The phone rang. And rang.

Or maybe it didn't ring at all. I honestly don't remember anymore.

What I remember is standing in the school's telephone booth to make the only call I was allowed to make, only to reach no one. I had already gone a few weeks without hearing a familiar voice. I looked forward to talking to someone back home, but that wouldn't be possible for another few weeks.

It was not a good moment to be on my own. The group I hung out with dissolved as two of them were expelled from school. Smoking, skipping class, and leaving the campus led to their sudden departure. They were trouble, and one of them was my crush. I liked him from the beginning.

Reset

Things hadn't exactly been going well for me in Germany. I hung out with troublemakers, skipped classes, and didn't pass the school year. Although I've always believed in myself and never doubted my abilities and skills, I usually did the opposite of what my father advised (or ordered). In short: I was a rebellious teenager.

I didn't want to repeat the year in the same school, and I applied for a year abroad. England and the United States were the usual destinations. It seemed so boring to do what everyone else did. When I heard my English teacher proposing India as an exchange program, I was thrilled. Previous attempts by my school to establish a relationship with this Indian boarding school had failed, as parents didn't want to send their child to India. But growing up with my open-minded, well-traveled parents, nobody in my family questioned India. Just my schoolmates teased me and bet I wouldn't last long before coming home.

I imagined a fresh start, a reset. But I hadn't understood that you could travel halfway around the world and still bring the exact same version of yourself with you.

India

It was the summer holidays when I stepped out of a small, flower-papered plane in Madurai.

Earthy scents. Humid air. Tropical heat that hit like a wall.

An old, honking bus climbed the Palani mountains and dropped me off at my new boarding school. Although the campus was deserted because everyone was away for the holidays, I received a warm welcome. Especially from Mrs J, my dorm mother.

The first weeks at the boarding school were hard. First, I didn't eat because I didn't like the food. I hated lentil stew already, but dal was on another level. Second, I felt lonely. I forgot the exact diagnosis, but I spent a few days in the school's hospital.

Blank page

School was overwhelming. My English wasn't good enough to keep up with class, so while the others had their leisure time, I sat through extra English lessons. Then came the maths placement test. I looked at the questions and didn't understand them. Not the maths, the questions themselves. I handed in a blank page, which earned me extra maths lessons too. That term we read Beowulf with nothing but an Oxford English-to-English dictionary. This was before Google Translate.

But I also got some freedoms I'd never had before. While the German school system gives you a fixed curriculum, here in India I could choose subjects because they interested me. Among the mandatory maths, English, and English Literature classes, I could choose World Religion, Biology, Arts, and Social Studies.

My room was no easier. My roommate was a senior: beautiful, clever, liked by everyone, and impossibly messy. I hung a curtain down the middle to separate my half. She didn't mind. She was hardly ever there. Everyone else seemed to have their circle, their laughter filling the common rooms. I had a curtain. It didn't help.

Rebel

So I did what I knew how to do. Boarding school ran on rules: bedtimes, a packed schedule, no leaving campus alone, and I found the gaps in all of them. I explored every corner of the property, then slipped past its edges: short walks into town, a little money spent at a local burger place. On one of those afternoons, I found my troublemaking friends.

Same girl. Different continent.

Until they got expelled.

And then nobody answered the phone.