Chapter 3: Digital Heartbeats
The drone of Mr. Mehta’s voice was a flat, concrete wall. Tectonic plates shifted in slides of dated graphics, a monotonous saga of continents colliding over millennia. My pen was still, poised over a blank page. My entire consciousness had narrowed to the small, rectangular weight in my trouser pocket.
It buzzed.
A single, insistent tremor against my thigh. I shifted in the hard plastic chair, the sound swallowed by the lecture. I didn’t reach for it. Not yet.
Another buzz. Then another in quick succession—a staccato pulse of secret communication.
The buzzes became a persistent hum, a live wire tied to my nervous system. I cleared my throat, my eyes fixed on a crack in the ceiling plaster as if it were the San Andreas Fault itself. My hand slipped into my pocket, my fingers closing around the warm device. I slid it out under the desk, shielding the screen with my cupped palm.
The lock screen was a riot of notifications. Her name, over and over.
A meme: a cartoon of two blissful, smooshed-together continents with the caption, ‘us when these plates finally shift.’ A laugh bubbled up, harsh and sudden. I coughed, covering it with a fist.
Another message. A photo. Her face, blurry and close, her glasses crooked on her nose. Her hair was a dark cloud around her, the collar of her familiar sleep shirt just visible. ‘studying you instead of biology,’ the text read. My thumb traced the curve of her cheek on the pixelated image.
Then, a new bubble. Three dots pulsating. My breath held.
‘I can still feel your hands from this morning. The exact shape of them.’
The classroom, with its dust motes spinning in the sterile light and the dry chalk smell, dissolved. There was only the memory of her skin, the heat of her through the thin cotton of her sleep shirt, the weight of her in my lap as dawn bled into the sky. My mouth went dry. I reached for my water bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a gulp.
The next buzz came as the water was in my throat.
‘House is so empty. Everyone’s out till late.’
I choked. Water sprayed onto my notebook, a chaotic splash over the blank page meant for subduction zones. I bent forward, coughing violently into my elbow, my eyes watering. A few classmates glanced over. Mr. Mehta paused, his pointer hovering over a map of the Ring of Fire. “Everything alright, Hardik?”
“Fine, sir,” I rasped, wiping my mouth. “Wrong pipe.”
He nodded, turning back to the slides. The coughing fit subsided, leaving a raw ache in my windpipe and a far hotter, more urgent ache lower in my body. My heart was a frantic, trapped bird. I looked at the phone again, screen now dark. I tapped it awake.
The last message glowed back at me, an undeniable invitation. A premise.
A promise. It hung in the charged air between my screen and my racing thoughts. The hum of the projector, the scratch of a pen nearby, it all faded into a dull background static. My thumb hovered, smearing a droplet of water from my choking fit across the glass.
I typed a single word. ‘Pritha.’
The three dots appeared instantly. They pulsed, a hypnotic rhythm. I watched them, my knee bouncing under the desk.
Her reply was not what I expected. A photo of her wrist. The delicate bones, the pale blue veins. Her fingers were loosely curled, resting on what I knew was her duvet. ‘Look,’ the text said. Then another: ‘Goosebumps. Just from thinking about it.’
My breath caught. I could see them, the fine, raised trails on her skin. A visceral record of a memory, of my touch summoned by thought alone. The classroom’s fluorescent lights felt suddenly sterile and cold.
‘You’re picturing it, aren’t you?’ she sent. ‘The park. The blanket. My head on your shoulder.’
I was. I was also picturing the way her hair had spilled over my arm, the specific weight of her. I typed, my movements stiff. ‘You’re not playing fair.’
‘I don’t want to play fair,’ she answered, immediate. ‘I want to play. Period.’
A heat flushed through me, sharp and dizzying. Mr. Mehta’s voice dipped and rose, discussing convergent boundaries. My own boundaries were dissolving, melting under the digital assault. Another buzz.
A voice note. I fumbled for my earbuds, plugging one in discreetly. I pressed play, cupping my hand near my ear.
Her voice was a low, breathy whisper, filled with playful static. “I can’t concentrate on a single thing,” she murmured. “All I can think about is how your T-shirt smelled like sleep and soap. And how quiet the world was except for us.”
I closed my eyes. For three seconds, I was back there. The damp grass, the chirping birds, her warmth seeping into my side. The memory was so potent it ached.
I opened my eyes to the grim classroom. I held the phone closer, as if it were her. I typed, ‘You’re killing me here.’
‘Good,’ she fired back. Then, a new text: ‘What are you wearing?’
I blinked at the question. I looked down at my standard uniform. ‘Stiff white shirt. Scratchy trousers. Why?’
‘I’m trying to see you,’ she wrote. ‘I’m lying here imagining you in that chair, all frustrated and trying to look normal. Is your top button undone?’
