Their Wonder Years: Season 1: Fall 1998

Each word landed like a guillotine blade.

At first, Bharath tried to follow. He was good at this, usually. Code made sense to him. Logic felt like music - patterns, harmonies, loops, repetitions. But today...

Today was different.

The diagram sprawled like a cursed tree. Boxes with arrows pointing to other boxes. Class A pointing to Class B pointing to Class C. Abstract classes. Interfaces. Diamond-shaped tangles that branched and rebranched like hydra heads.

Words that used to sound cool and futuristic now sounded like weapons of mental destruction. Bharath stared at the notation for a second. The concept of one class inheriting from another wasn’t difficult ... in theory. But now they were talking about abstract classes. Interfaces. Virtual methods. Multiple levels of method resolution. The dreaded diamond problem was scrawled across the board like a cursed diagram.

“The dreaded diamond problem,” the professor announced ominously, underlining the diagram three times as though it was a ward against evil.

Marisol squinted. “That looks like a family tree drawn by someone drunk.”

Jorge tilted his head. “Looks like Ravi’s Monopoly strategy.”

“Hey!” Ravi hissed from behind them, scribbling furiously in his notebook. “This is serious. That’s ... that’s pointers and virtual tables and...” He trailed off, sweat already gathering at his hairline as he glanced at Bharath doing something he had never done before in this class.

Bharath raised his hand.

The class went still.

It wasn’t loud, but it might as well have been a thunderclap. Everyone froze, mid-note, mid-breath, mid-whisper. Because Bharath never asked questions. He didn’t need to. He was the one people whispered to during breaks, the one who drew diagrams in the margins to explain things to others, the one who could link a concept back to cricket batting strategy and suddenly make everyone understand.

If he was asking? Doom.

“Professor,” Bharath said, voice careful, polite. “Can you walk through the difference between dynamic dispatch and overriding again? Specifically when you’re working with interfaces?”

The professor blinked. He wasn’t used to Bharath asking anything twice. But he nodded, adjusting his glasses, and launched into a slower, more detailed explanation.

But the damage was done.

Marisol’s pen paused mid-spin. She turned her head slightly, studying him. If he didn’t get it, what chance did she have? Her stomach clenched.

Jorge’s brow furrowed so hard it looked like he was solving world hunger. “I don’t like this,” he muttered. He was good at math. Better at logic. But this ... this was like watching the code argue with itself.

From behind, Ravi whispered like he was at a funeral, “We’re so screwed.”

The ripple spread across the class. Heads turned. Pens slowed. Even the professor’s voice seemed to echo differently now, each word heavier with implication.

Bharath asking for help was like Superman admitting kryptonite was real.

Marisol leaned back from the other side of the aisle and whispered to Jorge, “You okay?”

Jorge shook his head with despair. A sense of doom prevailed over the class. Bharath, for his part, stayed calm. He nodded along with the explanation as he jotted down notes. Ravi watched him clarify the abstract-vs-interface examples in the margins of his textbook. Although Bharath smiled now, the sense of doom remained for the rest of the class.

Bharath tried. He really did. He nodded along, jotted notes, even sketched the professor’s examples in the margin of his textbook. He wasn’t panicked - he was calm - but his brain felt fogged, like someone had slipped cotton between his neurons.

It wasn’t lack of sleep. He’d slept fine enough - sandwiched between Sarah and Marisol. His body was satisfied, his spirit warm. But his mind ... His mind was overloaded.

With responsibility. With the weight of being not just a student, but a lover, a leader, a protector. With the memory of the Ferris wheel: Sarah’s moans; Marisol’s laughter. With the pressure of walking down that hill every morning like he belonged in the center. He felt stretched thin. Like his body was here, in this classroom, but part of him was still in the bed upstairs. Another part was still outside in the courtyard. Another was already worrying about exams.

For the first time since arriving in Atlanta, he felt the gnaw of falling behind.

By the time the lecture ended, the room felt like a warzone. Students clutched their notebooks like shields, eyes glazed, spirits broken. The professor dismissed them cheerfully, completely oblivious to the trail of devastation he’d left behind.

