I looked from Noor to Sabah, eyes wide. ‘Wait, was Faraz in the car?’
For a long moment neither of them said anything. As Noor and Sabah looked at each other, their eyes locked in silent combat, I got the distinct sense that a treaty was being negotiated.
I wracked my brains for the details of the case. The boys, both unnamed, had been let off with probation and a fine thanks to their underage status. But Faraz was over eighteen, so if he had been in the car . . . even with my limited knowledge of Indian law I knew that would most certainly mean jail time.
My mind flashed back to New Year’s Eve, to the police car I’d seen on the Qureshis’ drive, the strange atmosphere in the house that evening. I felt my legs tense up under the table. What had I walked in on?
‘Are you crazy?’ Noor said at the same time as Sabah said, ‘Of course not.’
I looked at them, horror spilling onto my face.
Sabah broke the silence with an easy laugh. ‘Stop it with the crazy eyes,’ she said. ‘Faraz was with us in Goa.’
I stared at her. I had seen Faraz that night. He had stepped out for a mere second before Javed Uncle had motioned for him to go back inside.
Sabah lying could only mean one thing.
I was trying to work up the nerve to challenge her when Sabah motioned to the girls on the adjoining table for The List and one of them leaned over and slid the Wren & Martin textbook towards us. Noor flicked it open. ‘So predictable,’ she said before scribbling on it herself and passing it to Sabah.
‘This is accurate,’ Sabah smirked, glancing through The List. I watched her add a few names before passing it to me. ‘You might find this interesting.’
I looked at the sheet in front of me, my pen poised to add my own comments, my eyes lingering over Biggest Tease (Noor Qureshi), Biggest Flirt (Mohit Yadav), Biggest Creep (Ankit Agarwal), Hottest Girl (Sabah Khan) until they came to rest on the last title.
Tears pricked my eyes but even through the blur I could recognize Sabah’s unmistakably neat handwriting. I could feel Noor’s and Sabah’s eyes on me. I blinked the tears away.
‘This is so lame.’ I tried to inject my words with sarcasm, but somehow they came out whiny.
I smiled and flicked the book shut, trying to focus on the conflict between Nehru and Jinnah, but the words were imprinted on my brain.
Biggest Fraud: Alia Sharma.
SABAH
Thursday morning. I am immersed in the first batch of archive footage that Dan sent through, forcing myself to sit on my hands as I watch grainy video clips showing panel after panel dissect what a group of teenagers got up to at parties, when my phone pings. I hit pause as I skim through the text from Andrew, then read it once again, hardly able to believe the words that have appeared on my screen.
I mentioned the doc to the Amazon series commissioner last night – he is VERY interested. Wants to look at a proposal within the week. Can you put something together? Doesn’t need to be the pitch deck, even an outline will do – just communicate overall tone and narrative arc, maybe hint at possible foul play? Sizzle reel, if you can whip one up, will be brilliant.
I glance at the time, then do the mental maths to work out the time in London. Five a.m. Andrew’s a late riser. Famously. For him to be texting me this early . . .
I try to quell the excitement that’s bubbling within me. Amazon. They’ve been making big strides in the TV industry and Andrew’s been trying to get the series commissioner to come in ever since they set up shop in London.
I type back quickly. From what I’ve heard, Amazon like to move fast and they pay well above the market rate.
Pre-empt likely?
His reply is instant.
Extremely.
I take a breath. I haven’t hammered out the profit participation terms with Andrew yet, but even with a conservative royalty agreement, a pre-emptive bid from Amazon would be enough to wipe out all my debt, even pay my parents back. Plus, with Amazon’s reach and distribution network, the viewership would run into millions.
I look at Andrew’s text again, my eyes lingering on ‘foul play’. I can see what he’s trying to do. Ever since the multi-million-dollar success that was Making A Murderer, every distributor loves the unsolved mystery angle. Even the hint of foul play is enough to get the commissioners salivating. It’s a better hook and as long as viewers tune in, it almost doesn’t matter where the hints lead. I don’t need him to tell me what a big opportunity this is.
