It was early September, the start of fall. A yellow deciduous leaf with shades of red touched Emily’s cheeks. She sat on the stairs outside room number 38, her body resting on the plastered beam, her hands falling loosely on either side of her torso as she observed Mark and Hugh play their favourite game; laughing at each other. Her eyes rolled over to Aunt Jenny and her stationed body, her eyes immovable off the sky. Her ears ignored the wailing of a new girl in room 32.

As her days passed in the asylum, the count of which, could no more be done on her fingers, she realized, her once dreamy eyes had lost the desire to look at things around her and revere. Her tiny ears craved for the dying tunes that once beamed through them. She seemed to be digging a grave; a void that she could not relate with, but was getting accustomed to.

She held the leaf in her pale hands and ran her finger through the red strokes. There was something about this leaf; something that she did not understand but that attracted her. She held it close to her almond shaped eyes and turned to the pillar behind her.

‘Hi, Can I sit here?' someone she did not recognize, spoke,
Her body shrunk, eyes rolled down. Her discomfort was clearly visible until she realized she had to hide something on the pillar behind her and she raised herself.
‘I am Andrew’, the guy said, ‘room number 23.’

Silence hung between them for a while...

‘My mother told me there is this beautiful girl in room number 38 whom I should befriend’, Andrew said, ‘She forgot to mention about your messy hair though.’ Emily still had her eyes on the floor.

‘You want to see a magic trick?’, he asked.  Emily’s eyes lifted.
‘See this. I have two coins’, his hand traced his pocket and came back, ‘The big coin and the small coin. I call the big one- the mommy coin and the small one- the baby coin.’ 
He put the small coin back in his pocket and enclosed the big one in his fist.
‘Now tell me, where is the baby coin?’
‘In.. you.. your..poc..kett’, Emily stammered.

‘No’, he opened his fist, ‘It is back with the mommy coin.’ There indeed was the small coin with the big coin in his hand. Emily smiled.
‘So you see our world too is a magic trick, just like..’, he was interrupted.
‘An..Anru’, Emily tried his name.
‘Andrew, rr..rr..’, his tongue rolled. She tried. He corrected. They went on that way until he finally gave up.
‘What is your name?’, he asked.
‘Emeely.’
‘Let’s be friends Emeely?’
‘No’, her eyes went down again, ‘M..My ff..ffiendss  sayy I’m m..mad.’
‘My mother always tells me that for a mentally challenged person every other person is mad. He, in his extreme sadness, his pain, his wants, his failure, his struggle, calls every person mad.’
‘Eeally?’
‘Yes. Shouldn’t we then help such people? We are good human beings right? We must help the lesser privileged.’ She nodded.
‘So my mother tells me, whenever someone calls you mad, shout back, Yes I am mad! And start laughing loudly. He will either run away or start laughing with you.’ Emily laughed. ‘You know one day..’
‘Wheee is you..your m..mothee?’
‘Uncle John always tells me my father shot her when I was three. I always try to convince him that she meets me every time I go to sleep. I tell him she plays with me, caresses my hair, gets angry on me, teaches me things. This magic trick, she taught me this. But uncle would never understand. He says I’m mad.’
‘Ye..es I’mm ma..aad!’, she shouted and started laughing.

They both laughed until Andrew noticed something on the pillar behind Emily.
‘Jesus Christ!’, his eyes widened, ‘You made this Emeely?’
‘Y..yess’, she flashed a shy smile, ‘ I..I’m y..yet to com..complete itt.’

The white plaster was decorated with a tree. An abandoned tree. It had lost all its leaves to the fall. Emily now drew it’s first leaf on one of the branches. The leaf that had kissed her cheeks minutes before she met Andrew.