I am really sorry. You've chosen the wrong person"

The bigger and the more important thing here, that he could not fathom, was that I did not want to provide him with a fake hope - the hope of getting better after studying with me, the hope that everything will get better. Because I was afraid - I was afraid that I would ruin his already existing chances of doing well.

His grin was now gone and he stood up straight, shrugging his jacket as he did so and looked straight in my eyes. It appeared that it took him quite an amount of struggle and strength to do so. He felt uneasy. Slowly, he made his way towards me until he was standing just before me - his eyes just a few inches above mine. "I know my choice," he said. "You don't say a word about it. You just say your final word, if it is a yes or a no on you helping me get pass."

That was sudden. I had no reaction to provide. All I could think was if he could hear the sound of my heart beating out of my chest, because I could hear his. I could see his eyes aiming at mine and I could feel his warmth radiating to me.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Instead, I had to draw an involuntary gush of air which made me feel like I was choking and would be out of breath any moment. "Okay," I said at last, stammering with the word.

"Okay," I repeated and he nodded.

And then suddenly, with a virtual fist bump making its way into the air, Damien shrieked his victory but immediately contained himself as I passed him a fierce glare, and he looked to the other side - rubbing the back of his head.

When he turned to face me, he said mostly to himself than to me, "Well, thanks. Now I can show that Jimmy that I too can pass."

"Jimmy?" I asked instantly, unable to place the name anywhere.

There was a slight change of expression on his face - his lips pursed together and eyebrows furrowed over his creased forehead. And, just as quickly as it had surfaced upon his face, it disappeared with the same pace. Rubbing his temple, he responded simply, "just some guy I know," and walked over to the desk and started playing with the table lamp. "Thinks I'm too inefficient to do anything in life."

I sat quiet - listening to him talk and unable of forming any decent response to it. I was not used to talking to random people, let alone talk about life and troubles with them.

But, little did I know then, that he was no random person.

"Okay," he said, pulling me out of my thought and turned around with a pencil dangling from between his teeth. His voice came out muffled due to it. "What should we start with?"

"Get that out of your mouth!" I almost yelled when I saw that.

Taken aback by the sudden outburst, Damien stepped back and the pencil loosened itself from his capture and dropped to the ground, initiating a heavy silence after the clink created by its contact with the floor.

"Physics," I muttered finally, and moved past him to open the drawer and fetch out the books. "Here." I passed him a notebook which impressively, he caught it spontaneously from across a few feet. After all the books were with me, I pushed back the mouth of the drawer and threw the books on the bed.

"Are we going to study on the bed?" Damien asked, still standing at the centre of the room and while I was just about to set up my foot on the bed. His question left me with one leg in the air which I later realized must have looked very weird.

"Yeah." I shot him a blank look and eventually took my seat on one corner of the bed and flipped open the books. "Any problem?"

"Uh, no. I'm fine." Damien lowered himself to pick up the pencil from the floor and walked for the bed, rubbing the pencil onto his shirt as he did so.

It had been hardly ten minutes with the books spread open between us and the so-called brainstorming going on, when the door of my room yawned open just a bit and we snapped our heads in its direction.

A knock preceded the screech of the door and after it, as my mom's head stuck out of it. "Hey," she said, entering the room, still limping by one leg. "Here's some juice and cookies; thought you two would need it with studies."

Albeit Damien seemed to reciprocate my mother's smile, I knew very well of why the juice had been brought. It was to keep an eye if everything was all right. I wouldn't be surprised if, after a few minutes, dad would barge in to discuss about the New Jerseys and then mom again to ask if we needed any stationary.

Yes, my family could go to that extent. Any extent, to be honest. But it was for me, for my safety. And even when things went out of proportion sometimes, I could not complaint.

I loved them for that.

But also, it was too mechanical for my age.

Sighing under my breath, I glanced over to her with a reassuring look and mumbled a thanks before she took the leave.

And, left the door ajar.

"Okay, so where were we?" Damien asked, his voice muffled as he stuffed up his mouth with cookies - with more than half of the crumbs falling on the bed. I wanted to point that out, but then discarded the thought and continued.

