Page 12 of A King's Oath

He shrugged.

“Are you coming tomorrow?”

He smiled — “Yes.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

“Now go.”

“Oh, yeah… cool…” he walked backwards, unable to take his eyes off her as she stood there at the gate. The sprawling community dorm with its security behind her waited for her. She still stood there.

Samarth ran into a wall of muscle behind him and heard Ava’s laugh. He turned, then sighed.

“Oh, it’s you.”

Harsh nodded, holding the pile of his school uniform that he had forgotten in the tack room. He made his sign for ‘Where were you.’ Samarth turned to point to Ava but she was already walking away, skipping to her dorm, her skirt swinging in line with her ponytail. Samarth couldn’t take his eyes off again. Warm breeze swirled around him and he didn’t sniff the usual hay and dust and horse manure on himself. He sniffed again, dipping his nose into the open collar of his T-shirt.

He smelled of apples and peanut butter.

3. Full Toss

The Vajra Arena, an in-house stadium on the west grounds of Saraswati Crest was teeming with happy bustle. Students, teachers, staff from both Saraswati Crest and Vedanta Girls High filled the lower galleys. The upper galleys sat empty, but that was expected. This was the start of the year. Everybody was busy getting settled.

Samarth entered the arena from the Gandiv Pavilion, running smack into Coach Dhillon.

“Hey, Samarth! How are you, son?” Coach Dhillon smacked his shoulder. Samarth stood to attention, pushing his arms behind his back and chest out — “I am fine, Coach.”

“Coach Singh making you work day and night it seems.”

Samarth chuckled. His ex-cricket coach Dhillon had a bone to pick with his current polo coach Singh. His own father had wanted him to play cricket. He was decent at it too. But horses called his name. He had already played slow chukkers polo on ponies ever since he was seven. This was his chance to go professional. And when in standard 8th he had begged his way into SCPC — the Saraswati Crest Polo Club and then made it into the team just a few short months later, Coach Dhillon and his Papa had been the most disheartened.

“Are you here to cheer our girls’ team or after some cheerleader? Huh? What’s going on Samarth?” Coach Dhillon’s eyes narrowed. Samarth startled out of his thoughts, gulping.

“Oh… no, it’s… been so long since I came for a Saraswati Crest cricket match. I had a break and heard that Vedanta’s team is being unreasonably mean…” Samarth caught the nerve. Vedanta was always mean. Coach Dhillon’s face hardened, and Samarth realised he had hit the bullseye.

“Bullies. All of them. Our girls can give back as good as they get, but they are just not relenting today.”

“What happened?” Samarth glanced at the green pitch looking empty.

“252 for 6 in 20 overs. Their batters were heckling our fielders. Can you imagine? It’s the other way around. But two of them against eleven of ours and they managed this score.”

“Are we not in good form?”

“Top shape… but now I am concerned about what they will do to our batters. Eleven of them on the field against two of ours.”

“You give the best pep talk, Coach,” Samarth smiled up at him. “I still remember your slogan in-between our last match against Lawrence. Remember? 'Be your own Krishna?’ Look, understand and bloody give back — balls and words.”

Coach Dhillon’s eyes widened, remembering that pep talk. In that match, they had been short of one of their star openers. Lawrence had been taking full advantage of that and they were 5 wickets down. At that point, Samarth had been on the field with the opener who had managed to survive. And Coach Dhillon had stormed their way with the basket of drinks himself and spat these words like a hungry lion out for blood.

“Good idea…” Coach Dhillon muttered, turned on his heels and marched towards the team lounging in the stands. One of the opening batters — Niva, was tying her knee pads. Samarth’s eyes searched for Ava. She was the opener, wasn’t she? Where was she? He couldn’t walk up there without a good reason now that Coach Dhillon had asked him upfront if he was here for a girl…

“Hey, hey, Shree!” Samarth caught their junior rolling a trolley filled with drinks.

“Hi, Samarth!” She stuttered, stopping in her tracks. “You know my name?”

“Of course,” he smiled. “Shree. It’s short for Shreeya, right? You came to our class to present your Galileo model, remember?”

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