They filed out into the hallway, the gang moving slower than usual.

Ravi broke first. “You felt that too, right? It wasn’t just me?”

Jorge nodded grimly. “As Tyrel would say ... it’s getting real dawg.”

Ravi groaned. “I don’t even know what he was drawing. Was that supposed to be a diamond or, like, a cursed snowflake?”

Marisol bumped her shoulder against Bharath’s. “You okay?”

He smiled at her, tired but steady. “Yeah. Just ... thinking.”

They lingered in the hallway for a moment, the weight of it all pressing down. The thrill of the weekend was still alive in their bodies - the Ferris wheel, the laughter, the kisses in front of hundreds - but the classroom had reminded them of something else.

College wasn’t just romance and spectacle. It was work. It was pressure. It was the grind of concepts that didn’t care if you were in love or exhausted or a campus legend. For Bharath, Monday mornings weren’t just about kisses and whispers on the steps anymore.

They were about proving - to himself, to his goddesses, to everyone - that he could rise to meet every moment. Even the ones written in chalk.

---

Ayesha flicked her hair over one shoulder and leaned back against the sleek stone bench outside Skiles Hall, sunglasses perched on her nose, legs crossed just so. From the outside, she looked flawless. Her silky hair glossy, nails done, lip gloss on point, she was surrounded by the usual posse of clingers and flatterers - pre-med kids desperate for social cachet, sorority pledges hoping proximity would translate to popularity, and that one junior who still brought her coffee unasked even though she never remembered his name.

It was the performance she’d perfected since high school. To be the queen bee. Untouchable and beautiful yet always in control.

And yet - She was not in control. Not anymore.

She watched the quad beyond the fountain, pretending to scroll through her planner but really just waiting for them. It had become a habit. She’d never admit it, not even to Zara, but she now timed her breaks to when the Throuple Show passed through.

And soon there they were, right on cue with Marisol laughing at something Bharath said, her hand casually tucked into his back pocket like she was born there. Sarah was walking beside them, her head thrown back, curls bouncing, her fingers tracing lazy circles on Bharath’s forearm. Even Ravi and Jorge were laughing about something stupid. The whole gang practically glowed with some unnameable joy that made everyone around them turn their heads.

Ayesha’s stomach twisted from longing and jealousy. Initially she thought it was just acid reflux from all the alcohol she binged on nowadays at parties, but she finally admitted to herself that she was insanely jealous of the gang.

Because they weren’t even trying. They weren’t playing the game. They didn’t care if they were seen or not or if their clothes were perfectly curated or if their pictures would end up on a campus flyer.

They were just... happy. They were all actually living their best lives without worrying about their image or whether or not they looked cool. They supported and loved each other in a way that made her sigh with envy.

Once, she’d looked down on them. Once, despite her inner voice - she had forced Bharath to resemble a joke to her - a wide-eyed freshman who barely spoke above a whisper and looked like he’d never seen a woman in shorts before.

Now? She realized that her inner voice had been right all along. She was the loser for throwing away Bharath.

He was myth. People whispered about him like he was a cult figure. Girls sighed when he passed. Entire dorm floors speculated on how he did it. What his secrets were. What his “strategy” was. Everyone assumed it was the Wild Stone cologne he used.

But Ayesha knew better. He had no strategy. No charisma seminars. He was just himself. Just ... Bharath. Studious, awkward, kind, and loving Bharath. With two girls openly in love with him. Both of them radiant. All of them... themselves.

Ayesha looked back at her group. God, even their laughter was fake.

One girl was talking about a frat formal she hadn’t even been invited to yet. Another was listing which professors were “easy A’s.” A guy in a backwards cap was pretending he wasn’t checking Zara out again.

Zara was the only real one left. And even she was changing. She was more distracted lately. Asking strange questions about Bharath. Teasing Ayesha about him a little too often, and not in the old joking way. In the curious way.

Would you ever take him back? she’d asked last week.

Ayesha had scoffed. “Please. He was a child.”

