The Vaticinator

by Namita Singh

cannot even guess how physically stronger I may be than him.

  The kid, now free of Viktor’s hold, takes even lesser time in grabbing his bag from the floor and bolting through the first clear area he sees. If possible, it takes even less time than that for him to disappear from our line of sight.

  I roll my eyes.You’re welcome, kid.

  Viktor takes my ‘rolling of eyes’ to be directed at his feeble attempts of getting away. Decidedly, he raises his other hand to sock me in the face. My reflexes, so much better than his, watch his hand move almost in slow motion towards my face. I grab his other hand with my free hand. Viktor is surprised by my spontaneous defense and judging by the looks of the witnessing people, they are surprised too. I sigh. I despise the attention. Viktor, both the hands of whom are trapped by mine, looks furious. There are some ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’sas Viktor, in vain, tries to jerk away his hand, his face expressing pain every time he does so. Soon, he realizes that I am stronger than him. Much stronger for it to be impossible to get free of my hold.

  “Let go of me, Josh!” he growls.

  I flinch at the vociferated voice. I am, in fact, standing right in front of Viktor, with his hands bound in mine. I raise an eyebrow amusedly as Viktor starts to turn even red, flushing furiously and tugging at my arms uselessly like a kid, probably due to drowning in embarrassment. Good. He should know the taste of his own medicine. I anticipate his next move before he even motions for it. Before he can comprehend, I thrust my leg in between his, entwine it against his right shank and tug forcefully. With the surprisal, Viktor stumbles, falling to the ground on his knees with the jarring impact. I move behind him and place my right foot on his right shank at the back, right below the knee. Again, a point where thorough movement will grant him with good amounts of pain. I make sure he will not be able to get up. Some of the boys who are watching start chorusing ‘fight, fight!’ while the girls express shock at the violence. I bring my hands behind Viktor’s head, making his own hands that were held in mine lock behind his neck, right below his skull. He squirms helplessly and I take the moment to nonchalantly look around us.

  I am not pleased with the sight.

  The crowd has steadily increased in the last minute itself. The raunchy kids are having the time of their life, laughing and chanting encouraging words of fight to the pair of us. Some watch in astonishment, while others watch, impressed. Ray and some of my other not so good friends also stand in the crowd, cheering for me. They also look greatly impressed. Since I have never actually involved myself in any fight, my strength during flight must be coming off as a surprise to most of the people. I sigh again.

  “Leave me, you asshole!” Viktor shouts from the floor. Now he is going to resort to abuses, I muse.

  “Make me.” I say tiredly, still looking around.

  “Oh, have some mercy on the helpless, Josh.” Duato, Ray’s minion of sort, says in jest, grinning at me. The rest join him in mocking Viktor and playfully begging me to leave him.

  I grin despite myself.

  “The teacher’s coming.” A smiling face announces from the crowd. I find myself smiling back at Neal. I hadn’t notice him until now. He seems to be thoroughly enjoying the show. Why wouldn’t he, I smirk.

  Neal is a senior too. He is part of the more intellectual elite crowd of our school. He is also the writer of our weekly school newspaper, The Plutocracy. He has also taken upon himself to keep a regular blog for our school. Needless to say, he has a huge following, not only in school, but also on all of the social networking sites. It is helpful in a way, as being part of the student council, it makes for an easier medium for him to display announcements on a short notice.

  It also serves as a medium of endless gossip provided to the students of this school.

  An incident at school and it is impossible for it to not be mentioned in the paper and the blog. The blog is meant for shortened forms of the incidents occurring in our school. Unlike The Plutocracy, which is published every Monday, the school blog is updated daily, bursting with all the important as well as the vague things related to our school. And it is instantaneously available due to the possession of smartphones by everyone these days. Apart from the important announcements and notices meant for the students, the blog and the paper are always filled with all the juicy gossips of our school, streaming with information that is capable of forming and deteriorating one’s image.

  It had all started three years back, when Neal had officially proposed the idea of a school newspaper. Most people had voted in favor. Nealhad taken official permission from the principal for the task. The principal obliged, provided no lies are spilled regarding the school announcements and the students.