I’ll have something over to you by tomorrow.
I wait till I see the little blue ticks appear next to my message, then turn to my laptop. I open up a new document and start typing.
ALIA
Fifteen years ago
It wouldn’t be a Wescott sleepover without a game of Truth or Dare.
Noor, Sabah, Addi, Saloni and I were sitting on the floor in Addi’s room, still buzzing from the vodka Noor had smuggled in past Addi’s mum.
I laughed along as we went through dare after dare, giggling as Saloni attempted to make out with a pillow and Addi wrote her name on the floor with her tongue.
I sat up straight when the bottle came to rest pointing at me.
Somehow, despite my carefully executed plan to sit opposite Addi, people had moved around during the game and I found myself staring at Sabah across from me. She cocked her head and smiled sweetly. If anyone knew how to add menace to even the most innocent gesture, it was Sabah.
I swallowed. I didn’t think she knew anything humiliating about me, but then, this was Sabah. She was an expert at deploying words to cause maximum damage.
‘Hurry up,’ Sabah said, ‘there are only two options.’
‘Dare,’ I said. I didn’t really have a choice. I’d told plenty of lies since I started at Wescott and Sabah practically traded in secrets. I had no way of knowing what little nugget of information she had up her sleeve.
‘Really?’ Sabah raised her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t think you had it in you to surprise me.’
I laughed nervously.
Sabah pretended to think for a moment. She shrugged. ‘Kiss Noor.’
‘Excuse me?’ My voice came out like a screech. I looked at Sabah to see if she was joking, but her eyes were fixed on Noor. Once again, I had the strange feeling that I was caught in the middle of some game that Noor and Sabah were playing, but I didn’t know the rules.
‘Truth,’ I murmured.
Sabah tore her eyes away from Noor and looked at me.
‘Doesn’t work like that, Sharma,’ Sabah said.
I felt my cheeks flame. I looked at the others but none of them would meet my gaze.
‘This is stupid,’ Noor said, putting me out of my misery. She reached out and spun the bottle.
I leaned back against the bed as the heat shifted from me to Noor.
‘Dare,’ Noor said, looking squarely at Addi across from her.
‘Ooh, I don’t know,’ Addi said, rubbing her palms together.
Sabah leaned in and whispered something to Addi.
‘No way,’ Addi said, nervously laughing her off.
Sabah raised her eyebrows, the message clear.
‘Come on. It’s not like it’ll be the first time, right?’
The atmosphere changed in an instant and I understood that their whole act of friendship was just that: an act. Sabah was still furious with Noor about letting slip her secret.
Addi mumbled something and left the room. Sabah slid over to her spot.
‘Still want a dare?’ she asked Noor, lips twisted into a half-smile.
No one else was playing anymore; it was just the two of them, Noor and Sabah.
Noor cocked her head to one side, pretending to consider it. ‘Yeah, let’s see what you’ve got.’
‘I dare you to go down on someone –’
Noor scoffed.
‘– from school, on school grounds.’
‘Is that it?’ Noor looked around the group as Saloni and I shifted uncomfortably, before letting her e
yes settle on Sabah. She shrugged. ‘Easy-peasy.’
ALIA
Fifteen years ago
No one expected her to go through with it. She could have laughed it off. She could have lied about it. She could have found a way to flip the coin, but Noor was not one to back down from a dare. On the following Monday, she stayed back after school, skipping the extra credit art class for a far more intimate and entirely different extra-curricular activity.
Had it been anyone other than Noor, that would’ve been the end of it.
But it was Noor, and that was just the beginning.
I could sense a frisson of excitement on the bus the next morning. Wescott’s student population was obsessed with their Nokia 7650s, but even so, I had never seen people bent over their phones with such intense focus.
