Parveen's brain was still trying to process the sight of her staring at him when his hand acted a full second before his brain caught up. He tried to move the packet to his back pocket but it was too late.
GRAB
Her hand shot out and plucked it clean out of his fingers, the way you'd pluck a leaf off a low branch — no effort, no hurry, like she'd been practicing the move her entire life.
"Oi!! That's mine, give it back!" Parveen lunged.
She stepped back. He lunged again. She side-stepped, unbothered, like a matador dealing with a particularly slow bull. Three lunges and two near-misses later, Parveen stood there panting, hands empty, dignity emptier.
"That's mine...please...return it" Parveen said while panting.
Seeing this the girl laughed and asked "First tell me what is this? Then i may think of returning it and what was your name?"
"Parveen, and it is none of your business, so just return it" said Parveen.
"A pleasure meeting you, My name is Tanya and as you have know i am new in this school which makes me scared of the students like you here who conduct illegal trades on school grounds as it can be anything like weapon, pills, even bombs" Tanya said.
"It's not something like that!" Parveen said.
"Thats what you says but for my safety and the safety of my peers, it is best for me to give it to the teacher" Tanya said, with the calm logic of someone who had clearly never been on the receiving end. "Unless you tell me what it is?"
"It's cards!" Parveen snapped, then immediately regretted snapping, "It's just — cards. Trading cards. Everyone collects them."
"I am sure everyone does but not everyone buys them on school grounds as it is normally against the school rules to bring any playable items at school" said Tanya
"Says the person who brought a mobile to her first day of her new school," Parveen said
The girl blinked once, unimpressed, the way a teacher looks at a student who has just confidently written the wrong answer on the board.
"Do you have proof of that?" she asked.
"I saw it in the morning! With my own eyes!"
"Your word against mine," she said, and then, almost lazily, held the packet up between two fingers and gave it a little wave. "Unlike you, I have proof. Right here. Of you conducting illegal trades on school grounds."
"It's not illegal—"
"Illegal, banned, against the rules, whatever word makes teacher's hand connect with your cheek faster. Pick one."
Parveen's stomach did the thing it did whenever an adult was mentioned in the same sentence as consequences. He forced himself to think. Actually think, for possibly the first time all day. The packet was fifteen centimetres of mystery. It could be anything. Knowing Kavi's usual stock, it was probably four common cards and one slightly-less-common card that Kavi would insist was "basically rare, trust me."
Worst case, he lost two hundred rupees worth of cardboard. That was survivable. What was not survivable was a teacher hearing the word "illegal trade" before lunch was even over.
Best case, she throw the packet aside after seeing he have lost interest and walk away. Later he can comeback and pick it up.
He straightened up, channeling the same fake confidence the boy in the front row had used on Ms. Poonam that morning, right before it got him slapped.
"Prove it's mine, then," Parveen said. "What proof do you have that I bought that, huh? Maybe I just found it on the ground. Maybe it's yours and you're trying to frame me. Prove it."
He said this with the full confidence of a boy who had done the math and decided the packet probably wasn't worth fighting a teacher over.
He had done the math wrong.
The girl studied him for a second — the exact same look she'd given him from across the classroom that morning, calm and a little too calculating for someone who was supposedly new — and then, without any warning, tore open the seal.
"Your loss, then."
"Wait, no, don't—"
Too late. The packet was open, and five cards slid halfway out into her palm.
Two of them shimmered gold.
Three of them shimmered silver.
NOOOOOOOOOO
Parveen's soul briefly left his body, floated up past the basketball court, and looked down at the scene from a great and peaceful height before being violently yanked back in.
Gold cards didn't just appear in random packets. Gold cards were the stuff of legend, the kind of pull people bragged about for entire school sessions, the kind of pull that turned a boy from "kid who trades cards" into "kid other kids wanted to be friends with." Kavi had undersold it. Kavi had criminally, catastrophically undersold it.
"Those are mine," Parveen said, all pretend indifference evaporating instantly. "Those are actually mine. I take it back. Everything I said. It's mine, give it back, please, I'm begging you—"
"A minute ago you told me to prove it was yours," she said, tilting the cards so they caught the light, watching his face rather than the cards themselves, which was somehow worse. "I distinctly remember you saying 'maybe I found it on the ground.'"
"I was wrong! You have to give them to me, those worth more than me"
"Interesting." Tanya closed her fist gently around the cards, not crushing them, just... containing them, the way a person contains something they intend to keep. "Very convincing."
Parveen would have gotten on his knees right there between the trees if he thought it would help. He settled for a slightly less dignified version of the same energy.
"What do you want? Money? I don't have money, Kavi took it all. Look, whatever it is, just—"
"Relax," Tanya said, and for the first time since he'd walked into the classroom that morning, something that might generously be called amusement crossed her face. She was, he realized with dawning horror, enjoying this. Enjoying it a lot. "I'll give it back."
Parveen's shoulders sagged with relief that lasted exactly as long as it took her to finish the sentence.
"If you do something for me first." Tanya said
"...What?" Parveen asked
"A small favor," she said, tucking the packet into her pocket like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she hadn't just ruined his entire lunch period, his entire week, possibly his entire year. "Nothing difficult."
"What favor?" Parveen asked, with the flat, defeated tone of a boy who already knew he wasn't going to like the answer.
She looked past him, toward the crowd of students scattered across the field, scanning the distance the way someone scans a room for a face they already have memorized.
"I'm looking for a boy," she said. "You're going to help me find him."