Window
Note: The chapter below is based on imagination merged with facts and could be gladly regarded as fiction. Kindly don’t sue the author, the author is broke.
A crystal clear window glass, having a shiny absorption of a 20-year-old boy with curly hair, complexion as white as snow, and an innocent but lost face. While the raindrops kept pouring on the glass from the other side, he kept noticing his reflection being diluted by the water. He was stock-still, indulged in deep thinking while staring at his tinted reflection.
“Mark?” his mother yelled from behind. “Are you sure about this?” she added.
The young boy turned his face slowly, looked at his mother with a nervous glance, although he wasn’t ready to accept the anxiety. His eyes blinked repetitively while his thoughts murmured to him, and with an instant, his lips uttered a yes.
Mark’s mother knew that his drive for tech was exceptional, but she couldn’t place the idea of him leaving his education at Harvard for a project that was started in his dorm room while he was drunk. She’d always known Mark as someone with a tight-mouth but a loquacious mind. Tech has played both ways for him, one day he was making a messenger box to help his dentist father with the appointments of his patients, other days he was unable to express his feelings for a girl over the programming cloud camouflaging his head 24/7. His parents, without a doubt, didn’t fail to fuel his passion since his early adolescence, be it his father teaching him Atari BASIC programming, or hiring a private software developer who would train the little Mark. Not just that, Mark even took a graduate course at Mercy College while he was still in high school. Keeping the journey so far in the head, Mark’s mother decided to keep the hopes up and give the boy a ‘we believe in you’ smile.
Fast forward to the fall of 2004 — dark setting, hard rock music, the sound of beer mugs being cheered in the air, and then there’s a guy sitting in the corner, telling his friends about how he’s still buffering on the idea of improving Facebook. Mark expected to get insights from his friends, not directly but through their unconscious spills. Mark has always had artistic friends who’d come to his house and draw stuff, and he’d later turn that into computer-games. He may be considered as someone who prefers to utter less, but his capacity for extracting the ‘create’ out of ‘creativity’ had done wonders for him.
As being heartbroken and drunk didn’t justify the accusations for making a site to rank girls on their “hotness”, Mark had a lot of work to do on his reputation. He’d be passionate and perplexed at the same time. Not to forget, he had the impalpable pressure over his head for leaving Harvard in his sophomore year to work on Facebook. Was it all worth it? The thoughts would eat Mark’s mind but he decided to stay wired-in with his beliefs and work. The flashback of the love of his life calling him a jerk would repeat in his mind, again and again. She even went on saying that he’d never be a successful man but could be a successful jerk. It took a long time for him to get over her words.
Mark came out of his blurred memories to the cabin where he was standing. The silence was soothing. The sun was glaring at the window, while Mark came close and looked right at his tinted reflection. Curly hair, complexion as white as snow, sharp nose, and a poker-face. He noticed the sunlight making him look all bright like a vampire, when suddenly the door opened and a voice from behind accompanying loud cheering interrupted, “Sir, I think you should not miss out on the One-Billion-Members celebration”.
With eyes on the reflection and a nostalgic smile, “I think I miss being twenty” Mark sighed.