I slipped into my usual window seat then leaned forward to talk to the girl in front of me.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked her
She twisted in her seat to look at me. ‘You don’t know?’ she said, eyebrows knotted in an expression that made me feel simultaneously belittled and enraged. ‘I thought you were friends with Noor.’
‘I am,’ I said haughtily.
She shook her head, disgusted. ‘You know what she did then?’
I stayed silent.
‘Here,’ she said, holding up her phone. ‘Click play.’
I could hear the murmurs behind me, the boys whispering to each other but I refused to acknowledge them, my eyes focused instead on the video that had started playing on the phone.
It was a grainy mobile phone video, but somehow the grittiness made it look even seedier than if it had been a proper production. Noor appeared on screen, hair left loose, shirt unbuttoned, showing off a lacy white bra that had been pulled down to reveal one breast. She was kneeling in front of a boy, also in the Wescott uniform, his trousers pooled on the floor. I felt a wave of nausea rise up in me. Even though I had seen her with far less on than this, sitting on the bus looking at Noor in a video that had been made without her knowledge made me feel dirty. I couldn’t see what she was doing but the grunts in the background told me where her hands were. She tossed her hair back, eyes unknowingly meeting the camera for a millisecond before she bent down and –
I pushed the phone back at the girl sitting in front of me, who had been watching me with interest, as if now that she had seen the video, the next best thing was watching my reaction to it.
‘Have you seen it?’ Addi asked as soon as I sat down.
‘Yeah.’ I twisted in my seat to face her and Saloni. Noor’s seat next to mine was still empty.
‘I can’t believe she actually did that,’ Saloni said.
‘I know, it was just a stupid game,’ I said. I glanced at Sabah. She was in her usual seat, bent over her notebook, as if this entire thing wasn’t all her fault. ‘I bet she’s happy.’
‘What are you—’ Saloni started, but the homeroom bell cut her off.
Noor rushed in ten minutes later, her cheeks flushed.
‘You’ve missed roll call,’ the teacher said.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Noor replied, panting. ‘I missed the bus.’
Noor made her way through the desks and slunk in next to me. I felt my stomach writhe as the murmurs from the back of the classroom drifted into my ears, nastier than anything I’d ever heard before. I squeezed her hand, unsure of what to say.
Did you forget to get on the bus because you were busy getting off?
I’m free after school.
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Oh yes, Noor, yes, just like that.
As homeroom gave way to Chemistry, then Maths and Geography, the boys carried on whispering, the silkiness of their murmurs making the words sound cruder than they were. I snuck glances at Noor. She had barely said a word all morning, keeping her head bent as she scribbled with a ferocity I had never seen before, furious strokes filling page after page with sketches. As the morning wore on, the whispers continued, nastier, sharper, anything to elicit a response. There was a note being passed around and by the third period, the whispers had turned to chants. Even Sabah looked embarrassed as the boys repeated the words from the video, filling the classroom with moans, chanting Noor’s name as if they were in the throes of pleasure. They would start off every time the teacher turned to write something on the blackboard, their words too quiet for the teacher to catch but loud enough for Noor to hear.
Loud enough to rip Noor apart.
I nearly jumped with relief when the bell rang for lunch. I turned to Noor, trying to come up with words that might comfort her, but she was already out of her seat. I could feel the anger bubbling up inside me as I watched Noor make her way to Sabah. My fists clenched into tight balls. Of course, just like that they were best friends again. It didn’t matter that it was Sabah’s fault Noor was even in this position. Noor was crouched next to Sabah now, whispering, but Sabah was ignoring her. I flicked my notebook shut and crammed it into my backpack, ready to go and interrupt their conversation but before I had even finished zipping my backpack shut, I saw Sabah push Noor away.
‘What a complete bitch,’ Saloni said a second later, watching Noor’s back as she got up and ran out of class.
