‘Why?’
‘I checked the answer keys. What was the answer, Aanchal?’ he barks.
We had decided we wouldn’t check the keys. We had decided we would live in the confidence that we wouldn’t get anything wrong.
‘Aanchal?’ he grumbles.
I recall the question. It wasn’t a tough one. It was one of the five questions I had tackled in the first thirty minutes. ‘42.’
‘No,’ he says.
His words are like a tight slap. My heart beats against my chest.
‘No?’ I mumble. ‘But I had revised . . .’
‘It’s 42,’ he chokes. ‘42 is the answer. In all the answer keys, 42 is the answer. But how can it be 42?’
A flood of relief courses through my entire body.
‘It was a six-mark question,’ he continues, his voice feeling farther away than it is.
I feel the air shift.
‘Vicky?’
I hear him breathe heavily into the phone.
‘The answer is 42,’ he says, his voice that of a broken man.
‘So we got it right, then?’ I ask, knowing it’s a lie.
‘21, I got 21 . . . Aanchal. Six marks . . .’
His voice trails.
He speaks again, this time with anger in his voice, ‘SRCC is out of the question. I won’t make it . . .’
‘Jaan—’
‘. . . you will.’
He disconnects the call.
I stand there, looking at the phone in my hand. I call him back. His phone’s switched off.
‘Overconfidence,’ I say to Daksh. My head spins.
I sit on the sofa to settle myself. My blood boils. This is what I feared Vicky would do. I kept telling him to go easy, not make silly mistakes and that’s exactly what he has done now. I can almost picture him smirking at the easiness of the question and then skipping the last two steps. That’s where he made the mistake. My head feels heavy.
My voice comes out in an angry rant, ‘We had done similar questions hundreds of times. Hundreds! He shouldn’t have got it wrong. He used to solve the question but did not put the values in. Why? “It’s so easy!” he’d say. Then he’d look at me as if I’m some dumb little girl. I had warned him, I had warned him so many times. I kept saying, “Vicky, complete the answer, Vicky, complete the answer,” but no, he didn’t listen.’
‘It’s one question, Aanchal.’
‘One question?’ I sneered. ‘Where does this leave Vicky and me? If I get through and he . . .’
‘In the same university? Still in a relationship?’
‘You won’t understand. You’re just a Dubai kid,’ I snap. ‘Why am I even talking to you about this?’
