Kya Yahi Pyar Hai (Trans: Is this love?)

I started in shock at my phone and noticed that it was shaking. I forcibly tried to make myself stop shaking and struggled to make my brain overcome the urge to turn off the phone, get under the covers and pretend I didn't see that text. My brain seemed to be stuck on the "I love you and have loved you since we met" part. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, hoping that the extra oxygen to my brain might help wake me up a little. I started at the phone for a few minutes and decided to take the coward’s way out and pretend I didn't see it until morning. Plugging the phone into the charger, I stared at it for a minute more before turning off the lights and getting under the covers.


I looked at the ceiling and tried to stop my brain from thinking about anything that had happened tonight. The game, the party, the confrontation with Jack and now the text from Kevin. Kevin’s name brought my mind back to the text and I groaned. I really needed to go to sleep but at this rate it was never going to happen. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head, hoping that the old trick would work and help me fall asleep. Twenty minutes later I gave up and turned on the light. I walked over to my laptop and booted it up and started doing some homework. Or at least tried to do some homework. A few minutes after I started writing an essay I had for mass communication and society, I noticed that I had started writing down my thoughts about Kevin, instead of writing about the decline of the movies. I gave up on the homework idea and just let my thoughts flow onto the computer screen.

Reading thru what I had written I started thinking about when Kevin and I had first met. It was 5 years ago on the 1st day of classes’ freshmen year at Rover High School. My family had just moved to stage and I had gone from living in a huge city to a town of barely 20,000 people. Added to this was that in this small red neck little town, my family was the only Indian family around. We moved to Rover in the end of June and school didn’t start for Jack and I until the beginning of September. Jack and I spent the whole summer by ourselves basically as our parents tried to figure out the best way to run their brand new business.

I remember the 1st day of school that year. Jack woke me up at 7 in the morning and told me to get my butt out of bed and get ready. He drove us to school because being almost 18 and a senior in high school, he had just bought a car. After parking and getting our final schedules for the year, Jack and I split up to head to our separate lockers and then classes. I walked over to my locker which I had discovered during orientation a few days ago and found it blocked by someone’s backpack. I looked around to see whose backpack it could be when a guy walked over and said “Sorry, I didn’t see you there sooner.” “It’s okay”, I said and I opened my locked “I didn’t need to desperately open my locked yet.” The guy smiled and said “Hey, I’m Kevin.” I glanced at him and smiling said “I’m Rory.”

Just then the bell rang and I said “Well time to face the music”. “Are you new around here” Kevin asked as I turned around to head to class. I looked at him and said “yeah, I am. My family just moved here a couple months ago from Seattle”. “Whoa moving from Seattle to Rover, that’s a big change”. I laughed and said “yeah it is a big change, trust me”. I started to walk off and Kevin fell into step beside me. “What’s your first class” he asked. I opened my bag and grabbed the schedule I had stuffed in there a little while earlier “I have Biology with Lisen”. “Hey that’s my 1st class too” he said laughing. I just smiled and we walked into class. Somehow I ended up sitting at a lab station with Kevin beside me and a bunch of his friends around us. By the time that class ended, I had made some friends and realized that Kevin was a hilarious guy who loved to play pranks and jokes.

During the rest of the day, Kevin and I discovered we had 4 classes together that year from a total of 7 classes. As the first few weeks of classes passed, I spent more and more time with Kevin outside of school, just hanging out. We started becoming really good friends and sometime during those months, I fell for Kevin and fell hard…