Of Daydreams and More

I resurface to reality when he waves a hand in front of my face.

"Were you daydreaming again?" he asks, amusement clear in his voice.

"No," I lie, and when his mouth quirks up a little, I realise that I've been caught.

"Sort of," I then admit lately.

I'd been doing that a lot lately, fantasising. He always seems to know when my daydream chronicles started, and exactly when they ended. But he never asked what I had been dreaming about. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that.

After a long silence, I look up to see him reading a book, his head bent down and  a few strands of jet black hair falling flawlessly over his eyes. To an outsider, he would look peaceful. I knew better. Seeing the intricate expressions in his dark brown eyes, I could tell that he was in internal turmoil as he tried to figure out just who the killer in the story might be.

Staring at him was another thing I had been doing a lot, but if he noticed this, he never pointed it out. Sometimes he would suddenly look up and catch my eyes. He would then avert his gaze shyly and go back on reading, as if it was he who should be embarrassed.

"Do you ever suddenly feel that the universe is so much better that we think it is?" I ask him out of the blue.

He looks up startled. It is one of those moments I act like a 5-year old asking why the moon is following our car. He has to be very patient while explaining.

Regaining his composure, he answers.

"Well yes, I do. But there are also times when I think that I make out the universe to be better than it actually is."

That got me depressed. If a great person like him couldn't see the positive side of things, how could I?

"It's when you say things like this that I wish you didn't exist," I say childishly, tugging out my bottom lip a little.

"But I don't exist, remember? I'm just a figment of your imagination. An illusion you have created to escape from the world."

He says all of this very calmly, looking so beautiful that I wish I could believe him. But I can't; he is the realest thing that has ever happened to me. If he doesn't exist, neither do I.

The writer is a grade XI student of Scholastica.