"Momentum associated with an electron," I replied and took a deep swig of my juice.

Even while I had been sitting with an almost stranger - a classmate I had never talked to before except for the rare homework or school politics, I felt at ease. I imagined myself sitting with Chloe or Robin, and the thought of studying with them seemed crazy to me.

However, it was not any less crazy with Damien, but it was just...different. And, the most difficult space to decipher was that there was nothing different about him, technically speaking . He was the regular boy who would sit at the back benches and pull up failed-pranks all by himself and get a detention or two every weekend - either for his activities or for his blank answer sheets.

Maybe, he was different. Everyone is. And just maybe, I was unable to see his difference, then.

"Isn't it crazy," Damien started abruptly, looking up from the question he had been solving, "that everything around us, every-freaking-thing, is nothing but a constitution of tiny electrons revolving around a positive sphere?" He appeared lost, tapping his pen on his slightly-clenched jaw. And I just stared at him.

It seemed as if he had wandered off to a different dimension and was slowly and silently, pulling me with him, as well. I was there, and I joined him. "And that everything ultimately, is the same." I paused. "And the tiniest of difference is what makes us all contrast to such a massive scale."

I felt Damien's vacillating pen halt to a stop and his gaze fixed to me. I found it amusing how everything around us had a lesson to teach, a moment to relate. As if, nothing had been a fact all this while, but a metaphor.

"It's that configuration which makes one thing digestible and the other the opposite. It's that one DNA strand which makes all the difference in the world. It's that negligible angstrom value which determines what and how we see," I trailed off with the idea, wind slowly finding shelter among my tresses, and I could feel a smile playing on my dry and chapped lips. I resumed, too lost in the pleasure of thinking. It was my realm. "And, how the slightest change in the shade of orange across the sky can make it all wrong; how the green screams the value of the tree against the backdrop of the mountains. It's crazy, it really is."

I lifted up my gaze to the ceiling momentarily, and saw my life.

Suddenly, a hand waved in front of me and pulled me out of my thoughts. Started, I realized that I had been smiling rather idiotically all this while. I cleared my throat and looked down, unable to decide on a reaction to provide him with.

"I have physics and maths as subjects. Not philosophy and painting," Damien chuckled and ran a hand through his thick hair, the polo graphic of his shirt peeping out from the jacket as he did so.

"So, where were we?" I tried avoiding any eye contact with Damien and aimlessly started flipping the pages before stumbling upon a bookmarked page. "Okay here," I answered for myself, and did not stop till I thought it was enough for the day.

Eyes were focused on one another and nods were persistent through the whole lesson. Pens were scratched and pages were turned till the night could not turn any darker.

It was eleven when we finally decided to take a stop.

"I think I'm done." Damien pulled his hands up in air dismissively. "I think I could rather beat you in the exams with so much of education." His eyes gleamed up with the laughter that followed.

"You're not even done with half of the first chapter yet," I pulled back, closing and stacking the books on the table. "Let's just say you will reach there in no time."

With a slight glint of giggle, he jumped down from the bed, stacking his own fair share of books into the drawer. "Well, let's just hope." He looked around the room, shuffled on his legs till the moment I was sure that he wanted to speak something and continued at last. "Brooke's your best friend, right?"

"No," I said, amused. That was a question nobody from the entire school, let alone my class would ask me because apparently, everyone knew about me and Jason being diaper-buddies. "Why do you ask?"

He winced back just a bit so slightly, that I would've missed it if I were doing so much as looking down to his feet."Just," he said, "Nothing, really."

I observed him shy away and look down while he licked his lips. Who doesn't like a nice play? "You like her, don't you?"I asked quirking up a light smirk and turning myself completely to face him. "The whole school knows that."

"Except Brooke," Damien pointed out instantly and again shook his head, kicking the floor under his feet. For a fraction of a moment, I wanted to rush in to save the dear life of my carpet, but in a reflex ended up with something like:

"Of course she knows -" And instantly I bit my tongue, wishing Damien had not heard my words. But as it turned out, he had not missed it. Or, maybe he was not ready to miss it.

