Love Story from School – The Four Boyfriends of Rachel Pallin
Photo credit: ChasC from morguefile.com
(Note: Image does not illustrate or has any resemblance with characters depicted in the story)
This is the story of a girl named Rachel Pallin. She wasn’t exactly what one called promiscuous but she didn’t fit the criteria of happy ever after girls either, even though she hoped to have her own prince charming one day. Its just that no guy, however great he may be, seemed to be able to meet her expectations completely. If one asks me about it I’d say that the crux of the problem lies not in the inability of the boyfriends to herald themselves as splendid specimens of chivalry and masculinity, but somewhere else. It is therefore the mystery of that ‘somewhere else’ that I’m tying to unravel although I’m seriously doubting my capability of unfolding the complicated twists of a hideously romantic mind.
Rumors. That is what I’m actually depending on. What I’ve noticed in my short existence on the planet is that when you combine the rumors you hear about someone with a first person account of the same , the outcome is very interesting. As in the case of Rachel. Though it is a story, I would like to let it be known that Rachel is as real as it gets.
- THE HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR
Rachel was busy. She was online in Facebook. Though she was in eleventh grade, her complete attention was fixated on the profile picture of a cute guy who also happened to be a senior in the same high school where she went.
Name- Willem Penny
Class – Twelfth grade
Eyes – Green
Hair – Chestnut
Height- Not given
Section- B
Status- Enjoying the summer holidays
Relationship status- In a relationship with Sammy Mcwell
Rachel was very taken by this guy’s good looks forgetting the fact that he was already taken. Reality came to her as a rude shock when Willem posted a picture of him and Sammy walking down the beach holding hands in a gesture of love and romance. He posted it at the same moment when Rachel was trying to imagine what it would be like to be in his arms. The picture of the happy couple ruthlessly shattered her daydreams. She honestly didn’t like the feeling of having her hopes crushed and so she didn’t lose her hopes at all. Instead she resolved to really do something about it.
Normally in such a case, a girl will try to stalk the boy. But as Rachel wasn’t normal she stalked Sammy Mcwell instead. She, having searched Sammy online and sending her a friend request- which was unfortunately accepted- always kept on the lookout for an opportunity to talk to her. Rachel not onlybefriended Sammy but also kept chatting with her for a week to earn her trust. It was exactly one week later when she told Sammy that her boyfriend read in the same class as Sammy. When Sammy asked Rachel as to what was her boyfriend’s name she told her that it was Willem Penny.
No wonder Sammy was shocked. She and Willem were popular among their friends for being such a stable and happy couple. Obviously she went into a rage and started hurling obscenities at Rachel. But Rachel was not deterred. She kept her calm and kept claiming that Willem was her boyfriend. Now began the real problem- Sammy wanted to meet her in Willem’s presence for a showdown. Rachel was sure that by that time Sammy had already questioned Willem about her and he had obviously denied ever knowing a girl named Rachel. She honestly hoped that Willem might dump his childhood sweetheart and constant companion for her. She hoped that like her, even he might be able to recognize the connection that was there between them- that they were destined to be together and Sammy was only a wall in their way to happiness.
She hoped that Willem will come looking for her with Sammy at his heels. Willem would then look into her eyes before crushing his lips on hers while Sammy will cry and scream and gnash her teeth behind them. But that did not happen. What happened was that Sammy started pressing her for more details about herself and she was forced to go into social network hiding.
What was reassuring was that her account’s name was ‘Hearts n Flowers’ and there was no mention of her class name or anything. And that meant that Sammy could not find her in a school of more than five thousand. But Sammy did find her. What she’d missed out was that although her account had no name, her profile picture had her photo. Moreover, not only was Sammy a senior, but also a school prefect. And as we all know- school prefects have connections everywhere and one of those connections had Sammy informed of Rachel’s whereabouts.
Rachel had tried desperately to stay back home but had failed under her mother’s coercion. So there came the day when she had to face Sammy. Sammy was tall and prettier than she was and very intimidating. Rachel gulped. Sammy was flanked by two other senior girls as well. Then came the showdown. Rachel didn’t hear most of it, she was so ashamed of seeing all her classmates staring at her with an incredulous look on all of their faces. No one had ever called her such names .Sl#t…wh##e…bi##h…jack##s…and she didn’t remember anything else. She just hung her head and let the tears fall. Even through this excruciating humiliation, she kept expecting that Willem might turn up to take her side and turn the tables on Sammy by dumping her in front of everyone. But that did not happen. What happened was that she became an anti character in everybody’s eyes who had tried to separate two lovers and this made her a social outcast.
