006

"Sorry, please try again later."

Dang. For the two millionth time!

She pushed the reject button, hard, letting out a huge sigh. Nisa meddled with her cell phone, running back through her messages in the inbox, as if that was the only way for her to let go of her anger. She felt like everything was going wrong lately, and life had never been more different. "No answer. He turned off the phone," she muttered to herself, hoping Sarah would hear her. Somehow, that was the only way she knew on how to start a conversation that she hoped would lead to the talk where she could confide her feelings into other people. It did not seem like Sarah heard her, as she got no response.

There they both were, eating at the usual cafe they had always gone to for lunch and dinner, where the food is halal and also delicious, with prices that were not too costly but not exactly cheap.

"Sarah," she spoke softly. With that, she hoped to start telling her everything that was bottled up deep within her, only waiting to come out. It felt hard to start, but she knew she had to begin somehow, as she had been feeling so miserable lately.

"Hm..." Snorting, Sarah pulled a long face. "I'm starving here, hope the food comes soon." Looking quite tired, she looked at Nisa sitting opposite to her.

Dang. Can't pull the words out. Nisa looked back at her, smiling faintly, suddenly blurred of where to start. "Huh... you know, Sarah?"

Then Sarah focused at her. "Yeah? You were gonna say something, I'm waiting?"

Um... Her hands felt cold and they were starting to shiver. As simple as it might look like, just to blurt out the words "I have a problem", she just could not do it. Or she just was not letting herself to do it.

"SAY IT ALREADY!" Her imaginary-self appeared again, right next to her, pretty much yelling into her ears. Apparently, Imaginary Nisa did not look too happy, a whole lot more serious than before.

"Shut up already, moron," she muttered to her envisioned-self, who seemed to walk around the table she and Sarah were seated at, blabbing about her foolishness of keeping what she wanted to say bottled up inside. "You the moron! Don't bottle it up, it gets worse!"

It was only her imagination, but she found it to be just as stressful as it could have been if that was a real person yelling at her about the one thing she hated - the secretive, sensitive, quiet and scared part of her. Being quite, no, very introverted ever since a kid with such little changes till now, being in early adulthood, she hated herself for being a coward. All the simplicity of talking to other people and opening up, to let other people enter her life.

Closing her eyes, she rubbed both of her palms onto her face. That was only nobody but Sarah, her own close friend, yet she still could not do it. She was sure she would not be heard, not be understood, be laughed at, to be ignored. All that and more, she had always taken them as signs of rejection, that she was no one; a person with little things she was proud of and had nothing to be liked about.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Sarah's sweet, concerned voice flew over the table right into her ears.

"Now, Nisa, she is kind and she won't laugh or reject you," Imaginary Nisa spoke again, this time (with a calm look on her face, like any friend would do when their other friend is in need.

Nisa could feel tears in her eyes. "I've been trying to ignore him. I'm trying to forget him by doing so. And I don't like doing it at all," she finally spoke, somehow, managed to smile while doing so, holding back her tears - she was sure they would not flow out. "He may think it's 'coz of our last conversation with each other on the web messenger, where he made me very concerned about him, of which I got annoyed at. But really... there's a whole bigger picture to it..."

"Huh? That baka is it you're talking about?" Sarah started to sound rather stern.

Laughing to hear the word baka, Nisa felt better already. "Honestly, yeah. I asked him about some Biochemistry work that other day through YM, which eventually led to something else. He told me he can't help with anything, simply 'coz he hadn't even started with it as he had no mood to do it. His mood was off again, of which I didn't wanna make worse of it, to at least make him feel better I tried telling him few bad jokes that weren't even funny-"

Sarah's hands were raised up in air. "Whoa, slow down, the food's not even here yet, okay?"

Taking a deep breath, Nisa adjusted herself. "Yeah.. I was trying so hard... for weird stuff. Yet now I know he's no longer mine." She smiled - her usual smile, take one look at it and most would not know she was feeling bad inside. "Mushy stuff to say, huh?"

