Chapter Ten: Echoes of Shame
The rain had turned the city into a watercolor of smeared lights and slick, black streets. I walked home slowly, my bag clutched tight against my chest, not against the rain but against the feeling of exposure. Adrian's touch on my cheek still burned, a phantom warmth in the cold drizzle. The fight, the whispers, the raw fury in his eyes—it all played on a loop in my mind, a chaotic film with no clear ending.
When I pushed open the door to our apartment, the warmth inside felt foreign. The familiar scent of ginger tea and old books was now laced with a new, heavy silence.
My mother was not in the kitchen. She was sitting perfectly still in her armchair by the living room window, still in her work clothes—a simple, worn blue dress. The lamplight caught the silver threads in her dark hair, and the lines around her eyes seemed deeper, etched by a fresh kind of exhaustion. She didn't look at me.
"Mom?" My voice was small, swallowed by the quiet.
"Sit down, Arisha." Her tone was flat, devoid of its usual gentle cadence.
I obeyed, perching on the edge of the sofa, my wet coat pooling around me. The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the space between us.
"I received a call tonight," she began, her eyes fixed on the rain-streaked window. "From Mrs. Nisha. My colleague."
A cold knot formed in my stomach. Mrs. Nisha had a daughter at the university's law school. She was kind, in a distant way, and loved to share "news."
"She thought I should know," my mother continued, her voice beginning to fray at the edges. "She said everyone is talking about it. The videos, the photos… the fight." Finally, she turned her gaze to me. It wasn't angry. It was devastated. "She called it a 'tawdry scandal.' She asked me, with false sympathy, if you were alright, if the pressure of 'trying to fit in with those people' had been too much. Her exact words were, 'It must be so hard for Arisha, seeing that world up close. Sometimes, ambition can lead a good girl astray.'"
Each word was a needle. I could hear the conversation as if I'd been on the line—the clucking pity, the veneer of concern masking a feast of gossip. Scholarship girl. Prime Minister's son. A violent brawl. What did she expect?
"Mom, it's not what it looks like—"
"What does it look like, Arisha?" she interrupted, her voice rising for the first time. She stood up, a sudden, sharp movement. "It looks like my daughter, the one I work double shifts for, the one who is supposed to be building a future with her mind, is now the subject of cheap gossip! That she is… is…" She struggled for the word, her hand fluttering to her chest as if to contain the hurt. "That you are being called a social climber. A distraction. A toy for a bored rich boy."
The last word shattered the last of her composure. Humiliation, hot and fierce, flooded her features—not for herself, but for me. For us.
"He is not bored!" The defense leapt from my lips, fierce and immediate. "And I am not a toy!"
It was the wrong thing to say.
Her eyes widened, and something in them broke. All the struggle of the past years—the quiet dignity through my father's downfall, the relentless work to keep us afloat, the fierce pride in my academic success—crashed against this new, salacious narrative.
"You defend him?" she whispered, a world of pain in those three words. Then her voice cracked like thunder. "I sent you to that university to study! To make something of yourself with your intellect, not with… with this! Not by getting tangled with some heir who can ruin your reputation with a single whim!"
"He defended me! He was protecting me!" I was on my feet now, tears blurring my vision.
"Protecting you?" A harsh, disbelieving laugh escaped her. "By punching another student? By making you the center of a media circus? That is not protection, Arisha! That is privilege acting out! And you are left holding the consequences! Do you think his family will let this touch him? No! The story will be about you. The girl who led the Prime Minister's son astray. The scholarship student who caused a scene."
She stepped closer, and for a terrifying second, I thought I saw her hand twitch at her side. The air left my lungs. My mother had never raised a hand to me, not even in the darkest days after my father's death. But the shame was a physical force in the room, and it contorted everything.
Her arm did lift, not to strike, but to gesture wildly, encompassing our small, shabby apartment, the life we'd rebuilt from nothing. "Look around you! We have nothing left but our name and your future! And you are letting both be dragged through the mud for a boy? A boy who lives in a world we can never be part of?"
The truth of it, the brutal, unvarnished truth, hit me with the force of a physical blow. She wasn't just angry. She was terrified. Terrified that the one thing she had fought to protect—my chance—was slipping away, not because of grades, but because of perception.
"Do you think his world has a place for you?" she pleaded now, the anger dissolving into raw fear. "Or will it use you up and spit you out when the novelty fades? I have seen it happen. I have lived it in a smaller way. We are not like them, Arisha. We don't get second chances."
I wanted to tell her about the boy in the infirmary, the one who gave me a book about a secret garden. The one whose eyes held not novelty, but a recognition that felt like coming home. I wanted to explain that it wasn't about his world, but about the quiet space we'd found between us.
But the words died in my throat. They sounded naive even to me, drowned out by the echo of Mrs. Nisha's pitying voice and the relentless tick of the clock marking the ruin of my mother's peace.
She saw my hesitation, my tear-streaked face, and the fight drained out of her. Her shoulders slumped, the momentary flash of fury replaced by a profound weariness. The hand that had twitched now came up to cover her own eyes.
"Just go to your room," she said, her voice hollow. "I cannot look at you right now."
The dismissal was worse than any shout. I stood there, marooned in the center of the room, soaked from the rain outside and now from the storm within. The love and respect I felt for Adrian, blooming so wildly in my chest just hours before, now felt like a betrayal. A wildflower growing through a crack in the foundation of the only stable thing I had left.
I turned and walked to my room, each step heavy. I didn't close the door. I stood at the threshold, looking back at her. She had sunk into her chair again, a silhouette of defeat against the window, staring into the dark, rainy night where her dreams for me seemed to be dissolving.
The whispered humiliation from her colleague's call hung in the air, more palpable than the smell of rain. It wasn't just gossip; it was an indictment of her motherhood, of our struggle, of every sacrifice she had made. And I had brought it to our doorstep.
In the quiet dark of my room, the wildflower of my feelings for Adrian felt suddenly, terribly fragile. Not because it wasn't real, but because the world—our world—had no soil gentle enough to let it grow. It was a flower destined to be crushed under the weight of whispers, of shame, and of my mother's silent, shattered pride.