‘I can’t believe she did that to Sabah,’ Addi said, standing up. ‘It’s just—’
‘What she did to Sabah?’ I cut her off, outraged. ‘What are you talking about?’
Addi took a small step back. ‘I thought you knew.’
I shook my head.
Addi looked at Saloni. They were standing side by side now, backpacks slung over their shoulders.
‘What?’ I said, mildly aware that my voice was getting louder. Addi started to speak, then shook her head, as if the words were too difficult to summon. I grabbed my backpack and flung it over one shoulder. ‘Just tell me.’
It was Saloni who spoke.
‘The boy in the video,’ she said, slowly.
I glanced at the group of boys huddled together in the corner, bent over a mobile phone. All familiar faces; boys who had claimed to be Noor’s friends.
‘Yes?’ I said, impatience bristling against apprehension as something occurred to me. I looked at the group of boys again. Not him. Please not him.
Saloni had the hint of a smile on her face. I had never liked her, but in that moment, I hated her with a ferocity that surprised me.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Just tell me,’ I repeated.
‘It’s Vineet.’
SABAH
The cafeteria is packed with faces that look eerily familiar. Women who have had their faces botoxed into near replicas of their teenage selves, men with pudgy middles wearing identical suits and slapping each other’s backs as though they are still seventeen-year-olds. Though there are more than a few hundred people crammed into the room, the atmosphere is intimate and sentimental, with a heavy dose of irony thrown in.
The cameraman by my side isn’t helping and as I snake my way through the crowd, I can see the gossip travel through the room in ripples, soft murmurs skimming over the starched white tablecloths and flickering candles, the trepidation and curiosity mingling with nostalgia.
I have never seen the appeal of reunions. Their only function seems to be to keep decades-old rumours and speculation alive, embers smouldering years after the fire has been put out.
‘Just walk around and get some candid footage. I’m going to layer everything with voiceovers so don’t worry about the audio,’ I say to the cameraman before waving him away.
I stifle a yawn. I’ve spent the past thirty-six hours glued to my desk, trying to piece together a pitch deck and a sizzle reel using archive footage and the handful of interviews I’ve already conducted. I sent it to Andrew mere minutes before the commissioner walked in. That was three hours ago. No news is good news, I tell myself.
I force my face into a smile when I see Vineet approaching.
‘Vineet,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry about how we left things.’
‘Save it,’ he says, thrusting a business card at me without even the pretence of civility. I glance at it. A smirk escapes. Gokuldas and Partners. Criminal defence lawyers. How completely predictable.
‘Next time you want to catch up, call my lawyer,’ he hisses.
My gaze drifts to his exceptionally pretty, incredibly gullible-looking wife, who is watching us from a few steps away, shifting her weight uncomfortably in her sky-high Manolos. I feel a pang of pity for her as Vineet spins around and curls his arm around her waist, steering her towards the group of men I’d once called friends.
The hand on my shoulder turns me around.
‘Sabah?’
The features are softer, the face fuller, but the dimpled cheeks and impish smile I remember from school are still intact. My face breaks into a grin as Addi pulls me into a hug.
‘Addi! I haven’t seen you in ages,’ I say, genuinely pleased to see her. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve moved back?’
Despite my sudden departure from school, Addi and I had remained friends. We kept in touch online, following each other’s lives on Facebook, but I had barely seen her over the last decade. She’d invited me to her wedding in Jaisalmer a few years ago but work had kept me away and since then she had all but disappeared. The last I’d heard, she had moved back to Bristol amidst enough family drama to get Netflix excited, but that’s a story for another day.
‘I wish. I’m here for a much-needed holiday. Well, if you can call it that,’ she grins. ‘It’s just me with my sister and her baby girl. You remember Mia, right?’
I nod, vaguely recalling the chubby girl we’d all known as Addi’s little sister.
‘She’s a new mum but refuses to accept any help. So I’ve dragged her here under the pretence of a holiday.’
Can You See Me Now? Page 17