The Friend Who Was Only Fun

The wall behind the hall was where Class 7 ate.

It was about the height of a chair and it had six good spaces on it. The paint had gone at the top, and there was one corner where the brick had come away, and that space was worth less than the others. From up there you could see the gate, the bin, the tree. And one bicycle, chained to the tree since March, going nowhere. You got there fast, or you sat on the steps with the Class 5 boys. Nobody wanted the steps. Nikhil had sat in the third space from the left since June.

Zaid sat in the fourth.

Zaid ate in order. Rice first, then the roti, then whatever was in the small box. He gave the last bite of the small box away every single day, to whoever was nearest, without looking, and had probably never noticed he did it.

Zaid was the funniest person in the year. He did Mr Fernandes checking the register. It once made Nikhil laugh so hard that rice came out of his nose. That story got told about forty times, and got funnier each time.

He was also generous with the actual big things. When Nikhil’s grandfather died in August, Zaid was the one who did not do anything weird about it. He did not go quiet. He did not go careful. He came round on the Sunday with a football and made him play until it got dark. Nikhil has not forgotten that and is not going to.

And roughly once a fortnight, Zaid said something in front of everybody that cost somebody.

Six boys on a wall. Six boxes. One bin.

It was never planned and it was never sustained. He did not follow anybody about. He would find the exact thing, at the exact moment, in front of everybody. He said it, and got the laugh, and moved on to something else within the minute.

In September it was Aditya’s father’s car. It is an old car and it makes a noise at the gate.

In October it was the way Farhan’s mother says hello.

In November it was Nikhil.

They were on the wall, all six of them, with the boxes open. Nikhil had got a bad mark in the maths test. Zaid did a thing about Nikhil’s face when the papers came back. It was extremely accurate. Nikhil could see that even while it was happening.

Everybody laughed. Nikhil laughed too, mostly on time, with his box open on his knees and a roti in his hand.

Then in January it was Nikhil again, about his shoes. Black shoes, one lace newer than the other. They had been his cousin’s before they were his. Everybody on the wall now knew that.

That afternoon Nikhil worked out something he did not particularly want to know.

He could not put a date on when it had started. But before he said anything on the wall, he did a small check first. A quick look at whatever he was about to say, turning it over to see if there was a handle on it. He had been doing it for months. He had not noticed himself starting.

He did not say anything to Zaid. Nobody shouted at anybody. He never told him why, and Zaid has probably never worked it out and possibly never noticed at all.

He just started eating somewhere else.

Box, bag, step. Not wall.

The first week was bad. He took his box and sat on the low step by the water tank, on his own. The tap there dripped onto a wet patch that never dried, and the step was cold through his trousers, and there was a drain by his left shoe. He ate it in about six minutes. Then he had twenty-two minutes left over. He could hear the wall from there, over the bin and the tap and the tree. He could hear exactly when the laugh happened.

The second week was worse. By then it was a thing about him and not an accident, and one of the Class 5 boys asked him why he sat there.

Lunch was worse for a month. The step, the tap, the drain, the wet patch, the box on his knees.

In February, a boy called Vivaan started sitting on the step too, with a book and a water bottle. He wanted to read, and the wall was too loud for reading. They did not become best friends. They ate near each other four days a week, one box and one book on the step between them, and talked about roughly two things. It was fine.

Nikhil still sees Zaid all day. Same class, same corridor, same bus queue, same gate. Zaid is still the funniest person in the year, and Nikhil still laughs at the register thing, because it is still funny.

But at half past twelve the wall has six spaces, and the boxes come out, and two of the spaces are empty. One belongs to a boy who left in December and hasn’t been replaced.

The other one is the third from the left.