Instinctively, my free hand went to my collar. It was. I always undid it the moment roll call was over. ‘Maybe.’
‘I knew it,’ she replied, followed by a grinning emoji. ‘Your tell. It means you’re thinking. Or you’re restless.’ A pause, then another bubble. ‘Which is it today, Hardik?’
Both. It was violently, overwhelmingly both. The lecture notes on the board swam into meaningless lines. The tectonic plates could have crumbled to dust right then and I wouldn’t have noticed. She had pulled me entirely into the world of our messages, a universe of implication and memory.
‘You tell me,’ I sent back, a challenge.
Her response took a moment. The dots pulsed, stopped, then pulsed again. ‘I think,’ her final message began, ‘you’re restless because part of you is still here with me, on this bed. And you’re thinking about how badly you want to leave that classroom and come finish what we started this morning.’
The truth of it landed, a clean, direct hit. My grip on the phone tightened. The dryness in my throat returned, worse than before. There was nothing light about her words now. They were a clear, warm invitation laid over the stark reality of the clock, the distance, the rules.
I had no witty retort, no deflecting joke. The noise of the school felt like a cage. I stared at her words until they blurred, my mind already cycling through excuses, the fastest route to her house, the feel of her door handle under my palm.
The bell rang, a shockingly loud clarion call. I jerked in my seat. Around me, chairs scraped, bags zipped, the mundane world crashed back in with ruthless force. I stood, my limbs feeling alien.
I shoved my unused notebook into my bag. My phone, still clutched in my hand, buzzed one more time. A final message. ‘Lunch break doesn’t count,’ it read. ‘I’m just getting started.’
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. The words were a live current in my veins, short-circuiting any thought beyond motion. My bag felt like an anchor as I slung it over my shoulder and joined the stream of students flooding into the hallway. Their conversations were a muffled roar, a distant ocean against the drumming in my ears.
I moved with purpose, my long strides eating up the linoleum. The exit doors at the end of the west wing were my only compass point. A teacher called out a greeting I didn’t hear. My phone was a burning brand against my palm.
The heavy door thudded shut behind me, cutting off the institutional noise. The afternoon sun was a physical shock, warm and immediate on my face. I took a deep breath, the air free of chalk dust and floor cleaner. My bicycle was chained to the rack, but the idea of fiddling with the lock, of the slow turn of pedals, was suddenly unbearable.
The distance between school and her house was a known geography of side streets and shortcuts. I knew every crack in the pavement, every overhanging tree. Normally, it was a fifteen-minute ride, a twenty-five-minute walk. My body decided for me.
I ran.
My bag slapped against my back, my shoes pounding the sun-warmed concrete. The first burst was pure adrenaline, a furious escape from the cage of anticipation she’d built. I wove past a woman with a stroller, muttering a breathless “sorry” over my shoulder. The wind rushed past, pulling at my shirt, but it didn’t cool the heat building under my skin.
My mind replayed her last words—just getting started. They fueled each stride. I cut through the small park we’d been in that morning, the memory of her weight in my lap a sharp, sweet ache that pushed me faster. I was running towards the echo of that silence, the one filled only with us.
My phone buzzed in my clenched hand. I didn’t break stride, just lifted it to see her name on the screen. I tapped the message open with my thumb, my breathing ragged.
“Front door’s unlocked.” That was all. Four words that sent a new, more potent jolt through me. It was trust, and an invitation so direct it stripped everything else away.
I pumped my arms harder, my legs burning. The houses began to change, familiar landmarks blurring past. I was a straight line aimed at her. Another buzz. I glanced down, nearly stumbling on a cracked slab of sidewalk.
This time, it was a photo.
It wasn’t a posed, dramatic shot. It was pure Pritha. She was lying on her side on what looked like her living room sofa, the soft, worn fabric a familiar cream color. She’d taken it from above, her face tilted up to the camera. Her glasses were off, her curly hair a wild halo against a cushion.
Her expression was a mixture of warm anticipation and playful impatience. A slight, knowing smile touched her lips, but her eyes held a softer, almost vulnerable openness. It was hot in its intimacy, cute in its casualness. A flush spread across her chest, visible above the neckline.
The caption read: “Hurry.”
The word was a spark to tinder. A final, gasping burst of speed carried me from the public street onto her quiet, tree-lined lane. Her house, a modest whitewashed bungalow with a blue door, came into view.
The sight of it, usually a place of calm, now felt like the epicenter of everything. My lungs burned, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. I skidded to a stop at the blue door, the paint chipped in a spot I knew by touch. The brass handle was cool under my sweating palm.
I pushed. The door swung inward without a sound. The interior was dim and cool after the afternoon glare, smelling faintly of lemony polish and the old books her father collected. The house held its breath. “Pritha?” My voice was rough, too loud in the quiet.