🫖 Teapot
I woke up to the bright white light on the ceiling and quickly covered my eyes with my palms. I don’t like artificial bright lights. I cower when I see bright bulbs or LEDs. But since I was already lying down, I curled up to rest my face on my knees and my palms. My left arm hurt. I didn’t know what was wrong. From the gaps in my fingers, I could see mum sleeping on the sofa near to me.
I had a blue plastic label wrapped around my wrist with my name written on it. Ahsha Saras. I like my name because it is a palindrome. I do not know anyone else whose both first and second name is a palindrome, except of course my mum. Her name is Muhum Saras. I like her because she also likes numbers and palindromes like me and she named me Ahsha because she knew that I’ll like my name more than any other name and I would never change it. Both my first name and the second name has five letters and five is a prime number. I know all prime numbers until 2467. Prime numbers are like mother numbers, no other numbers would exist without them. My favourites are 2,3,5,7 and 2357.
I write my numbers on Fuschia, green and citrus coloured post-it and stick them in my notebooks and on my wall. I buy them from Shami’s corner store. Shami stocks all good things like my 3x3, 5x5, 7x7 Rubik’s cubes, tetrahedron cube, gear cube and my teapot. 467 days ago, on a Monday, when I had gone to Shami’s store with my pocket money there weren’t any Rubik’s cubes or post-it’s to buy. So I started to walk very fast between the isles. But Shami stopped me and showed me the teapot. It had tiny numbers written on it along with blue leaves and yellow flowers. I didn’t like blue leaves because leaves are never blue but I liked the numbers because they were all my favourite; 2,3,5 and 7, written on the bottom in black ink.
I keep my teapot next to my Rubik’s cubes by the window sill in my room. 444 days ago, when Leila, my elder sister, was making tea in the kitchen and she’d left the kettle on for too long, I saw a little rainbow in the kitchen as the steam escaped the spout of the kettle. There were feeble streaks of red, orange, yellow and green of the rainbow. I stood there and stared at it until it vanished. That gave me an idea, since I did not drink tea I could use my teapot as a rainbow pot. I took the boiling kettle to my room and poured water into my teapot. And for a few seconds, the rainbow appeared. And now I do this every day. When I return from school, I boil the water and take it to my room and wait for the rainbow. Some days it appears and some days it doesn’t. I wait until I solve my Rubik’s cubes. I can do the 3x3 sub-one minute, the 5x5 under 4 minutes and the 7x7 under 8 minutes. I always need a Rubik’s cube in my hand, even at school. It helps me with listening. When I am solving the cube, I can hear people clearly without hearing the grazing of their jacket against their arms or the clicking of their shoes.
Yesterday, after school, Jamie and Klara who always laugh when they see me took all my Rubik’s cubes from my bag and ran away with them. I didn’t know what to do, so I walked home as fast as I could, boiled the kettle and put hot water in my teapot. The rainbow wouldn’t come. I lifted the teapot and shook it hard. I wanted to see the rainbow. I wanted to see the seven colours because seven is a prime number. But the hot water dived out of the teapot, leaping out from its lid and its spout. It fell on my arms and belly. I laughed and screamed and folded my face between my knees.
