A ringing sound had deafened all senior high school students. It’s like the call bluff that they had to go back to class and prepare to gorge the other knowledge from different teachers.
Three male students cackled as they headed to their seats in the back corner of the classroom.
Ari first sat down because he’s sort of more agile and active than others with Iman in front of him, and Ilham was on the side from which a small space separated them. After a few seconds of calm, Ari began a conversation about goals or dreams to either of his friends.
“We are in the last semester of 12th grade and will face the final examination soon too. After this school age will be over, what are you doing?” Ari asked Ilham with a poised glance.
“Humph, not go into anything,” Ilham replied carelessly.
Ari frowned as he heard Ilham’s lighthearted answer at once, Iman turned his slenderness halfway coincidently. Be ready to join with a discussion.
“Jobless! You’re weird.” Ilham murmured, and his chestnut eyes were gazing over at Ari.
Ari pursed his lips were rather thick on lower after hearing Ilham’s spontaneous.
“That’s true. Is there anything wrong with my answer?” Ilham commented.
“Yes. But when you live, you will have a special purpose,” Ari retorted.
“O. I see,” Ilham’s mouth rounded. “I may not be gaudy. As you know, my father is having ail and can’t work anymore for at least a few years later. Sooner or later, he will resign.”
“Your father’s a civil servant, isn’t he? Why should he resign? Wouldn’t it depend on a pension?” Ari asked plainly.
“Civil servant is sitting in your nostril! How many times have you been to hang out at my house? Dumb you.”
Ari looked like a blockhead donkey toward Iman.
Iman chimed in so that Ari didn’t drag on his silliness. “His father’s security.”
“Oh, yeah! Sorry, I forget,” Ari blushed, scratching his nose as if mourned by his dimwit.
“You’re mocking me, aren’t you?” Ilham pretended to be insulted.
“Oh. Come on, I loosened at that bro!”
“What would you become for the next time, anyway?” Ilham stuck out his upper lip as if drawing his curiosity. “University, right?”
“I thought it was like that. Go to university like the most.”
“Univ. After graduating, you’re unemployed again. Useless!”
“Therefore, I changed my mind to be a steward.”
“You want to have a job for girls’ job?” snapped Iman.
Ari shook his head to defend against Iman’s explicit opinion. “I said a steward! A stewardess for girls.”
Iman realized quickly, and his lips were just stitched by Ari’s bursts.
“Do you surely think you fit to be a steward? Flirtatious boy plus pervert like you. And your job will serve the passengers in an airplane,” Ilham chirped and looked down on.
“Hey, Bro, I seriously want to have a job for serving like that. Especially for foreign white-skinned female passengers! They love wearing mini clothes on. My eyes will dote over though.” Ari tried to carve out his obscene delusion.
“You think an airplane is like a beach in Bali.” Ilham hit his desk so that it disrupted Ari.
Iman laughed contentedly because of that surprising scene.
“You know they are so free to express themselves out everywhere,” Ari said with a reddish face.
“They still have the sensitivity to look around their surroundings too, even as free as they are.” Ilham was incessantly fussy.
“I’ll make sure in one day I can date one of them. I’ll do it!”
Ari was confident in his decision. His odd behavior had rather failed to cover up.
“You don’t want to be a steward?” Ari asked Ilham.
“I’m terrible in English,” Ilham answered as it was. His haughty eyebrows were creased.
“What do you want to be? What’s a job?”
“Become a bank manager.” He acted as in high confidence while upholding his spine.
Ari and Iman gawked simultaneously.
“You ask me what I want to be, which is a job for high school graduates. Don’t make me burn with anger!”
“I can’t understand either. If a kid is a bank manager, the bank can be bankrupt in the short term,” said Ari.
“Damn!” he grumbled.
Ari and Ilham held back their laughter that almost exploded loudly.
“The plan if I can get a job, I want to take a short course to take part in the examination of the civil servant candidate,” Ilham pursued.
“So, you will have attempted the examination of the civil servant candidate while you are working,” Ari stated.
“Yes.”
“And you, Man. What about your plans for the future?”
Ari’s question seemed to electrocute Iman who just wanted to have fun amongst Ari and Ilham who showed off their jokes.
Iman gulped. He then answered hesitantly. “I ... Err, have no idea. But I want to take—”
The banging sound of the Fladeo shoes echoed from the front of the class. Biology teacher named Mr. Gunawan had rested his flabby buttocks on a teacher’s grand chair. He strenuously took out his laptop.
The three boy’s conversations automatically dissolved in a moment.
***
Students came back to school when a complete day off on Sunday had been off. They would be ready for Monday’s ceremony that was held in every school in Indonesia. The boys looked handsome to wear on a snazzy white shirt and slim-fit grey pants, and for the girls just to differ on the skirt they put on, some of them wore on a long skirt and the others were not. They were so enchanted with the emblems and ties tightened on the collar.
Ari, Iman, and Ilham joined the lineup in the back row that fit with their class group. But that morning, there was something odd in Ilham’s expression. He looked pale as if the death angel floating atop his crown, strived to pull out his precious life. Ilham chilled and sometimes his light brown eyes were flickering a few times and his breath creaked like never reached the finish line in marathon competition.