"What?" He sprang up his head like a cork. "She knows?"

"Know what?" I white-lied, hoping he would fall for absolutely any excuse that would be given to him. I continued to stare at him since I was not the one trapped into this whole somebody-is-asking-me-about-my-crush situation.

"That I like her," he said, eagerness reeking out from his tone.

"Of course not," I replied and tried to laugh it away. I was not supposed to let him know that Brooke already knew about it, because as it turned out, Brooke had made it clear that she would never, and I repeat as she had too, never ever, go out with Damien Waters . "I mean, no - as far as I know - she would've told me otherwise, you know," I stammered.

"Yeah, I know," he murmured in disappointment and absentmindedly, ran his fingers through the books lined up by the top shelf. He stopped when his fingers touched a blue hardcover book. His finger trailed the binding of the book to read the title and then, he almost screamed, lifting himself into the air. "You've got the exclusive edition of Dawn of Hazel?" He blinked his eyes a couple of times, and continued shaking his head. "I - I mean, do you read Dawn of Hazel?"

Through the looks of his reaction, I feared that he would run out of breath soon. It was quite terrifying - his excitement splashing and radiating through his eyes all over the place. "Yeah, I guess?" I said.

He cursed under his breath and his eyes beamed with astonishment. "Weren't there like only a couple of copies released? Like, literally in a few hundreds. Carios is crazy!" he hollered in one breath, "- he releases books only in minimal numbers and then leave us hanging in mid-air. Like, dude, you can't do that to your readers; plus he would also earn massively if he actually cared to publish a few more copies."

I watched him speak restlessly all the while, suppressing a giggle and when he finally stopped, I had to somehow contain myself, which proved out to be rather difficult. "Well, that's what makes him different, right? And of course, meaner - to leave people cringing in their beds and make them curl up in a corner and drown in their own tears. You can't even imagine how much s**t I had to go through to get this copy. It was - "

That was when Damien interjected me.

"You need to give me this," he said, brooding in his own thoughts. "I promise to return this to you as soon as possible. The first thing you'll know when you wake up tomorrow morning is that the book is beside you." He looked back at me, disconnecting his sight from the blue paradise and shot his innocent smile.

That never worked with me. "No," I shot it straight - no argument, no bargain and no expression; just the sweet, life-saving and efficient no.

"What, why? Please?" Damien begged and tried his best to convince me with his pleads but being the awkward boy that he was, he failed miserably at even bringing me to something as close as to a maybe.

"This book is very dear to me," I said, directing Damien's hands away from the shelf and locked it, keeping the key on the table. "I cannot just give it to anyone, uh, someone," I choked on my words, trying to complete the sentence after literally addressing him as a complete stranger. I shrugged dismissively and continued to make my point clear. "I would not even give the books to Jason, just so you know."

"Oh right, it's fine." Damien stepped back and swung his bag from the bed onto his left shoulder. "I probably should leave."

There was no doubt that I felt a stab of guilt and remorse hit me but if there was one thing I couldn't let people take away from me - on their own, it was this exclusive copy of DoH.

And of course, my dream. But no one would ever take that because no one knew of its existence.

I nodded, sweeping a strand of hair behind my ears and walked him out.

"So, see you tomorrow after school?" Damien said and looked back just as soon as he had taken a step out on the front porch.

I looked up, startled by his voice. "That should be fine, I guess," I replied blankly, in a flutter.

"Where should I wait for you?" he asked, opening the bolts of the huge iron gate.

"Uh -" I tried to think for a while but nothing trod past my brain. It felt like being stuck in ice, an avalanche racing against my body. Dreams always ruined everything, they just have to.

"I am pretty sure that I asked you to name a place to meet," I heard his voice and lifted my head up to meet his eyes, "not build one."

"School gate?" I spluttered immediately.

Without a second's delay, Damien hooked his thumb up in agreement and smiled as he walked down the street, leisurely humming a 90s tune, hands dug deep into pockets and backpack swinging behind him.