This is what one hears from everybody when asked about the incident.
But according to Rachel, the incident had occurred quite differently.
One day, Rachel was online and chatting on facebook as usual when she received a friend request. It was from a cute guy who was a twelfth grade senior in her school. She accepted him. From the first day he used to be very flirty and gentlemanly at the same time. His name was Willem Penny and he read in section B. With time Rachel fell for Willem because of his charming ways. Though they never met in real life, Willem proclaimed that he loved her and that they were meant to be together. From then on they got into a relationship.
And then one day she accepted a friend request from a girl named Sammy Mcwell. They used to chat but Sammy had never told her in which section she used to read. Then one day, for some reason, it came up that Sammy read in the same section as Willem. Rachel immediately told her that her boyfriend read in the same class. On being asked about her boyfriend, Rachel told Sammy about Willem.
Immediately, Sammy’s nature towards Rachel changed completely. In seconds Sammy turned from a warm hearted elder to an abusive senior. Turns out that Sammy was actually Willem’s ex-girlfriend who was still very possessive about him. Willem had dumped her because of this madness and she’d been quiet normal till date. Sammy had clearly expected that Willem will never get over her and return to her eventually. But when she heard that Willem had a girlfriend now, she realized that Willem had moved on and this made her mad. As she was literally crazy
about Willem, she did not say anything to him, but took her revenge on Rachel by harassing her in front of everybody. Willem got back together with Sammy in fear that she might do further harm to Rachel if he didn’t go back to her.
And this according to Rachel was the case.
- THE LATE NIGHT CALL
Raoul Timothy is an acquaintance of mine whom I saw every Monday at my English classes. From all I know about him, he’s a decent boy with a passion for animation and the Japanese culture. He is even good in studies. One night he went to his uncles house for a short visit. There were no plans in particular as to what he was going to do over there- but whatever it was, it was nothing special.
But to Rachel, that particular night was special, but not in a good way. Rachel claims that around one thirty in the night, there came a sudden call on her phone. It was Raoul. According to Rachel, Raoul was drunk and furious. He called Rachel a slut and told her to suck his unmentionable. Rachel was devastated and informed her parents about the incident. Rachel claimed that Raoul was in some club along with his friends and had called her in a drunken stupor and hurt her self respect verbally. Moreover Rachel claimed that she and Raoul have been in a relationship for quite a while and that Raoul was the worst boyfriend she’d ever had.
When Raoul’s parents were informed of this, they were astonished. And they had enough reason to be so too. According to Raoul’s parents, Raoul was with them all the while that night. He even slept in the same room with his cousin who swears they were sleeping the whole time. This points that Rachel has been lying about Raoul. But Rachel apparently has no reason to make such false accusations on him. Moreover, Rachel swears that she had seen the caller I.D. before picking up the phone and that she’s sure that she had seen Raoul’s name on it.
- HOLDING HANDS
Jisn Momoa loves to sing. He loves music. He even has a band of his own. It was not so long ago when he had gotten into a relationship with Rachel. They had hoped to be one of those lovestruck couples who always enjoyed their company. But that didn’t happen. Common things never seemed to happen to Rachel and normalcy seemed to avoid her.
Imagine that you went to a restaurant. You see couples sitting all over the place. Some look lovingly at each others eyes while some whisper to each other. Shy smiles and careless embraces is all you see in happy couples. But what is most common among all the various couples there is that they hold hands together. Now consider this- is holding hands so wrong? What does this gesture mean to you? Normally holding each others hands is a sign of affection and tender assurance of love and romance. Isn’t it?
Now Rachel’s school had a gas station (aka petrol pump) right in front of it. The gas station was very important for the students. You can say that the most exiting incidents of the school happened right there. No wonder it was always crowded. Students sat there under the shade and gossiped before and after school hours. The school fights used to happen there and so did the romances.
Romancing was what Jisn had attempted to do and embarrassment was what he was awarded with. It was nothing actually, he’d just want to show his love for Rachel. In an attempt to do so he’d tried to hold her hand. Probably he had expected Rachel to look up and smile at him. But instead she looked up and slapped him hard across the face in front of everybody.