  People do not realize that by voting in favor of it they have put themselves literally in his paw. Neal is probably the only person whose words hold more power than even Ray in this school.

  Neal writes all the unfair judgment of the administrative office regarding the exam schedule, cafeteria rules and what not. He also writes the positive alteration that may help with the betterment of the school as whole. With publically defining the changes that can be brought through in the school, he has earned a respectable image and is always immediately supported by the herd of students. His excursions have brought a lot of positive changes in the school, no doubt about that. He deserves all the gratification in return, even if it is in the form of mindless followers.

  But Neal also writes very truthful words about the activities of the students in our school. It can be someone acing a subject or our home team winning a match. Or even someone ridiculing innocents in a drunken haze or when someone is humiliatingly beaten in a fight. Someone accidently humps a door, because he is too much of a loser to grab some action at a party and even that is news in our paper. These people have themselves vouched for the paper, knowing what it’d bring. The impeached couldn’t stop Neal from writing things like these afterwards because, after all, Neal is only writing the truth. Truth can be very bitter as they say…

  So, the people do what is the most intelligent of them to do. That is to try their level best to be the freaking Queens and Kings of high school, so they’d be mentioned in the paper more. Sadly, the newspaper has become the medium for students to enhance their reputations. No wonder the paper is intelligently called by Neal as ‘The Plutocracy’. The system created by the prevalent ‘trendy’ students themselves.

  Some kids even stoop low enough to make sure that they always remain in Neal’s good books, so nothing bad is ever written about them. Some students try to strike friendship with Neal, hoping to become his best of friends. Some people even try to bribe him for writing good things about them. The good thing is that Neal is intelligent enough. He sees right through people. And though he is an amiable guy, he keeps himself restricted to his selected friends.

  That is one thing distinctly different between Ray and Neal. Neal knows of the power he has, just like Ray, but unlike Ray, his power is more tangible with his journalistic ability. Also, Ray welcomes his followers and accordingly acts to maintain his image. Neal works from behind the curtains and doesn’t get overwhelmed by the number of people bowing down to him.

  I am smiling back at Neal right now, but I severely detest his ‘job’. I like Neal as a person, but very much despise his creation, The Plutocracy. My smile falters when I realize that this scene is probably extending more than it is supposed to. It shouldn’t be much difficult to understand now why I hate being the center of the attention. I feel Viktor’s squirming getting desperate and know that he must be feeling sorely humiliated. He will not like it if this fiasco is mentioned in The Plutocracy.

  Being popular in high school, yet not being infamous is seemingly what every teenager’s life depends on in school.

  “School’s over; what’s the teacher going to do?” Duato says in reply to Neal, grinning in return.

  Neal just shrugs in return, keeping his eyes on me and Victor. As I said, Neal doesn’t extend his hospitality to everyo
ne around him.People tend to take advantage of it otherwise.

  “We are still in the premises, Dua.” Ray says, earning a nod of agreement from the majority. People will agree with him even if he asks them to jump off a cliff; I roll my eyes. Ray is not bad or disliked by me, as may have been wrongly assumed by my thoughts. I just dislike how his simplest of simple sentences are regarded as the verses of a scripture.

  Another kid, this one unknown to me, announces the approaching teacher once again. Sighing, I loosen my grip on Viktor. Viktor immediately falls forward and braces himself on his free hands. Stumbling, he stands and turns to look at me. Stupidly, he pushes against my chest in retaliation.

  “Bastard!” he snarls at me, stepping up to my face.

  I raise one hand and push it against his chest, forbidding him from stepping forward. My arm pushes with more strength than necessary, but still not enough forceful to make Viktor stumble back. But Viktor senses the strength as his forward movement gets restricted. His eyes flicker with doubt, making me mentally sigh once again.

  “Let’s not get suspended?” I offer him.

  He scowls at me, “This is not over.” He growls, picking up what is left of his dignity. He jerks back and then passes by me, bumping my shoulder