The Rooftop Garden by Menaka Raman-Wilms

Author:Menaka Raman-Wilms
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Nature, Environment, Psychological
ISBN: 9780889714397
Publisher: Nightwood Editions
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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The next day he decided to respond to Nabila. He wasn’t sure that he should, but he didn’t really know what he was doing anymore, didn’t know if anything even mattered. Tom had probably told everyone about him throwing up and they would all be laughing at him. He wanted to write to Nabila and show her that he was angry, because she was the reason that he’d ended up in this place. She was the reason the other men were making fun of him.

But he also missed her terribly. He wanted to talk to her, to just say something, really anything. All he wanted to do was make contact.

So when he got his phone time the next day, he responded to her message. He just said that he was fine, and that he didn’t know why Nabila cared anyway. He didn’t want to seem eager. He was still unsure if she was trying to make fun of him like AJ had said, and he didn’t know what he’d do if her response was to laugh at him. He thought about maybe going into the trees and shooting himself.

Then he turned his phone off before putting it back in the box with the rest of them. He didn’t think they would check them, he hadn’t given them his passcode, but he didn’t want them to find Nabila’s messages. No one had given him clear rules, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to be talking to her.

Matthew thought about her a lot the next two days. He wondered if she was thinking about him too, and he figured that he wanted her to. He was angry and then hopeful and then angry again because he didn’t want to be hopeful.

But Nabila didn’t laugh at him. In two days, when he got his phone again, he saw that she’d responded immediately to his note. She wanted to make sure he was okay, she said, and she was worried he wasn’t; he’d left without really explaining where he was going.

For a few moments he was so happy. But then he didn’t know what do to. AJ had warned him about how Nabila would try to manipulate him, how she’d tell him things that he wanted to hear and then take them back. She’d already done that, he knew. He reminded himself how furious he was with her, how unfairly she’d treated him.

He thought maybe she was trying to play with him. So he didn’t respond right away. He thought about it, turned the possibilities over and over in his mind. AJ would have known what to do, but he’d stopped talking to Matthew. And everyone at headquarters had started to ignore him.

If he wrote back to Nabila and she didn’t respond, there would be nothing left. So he decided to wait.

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