Iman stood right next to Ilham who was taller than him, and not strictly whispered as he asked how his friend was.
“Ham, what’s wrong with you?” Iman asked curiously. But Ilham glanced over at Iman listlessly, and he shook his head without saying even a word.
“Seriously? Your face is so white.” Iman firmed up to not believe him.
Ilham winced now and put his right hand on his stomach as he crouched a bit with a face full of sweat because the heat was scorching.
“Did you have breakfast?” Iman went on, his face looked uneasy when he studied Iman’s condition.
Ilham leered at Iman and sipped. His teeth clenched as if showing off his discomfort.
“Set back from the line instead of something would happen,” Iman suggested.
“Take it easy, the ceremony will be over in a while,” Ilham insisted.
“The principal’s speech will take over in order. You know when he delivers the speech, it’s such a long wait.” Iman said in a convincing tone, but Ilham just pondered to agree with his advice. “Step back, it’d be okay.”
Ilham decided to steadfast in his stance at last. He was reluctant, but that made Iman furious because he couldn’t bear to see his poor.
“Ham,” Iman said. Now his eyes roamed around the rows that were drowning into the solemnity of ceremony despite them roasted beneath the vicious bright sun.
“What?” Ilham retorted curtly. He bitted his lower chalky lips sometimes.
“After this, you and Ari will help me get into the School’s Health Clinic. You get it?”
“What do you mean? What is it all about?”
So shortly after that, Iman seemed to relax, as if binding his bones together. Eyes closed slowly, and his body collapsed forward to Ari’s back abruptly. That startled all the students. A little hectic wasn’t able to fend off, Ari had got to be ready even for the first time he couldn’t get into it. He lifted Iman’s body as he slipped his hand on the sidelines of two armpits and looked up at Ilham to help him on the legs part. Ilham had no choice then.
The two of them dashed toward the SHC, which was luckily near to their position. They were like carrying an accident victim whom he was half-dead and almost none of the blood flows flowed to his artery.
“What are you doing, fool?” Ilham asked in his mind. All his complaints were no longer focused. Keeping a balance in need of energy was on his murky face.
Ari and Ilham to be hasty when they stepped into SHC and met Mrs. Tini as the staff who pointed her finger to a single general ward bed.
Mrs. Tini brought a glass of warm tea and strawberry-flavored bread roll from the cafeteria a few minutes ago. She’d placed the two objects on the table and scurried back up to take a Japanese hand fan had missed while at the cafeteria. She did not have a second even to tell out any message to both of them who were standing agape because of her rush.
The short and pimply lady who was wearing on an amber hijab buzzing footsteps had vanished in their ears gradually. But Iman woke up and sat straight up shockingly, like a zombie becoming alive again on a mortuary carriage.
“Oh, gosh!!” Ari gasped.
Ilham frowned as his eyes were bulging out.
“Mrs. Tini is not here, right?” Iman asked, observing the SHC's door.
“Be honest to me,” Ari growled. “Are you sick or what?”
Iman ignored Ari’s question and ordered Ilham impetuously. “Ham, you grab out my bread and swigged that tea. And go back to the ceremony as soon as possible with Ari.”
“What? No!” Ilham opposed doing it.
“Come on! You didn’t have breakfast for this morning, didn’t you? I know! No more excuses. Chew that before Mrs. Tini will come back in.”
“B-but—”
“You’re as thick as two short planks!” Iman snatched bread on the table that wasn’t far from his bed and gave it over Ilham.
Ilham nonchalantly took it and encouraged Ari to get out.
“The tea?” Iman half squealed.
Ilham and Ari stopped at the doorstep.
“No need, this bread is more than enough,” Ilham answered with a brief energy and then disappeared in Iman’s eyes. And Ari with an astounded face.
Half an hour had skidded. The ceremony ended too. All children returned to their class and went along with their group.
Iman could let go into the class with no suspicion by Mrs. Tini. He entered the class and some glint of curious eyes overwhelmed himself as if he was peeling with a steel scraper which was peculiar because they hissed just all about fainting during the ceremony.
Ari and Ilham were still in a flat expression when they watched Iman’s act like a weak one. He looked down for a second and winked his one eye at his two friends.
Ari and Ilham looked at each other. Grimaced. Their eyes were now staring toward Iman, who was seated on his chair.
“Bro,” Ilham whispered, leaning his face forward. Iman responded as he looked over the shoulder. “Thanks.”
Iman nodded, his gaze blew off to the front because Mr. Gunawan got into the class and took his laptop out of a travel backpack that laid precisely now on the right beside a laptop.
“I think I know what something you have to improve after graduating, Man,” Ari whispered very close to his nape because Iman was precisely sitting in front of his desk. “You are fit to be an actor! Find some cast agency out there!”
Iman was reticent, but now his dark thick eyebrows rose like proving to that advice. His charming face beamed.
Bio :
I love reading, and writing (of course, when my brain is shocked after the guards of idea passes by)