Read The First Life of Vikram Roy (Many Lives Series Book 3) for Free Online Page B

turns to me, holding a Playboy magazine. "See, it's good to have the family servant in your pay, don't you think?"  
    It's even better to have a roommate who gets showered by such care packages from home on a regular basis.

THIRTEEN

    I want to fit in with everyone here. I also want to stand out. It's all so confusing. I haven't stopped feeling this way since I arrived here.  
    It's been six months already, since I've been at St James. I am now officially a teenager. Thirteen. Not that it feels any different. More like I've gone back in time. Like I am ten again. I'm not really sure what to make of what's happening around me.
    I try to focus on the basketball tournament taking place at the gym. I sit far behind the court, watching the game in progress. I feel awkward, as if everyone is watching me. Other than Tenzin, I have no other friends yet. But then, I haven't tried very hard either. Surrounded by strangers … foreigners in varying sizes and colours, for the first time in my life, I am tongue-tied. Nepalese, Koreans, Tibetans, Americans, British. There's even a boy from Eritrea —Eritrea? — Is that even a country? They all seem so exotic.   And confident.   Me? I'm just ordinary.
    My dorm parent tells me it's quite normal to feel a little lost, that it will take months, maybe even a year, to settle in. A year? That long?
    I've always managed to make friends quickly. Before I came here. Maybe it's being this high, at the foothills of the Himalayas, but everything feels so out of balance. I am not sure I actually want to stay here.
    I don't want to go home either. Everything I left behind seems tiny … little, compared to what I am discovering here.
    I can't really concentrate on the game, so I give up and leave the gym. I continue walking till I have left the Quad and the main building of the school behind. A path leads into the woods behind the school. The fresh air hits me. Even after all this time I'm not used to it. I take a deep breath and the bright, white air rushes in making my head whirl. It's evening, and the shadows of the pine trees mesh together on the ground so it feels as if I am playing hopscotch with my own shadow. Their needle-shaped leaves crunching underfoot is the only sound I hear. Out of nowhere something slams into my back. What the—? What was that? I'm pushed over, doubled in pain, all my breath knocked out of me. I hear footsteps behind me.  
    "Hey, you okay?"  
    I look up into a pair of blue eyes, fringed with the longest, brownest lashes I have ever seen before. Her hair falls in a braid down her back. She's wearing a white T-shirt stained with mud and grass, and jeans torn at the knees. On her feet, faded blue-black sneakers.
    "Are you hurt?" She waves a hand in front of my eyes and I snap back to the now.
    "No. I'm cool." My voice comes out a little breathless. It's because I've just been hit square in the back by something that felt like a heavy brick. Of course, that's what it is.
    "Oh! Good. You scared me." She walks to where a red-coloured ball lies on the ground. "I would have never forgiven myself if you had been badly hurt, and at the speed this ball was travelling, it could have been quite lethal. You know what I mean?" Her words wash over me, but I can't hear what she is saying anymore. She uses her hands when she speaks. They rise and fall, like birds skimming air currents, as if they are talking to each other, in secret code, a language of their own. She picks up the ball and I notice the curve of her hips where the jeans pull tight against them. She turns, and catches me staring, and I find myself blushing.
    "Well?" She rubs the ball on the front of her thighs. I can't take my eyes off her hand. "Never seen bowlers shine a ball to get better swing?" she says, smirking.
    "Uh?" What's she talking about? It's as if she is speaking a completely alien language. Which, of course, she is for me.
    "You're playing cricket?" I sound so stupid.
    She shakes her head in