A Sweet Poison - Chapter 19

A couple of days passed normally. The same old hiking and trekking and gaining knowledge about different plant and animal species. I had to admit, the tent almost seemed home to me after getting familiar with it properly. We had even dug thin channels around it, so that there was no danger from snakes or other dangerous creatures like scorpions. Rina was still basking in her fame. I was still healing. But now I looked even worse than before. Earlier my wounds were fresh. But now they were healed and I found myself covered in brown stretch marks all over. I started wearing full sleeve shirts to hide them as much as I could, although the heat boiled me in full sleeves.

Now we had completed a week in this camp already. I regularly rang up home and regularly met DJ too. Could he not just stop behaving like my friend and come closer? Didn't he understand me at all? Couldn't he even reciprocate my feelings? Huh, I guess I had no answers to that. Was he taking his mother's advise carefully and acting as my brother? No!

As we went for breakfast, Rina said, "Hey Sarah, I feel worried."

Worried, Rina? No way. She was always the bold and carefree type. I couldn't understand what had bought along this change. She really looked kinda sick and green. She even had dark circles under her eyes that I hadn't seen before. I tried to cheer her up.

"The bold girl who got Mr. Chand kicked out of the school shouldn't be worried about anything, should she?"

She smiled weakly and then shook her head. "No Sarah, I'm damn serious. Last night I had a horrible nightmare and I woke up quivering. I wanted to wake you up right then, but I found you mumbling DJ-DJ and so I drank some water and went back to sleep."

I bit my lip and grimaced. I knew I talked in sleep and from the past month I had been dreaming of nothing else but DJ. But to think that I had been caught red-handed in dreaming about him, especially by Rina was embarrassing. I knew she'd tease me like crazy when she'd be back to normal.

I quickly tried to change the topic. "What was your nightmare about, Rina?"

"That is the point, Sarah. Last night when I woke up I clearly remembered it. But now, I can't even get a flicker of what I saw. The only thing I'm sure is that it made me scared and it was a bad dream."

"Well, it happens to me too. All night I dream of something and the next day when I try to pinpoint what was it, I can't. It just slips out of my mind.", I tried to comfort her.

"Sarah, it's not like I haven't had nightmares before, the thing is that I can't even get over it. It's sort of haunting my subconscious mind. I have got a sick feeling in my throat and some strange feeling in my stomach!", she explained.

This got me confused. "Well, may be you're sick? " I offered.

"I don't think so. I don't feel anything wrong with my temperature. It's something mental. Do you wanna know what I think it is? "

"Go on", I encouraged. What was she having in her mind? Suddenly she was behaving all strangely, not at all like her previous self. She hadn't even greeted our tent mates today.

"I feel... ", she began slowly, "That... that something horrible is going to happen soon with me!", she finished seriously.

What? Rina talking like this? Surely she'd gone off her mind. I rolled my eyes and said, "You know what? You sound exactly like a road side gypsy making false predictions!"

She grimaced. "Say what you want to, Sarah. But I think I'm right. And I'm scared. I feel all alone..."

My friend needed consolations and I was going to give her that. Soberly I pressed her palm and said, "You are not alone, friend. You've got me and everyone else here. No harm will touch you here. "

She looked at me and said, "Thanks, I needed that. I just fell so insecure... Forget it now".