Now think, if you see a girl hitting a boy on his face in public- what is the first thing that flashes across your mind? You think that the boy has somehow harassed the girl and you have an immediate disgust and loathing towards such men although you didn’t know what happened. Isn’t that true? Well, the same thing happened to Jisn. What worsened the situation was that Rachel began to blame him for sexually harassing her. She even involved the school authorities in this matter. Sadly no one seemed to believe Jisn. As a final stoke, Rachel was successful for having Jisn expelled from school for a week.
On the brighter side was that though the teachers and parents initially believed Rachel, none of the students were ready to trust her. They just could not believe that Jisn, who’s reputation was practically unstained could ever do anything as stupid as that. On the other hand, everyone was aware of Rachel and her peculiar way of complicating even the simplest of things. In simple words, everyone considered Rachel to be unhinged.
- ARNOLD NATHAN.
Arnold wanted to be popular among his friends, who doesn’t? But, according to Arnold there were certain things that one had to do to become famous.
I. Be cool
II. Make friends with the cool people
III. Use slangs
IV. Make fun of others
V. Pretend to be a scholar
VI. Get on facebook
VII. Upload a ton of pictures with your so called friends
VIII. Be oversmart
IX. Tell a heap of lies about yourself
X. And finally, have a girlfriend.
The first nine points were struck off because Anki already had all of those. Now what he really needed was a girlfriend. First he had tried to please a girl named Cindy and had tried to coax her into a relationship. But the girl just used him for getting help in her project work and then dumped their friendship. He didn’t even get an opportunity of proposing to her as she had already started flirting with Matthew Anthony Dolly. Previously he had lied about a girl from lower grade by calling her his girlfriend. Then there was the girl from the arts section of his own grade named Simmy. That was a big mistake. The girl had gone really angry at him and showed him the middle finger in public for lying about her. That was rather embarrassing.
So when he found that Rachel was available and sympathetic to a thick arsed nerd like him, he lost no time in proposing to her. When she accepted, which was immediately, he became completely sure about his path to stardom. Unfortunately, he was unaware of Rachel’s own antipopularity. His ignorance made his common sense fail to warn him about what was he in for.
They began their relationship quite normally. It was nice to see that both Anki and Rachel were benefiting from this relationship. But a relationship can never be built on personal gain and that is what broke them apart.
Roche Chan was a cute guy who was Anki’s good friend and classmate. They even used to sit together from the first day at the start of their eleventh grade. Honestly speaking, he was usually a good guy to the people he liked. But he had the bad habit of seeing people irritated and disturbed but in this case he was not the one doing mischief. He was a victim.
Not long after when the cracks began to appear in their fake relationship, Rachel began to realize that her
boyfriend had the habit of lying about nothing and everything. On the other hand, Anki was coming around to the fact that Rachel was seriously mad. As they had no one to share everything about their problems, they both went to Roche.
Roche was clearly not liking the fact that he had to listen to all of their personal problems. Moreover they both expected him to pick a side which he will never do. So with the increasing bitterness between Anki and Rachel, Roche was finding it more and more difficult to keep up with them. He then just decided to end their relationship himself.
But he didn’t have to do that. Rachel did the job. She told her friends and teachers about their relationship who in turn became informers to Anki’s mother. Clearly Anki’s mother did not like to hear that he was playing boyfriend for a girl who was as mad as a hatter. What happened to Anki in his home was his problem, but what happened in school the next day was another matter entirely.
Roche thinks that he had never before seen a couple’s argument in which more than twenty people were involved. Yes, Rachel and Anki’s argument was there for the whole class to see. But the students were not satisfied by just watching them fight and so they took a part in it themselves. It lasted whole day and instead of reaching a conclusive truce, the quarrel ended in bitter enmity.
Whereas Anki blamed it all on Rachel, Rachel in her own mind believed that it was all Anki’s fault. Who is there to judge? No one. But there was one person who was relieved by the complete end of their relationship. It was Roche. Cruel though it may sound, according to him it was the best thing that happened to both Rachel and Anki.
But to this day Rachel believes that there was no fault of hers and that she was innocent. And in her own hideously romantic mind she believes that Anki along with all her previous boyfriends were still madly in love with her. Though her relationship with Anki ended badly, she still liked him for he was still the last boyfriend…
–END–