Sarah snorted. "Haha... glad you know that, that's so rare of you."

Looking on the empty table, Nisa continued. "Joey eventually told me he had stuff to do, to end the conversation. Before it ended, he told me he hated living... and everything... all sounded bad... dangerous... harmful... he got me damn worried till he told me he made it all up. That was a serious matter, so I got mad!"

At that, Sarah almost smiled. "I see. But, I don't think he'd do that anyway... isn't he a good guy... he won't do....."

As the waiter approached and began serving them the food they ordered for, Nisa felt a weird, sudden urge to look outside the window of the restaurant, with Sarah's voice slowly going unheard by her, fleeting somewhere else. She saw a familiar figure across the street, the same hair, the same height, same style of walking. He seemed to be headed somewhere, wearing a tiresome look on his face and carrying a black backpack.

Joey?

Ahmad Jo: i wanna find another life
Ahmad Jo: get away from dis current one
Ahmad Jo: huhuhu
Nurul Nisa: huh?
Nurul Nisa: what does dat mean?
Ahmad Jo: wel if i tel ya i'll hav to kil ya
Nurul Nisa: ....
Nurul Nisa: nothin stupid rite?
Ahmad Jo: hmmmmmmm
Ahmad Jo: lets just say it's not something decent

What is he doing?

She felt lots of things running through her mind at that moment. She could no longer hear Sarah talking, she no longer cared about her food.

"Nisa, you said you wanna ignore him! Why are you so tight up all of a sudden?" her imaginary-self spoke again, seemingly standing next to her, looking at the same guy who was going to disappear out of their sight.

"I've been trying to call him but to no avail! I ignored him before that because of my own selfishness! Whatever happens, I can't let him hurt himself! Even if he made it all up I still worry about him!" she said to herself, still looking outside. This was heard well by Sarah which surprised her.

"Wait," Nisa stood up quickly from her seat, planning to get to Joey, which added up to Sarah's surprise. The waiter who was serving food startled a bit by her rather clumsy reactions. However, Nisa could not care about all that anymore. Leaving her purse on the table, she ran outside to chase him, feeling sure he would soon do something stupid.

"HEY!" Sarah panicked. "Where are you going??" She got up to try and stop her. "Nisa, what's happening? Don't just leave!"

Maybe he hasn't been lying. Maybe he'd hurt himself. Although he had no idea what he made me feel, worried to death, when he joked he'd do those stupid things!

"You! Shouldn't be running in a crowd like this!" Imaginary Nisa yelled, running next to her. "I think you should stop!!"

"NO! Get away from me!"

Joey vanished into the middle of the block of shops across the street of Blatchington Road in Hove of East Sussex, leaving Nisa trembling for a split second of where he went to. He went into that alley, but where would that lead to?

"Joey!!"

It was a big crowd around, at such a peak hour where everyone was going out to eat, of which she found her way running in the middle of the people to catch up with Joey. Sarah tried chasing her from behind, at the same time calling for her to stop, or basically, anyone to stop her. "You'd better stop! THIEF!!!"

She made that up, spontaneously. The people around might have heard her say that, and tried to react to it by looking at the girl she was chasing after and try to stop her. Still, Nisa was a small girl among the crowd so she was able to disappear quite fast before anyone could get to her.

Sarah stopped running, finding it hard to go around as she was stopped by the red traffic light for pedestrians. She was devastated and tired.

"Miss, were you trying to catch that other girl just now?" a so-called friendly voice spoke to her, who was a little boy walking with her mummy.

"Are you okay?" the mother asked her. "We heard you but it's too hectic here. She stole your purse?"

"NO!!" Sarah yelled back. She refused to care anymore. At that time, she had lost her best friend and she did not know what happened for sure, troubled to think about her friend's last reaction. "She's my friend.. please help me.."

The boy looked at her, feeling bad for her. "Mum, we have to help her."

Panting, Sarah felt like she wanted to cry. "Where did you go?"