The Silent Room

It was the year 2001, and I was in some backwater kampung school in Cheras. I had a 28″ waist, stylish medium-length jet black locks neatly combed back, gleaming in stark contrast to the discipline that was demanded from the blue prefect’s shirt that I casually wore over a t-shirt without a tie, with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows.

It was my post-PMR year, and I was sort of a bad-ass maverick prefect. I was one of the only four Malay boys in the top class [the rest were 5 indians, over 30 chinese students] in the entire school. I was often sent for contests, quizzes and debates by the teachers [obviously because they were a bunch Malay racists], and was pretty much a regular guest in the teachers’ office. After having saved more than a few delinquent asses from the tyrannous, ex-cop discipline teacher, I gained the favor of the ‘bad boys’ too.

I had great friends, some of which have grown into brothers today, and I did rather well for my studies. It was a fantastic year, one that arrived after almost three years of alienation, loneliness, grief and anguish. Yes, it was almost a perfect year.

Keyword: Almost.

The only thing that was missing from what could have a been a perfect fourth year, was that I didn’t have a girlfriend. This tiny little fact affected me profoundly, in way that only a 16-year old hot-blooded male would understand. Raging hormones and what have you.

It bothered me greatly, you see. It was a time when I had achieved many things, and felt that I had it all. However, that one empty slot was such a gaping void that my mind just couldn’t keep itself from feeling bothered. So, like any other boy of that age, I had a crush. Figuring that it was my final year and that I didn’t have much else to lose, I decided to try and get into her skirt.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

My crush, let’s call her Hida for convenience’s sake, was also a prefect. In my school, one of the prefects’ tasks was to usher everyone else out of their classrooms and keep the classrooms empty throughout recess. We had three buildings, three storeys each. Each floor is patrolled by a pair of prefects who, aside from keeping everyone else out, pretty much do nothing but walk around and make small talk. Once you get a partner, you stay with him/her the whole year.

So I was a bit upset that Hida wasn’t paired with me, but I figured it was a small matter since I could always talk to her during our early recess. However, I had a problem. I was in 4-A, whereas she was in 4-D, which meant that there was very little common ground for any conversation between us, different circle of friends and all that.

I moaned about this to my partner, a cheerful and uh, very proportionately-blessed girl who always enjoys a good chat. Let’s call her Izzah, shall we? “Everytime I tried talking to Hida,” I would tell her during our rounds, “…it always ends up awkward. I really don’t know what to talk about with her.”

Funny I didn’t realise it then, but whenever I brought up that subject, one way or another, Izzah would always swerve the topic to something else. We would then probably spend the recess hours up on the second floor corridors, looking down and chatting over the most mundane things.

About how I saved some tardy buffoons at the rear gates before they got caught by any teachers.

About how she ruined her science experiment.

About how I crawled through the school fence back in Kedah to go out late at night.

About how one of her netball teammates was such a whiny bitch.

About how I managed to keep my hair long and not get caught.

About how she almost got scolded for not wearing her tudung properly.

All that, while I was thinking about Hida, and contemplating on what I could use to spark something off between us.

This went on for months, until one point that I realised that Hida was actually annoyed by my presence, and the realisation sank in like a curved blade that made a clean slice through my gut. I was quite devastated to hear that all this while I’ve been a huge fool, and have been shamelessly showcasing my foolishness in plain public sight the whole time. I was really depressed and heartbroken, and it took almost a week to get my usual self back. By then, the final exams were just a few weeks away.

It was also at that time that I realised that Izzah has been talking to me lesser each day. At one point, she went and asked the head prefect to swap partners with someone else. I was later paired with another guy, but to me, recess duty is just that, a duty to be fulfilled by someone who wore that blue shirt, so it never really mattered who my partner was.

It wasn’t until I noticed how Izzah turned away from me, and how she ignored me that I figured something wasn’t right. Out of curiosity, I asked my new partner if anything happened to her. What I learned shocked me to the core.

“Fazri? Seriously? For a 4-A guy I thought you’d be smart enough to figure it out!”

“What?”

“Izzah had a crush on you.”

“Pfft, that’s bullshit. She was always hanging around with that other guy, what his name?”

“It was HE who was hanging around HER.”

“Uh, okay. So?”

“My god, you really are an idiot. You’re probably the dumbest genius I’ve ever met.”

“Cut the crap, man.”

“Let me make this simple. She liked you. You liked Hida, and you weren’t exactly hiding that fact.”

“…wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, WAIT.”

“She gave up on you, that’s what happened.”

“Oh, shit.”

The first time in my life a girl actually liked me, and I shoved her aside as though she was never there. “I’m such a heartless bastard.” I told myself. I repeatedly said that to myself hundreds of times. After that, whenever I was cycling home after tuition classes, occasionally I would stop at a breezy, grassy cliff that overlooked a vast football field below. I would just sit there and bury my face in my hands, thinking over what I had done. One evening, I decided that I would talk to her again, and properly apologise. It was the least I could do.

Unfortunately, it never happened.

It wasn’t until SPM was over and everyone in my year was taking it easy that I actually saw her again. I was walking to school, checking out what was going on [it was a textbook burning ritual, actually] and I crossed paths with her. She was with cycling a friend, hastily heading somewhere. I had to redeem myself, and so I raised a hand.

“Hey.”

“Eh, hi. It’s been a while!” she said with a smile, as though nothing had happened between us.

Well, nothing actually did happen, and it was largely my fault.

“So, uh… how’s holidays?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just hanging out with friends.”

“Yeah, maybe we could, uh.. hang out some-”

“Hey, I gotta go. Talk to you later, yea?”

I swallowed hard.

“Yeah, okay. Seeya.”

All I could do was stand there and watch as she pedaled away. It was my first mistake, my first regret and I remember the anguish I felt for what I did to this very day. Every once in a while, as I ponder alone in the darkness of my room I would think of her. What I could have done. What I could have gained. What I could have been. Of course, over the years, experience has taught me that regrets don’t mean a thing unless you learn from it.

And learn from it I did, though it didn’t save me from making yet another mistake. It was a mistake that continued to haunt me for many years onward, to this very day. They say life’s lessons are really just a series of mistakes, and the day you stop making mistakes is the day you return all that you learned back to where it all came from.

I continued to make many more mistakes after that, but I guess that’s another story for another day.