But now ... Now she wasn’t sure.

Classes were getting harder. That previous lecture had flown past her like it was in Chinese. She’d always been sharp, always among the top of her class - but now her brain just felt tired. Like the shine on everything was wearing off and all she had left was a shell of who she used to be.

She could ask for help, but from whom? Not the TAs, who smirked when they saw her in office hours. Not the seniors, who whispered about her after parties. Her reputation preceded her now in ways she hated - not the polished queen but the girl who drank too much, who laughed too loudly, who could be coaxed into things she barely remembered.

She hated that phrase.

“Sure thing.”

It clung to her like a second skin, something whispered in locker rooms and frat basements, something she’d overheard from a girl in her own sorority house who thought Ayesha was too far down the hall to catch it.

Sure thing. Not queen. Not radiant. Not untouchable.

She wanted to recoil from it, to scrub it off her skin until she was raw. She despised the way hands - careless, greedy, clumsy - had found her when she was drunk. Men she didn’t know well enough to trust. Women who leaned too close because they thought it would be funny to “play” with her in front of a crowd. Fingers on her waist, on her thigh, on her wrist tugging her back toward the keg. Every time she told herself she hated it.

And yet she went back.

Drink after drink. Party after party.

Why?

What was wrong with her?

Was it loneliness? The pressure to be seen, to never slip from the spotlight? Or had she simply learned to confuse attention with affection, mistaking groping hands for something like love?

She thought of the photos Zara had intercepted over the past year, the ones she never showed her but Ayesha knew existed - blurry polaroids stuffed into Zara’s desk drawer, disposable camera rolls she’d quietly snatched from frat boys, even the negatives she’d shredded before anyone else could see. Evidence of nights Ayesha barely remembered, of her own body bent against a wall, her head thrown back in laughter that didn’t sound like hers, someone’s hand gripping her hip like she was theirs to claim.

Zara had never told her, not once, about the things she had rescued her from. She never sat her down with an accusation or a warning. She simply stepped into the fire again and again, pulling the proof out of circulation before it could spread. She made sure the queen’s crown didn’t slip too far, even when the queen herself was too drunk to keep it balanced.

And Ayesha knew. She had always known. Every time she woke up with mascara smeared across her cheekbones and a sour taste in her mouth, she wondered what Zara had saved her from that time.

That knowledge sat like a stone in her chest. Because she loved Zara for it. Loved her with a loyalty that went deeper than sisterhood, deeper than friendship, because Zara had been her shield when she was too weak to stand on her own. But she also hated her for it - hated that Zara had seen her at her worst, hated that Zara held a truth she couldn’t bear to face, hated that every unspoken rescue left her indebted, diminished, exposed.

God.

She had debased herself for popularity. Chosen validation over dignity. She had traded her dignity and sense of self for something cheap, and the worst part was knowing she would probably do it again next weekend, because she didn’t know how to stop.

And all the while, across the quad, Marisol was laughing into Bharath’s ear, glowing with the kind of joy that didn’t need alcohol, didn’t need pretending, didn’t need to be performed for an audience.

Ayesha’s stomach twisted again - harder this time.

Why her? What does she have that I don’t?

She had the same curves. She wore the same eyeliner. She knew the same music. She’d been queen since forever. She should’ve been enough. Why didn’t Bharath pursue her the way she deserved to be? Sure she had shamed him in the beginning but she deserved a little attention.

Marisol looked like she belonged. Like she wasn’t trying to prove anything. Like love - real love - had chosen her, not the other way around.

This made Ayesha feel small. She blinked, suddenly aware that her hand had clenched into a fist. She released it slowly. Swallowed the burn in her throat. She would never admit it aloud.

Not to Zara. Not to herself. But the thought had begun to creep in. Quiet. Unstoppable.

Why did I treat him that way when he wanted to be my friend? What is wrong with me? What if she had walked away from something real, something slow and deep and steady - and traded it for parties, plastic praise, and people who wouldn’t care if she disappeared tomorrow? What if she’d burned the bridge back... and it wasn’t even on fire to begin with?