“And the winner of the Gene Bautista annual poetry prizes is …….” With this announcement the hearts of thousands of creatures present in the huge garden started pounding at their double rates. Oh, did I just say creatures, well yes, that’s because amidst the audience were some hundred odd people along with numerous tiny mosquitoes, some birds and other local crowd of animals. Well the people’s heart was throbbing with the excitement of who amongst them was about to win the 100 $ prize (sounds trifle to you, ask those people getting their blood sucked by the “creatures”) but these animals were pretty disturbed by the ringing sound of the microphone, which really made them exacerbated (in normal and more Indian student language, it simply pissed them off)

Anyways not estranging from the subject, let’s get back to the crowd and the announcement. Amongst these hundred people was a girl (I don’t mean to say there was just one girl, but simply a special one you are about to get introduced to). This girl, like all other people present there was waiting and wishing to hear her name being announced next, but unlike all others, she was not a underprivileged poetess who was here to get the money, as a matter of fact she belonged to a well off family with her dad paying all her bills, who by the way was no tom, dick or Harry from the roadside but eventually a successful lawyer, moreover she wasn’t even a poetess, this is the first time she wrote a poem, and the reason was simply that she wanted to participate in the competition, she simply had to, because she is obsessed with competing, even in things that are not her cup of tea. She was here just to win. She likes winning (not that I or you or anyone likes to lose, but competing wasn’t the only thing she was obsessed with, the other thing was winning).

At this point I will have to go back to the announcement, cause our tiny plump announcer was no more able to keep people at the edges of their seats, he had actually started to bore them in his unsuccessful attempt of building excitement, so he completed the announcement (finally!) “And the winner of the Gene Bautista annual poetry prizes is April Evers”. By the way April is the same girl, the one I was just talking about. So this is our little April (no, not literally little, she is 18, n 5.5 fts in height, I just like to introduce people like that) happy as she was, she went with the most lopsided smile I have ever seen to the stage to collect her prize.

So this is April. April Evers, an eighteen year old girl living with her parents in Winnipeg, who is simply obsessed with competing and winning simply everything she comes across. Here I really can’t add a lot about her personal life and her emotional sketch, not because I don’t want to, or I like keeping secrets but simply because she does not have a personal life, no romance and just four friends out of which one is her pet dog “puchkoo” (april is not the only one with a strange name in this story), second her dad, only because being a lawyer and what dads usually are, he helps her out with arranging her stuff (lawyers are always so organized)he prepares flowcharts for her that tell her the sequence of the upcoming competitions that she is participating in (trust me, which is all the competitions that she comes across) along with the due dates of the upcoming results, not to mention, he is very supportive towards her only daughter and is very encouraging, at times unnecessarily overenthusiastic of her ventures. (April is not the only one so overambitious and enthusiastic in her family), and yes of her other two friend one is internet without which she cant dream of participating and more importantly winning all stuff she at times cant even spell, this is with reference to scuba diving she once participated in and obviously won with just one “popat” (that’s our Indian word for a faux pas) while filing the form she actually wrote scuba driving in place of scuba diving. She could have easily hurt herself by trying this kind of stuff for the first time, if she had not taken all the tutorials available online which had enough matter to teach her some really cool techniques. And her fourth friend, well it’s a girl from school, her lab partner Dawn, her friendship with dawn is simply based on the fact that she, I mean dawn shares the same passion for schoolwork and homework as April (yes, she does have something in common with someone)

Talking more of her life, which is mostly, restricted to her family, her dad Mr. Paul Evers is a lawyer as I already told u, very well kept, too organized to be a man (I share my mom’s opinion of men as untidy dirty people who just cant be clean and organized) but definitely a man of immense respect earned by his sweat and toil. April’s mother is a housewife; Mrs. Patricia Evers fell in love with Paul in high school in the month of April,

Got married to him, after being in a relationship for six years, again in the month of April. When she came to know that she was expecting, it was April once again, so her poor daughter, though born in January was named April which obviously was something she was teased a lot about. Kids used to ask her constantly “April, o April, is it yet April!” and the surname Evers was not made less fun of. Her joked that if April lasted forever when will there be May and June….

Getting back to the award ceremony which definitely seemed to go on forever and ever, our April’s happiness had now vanished because she came to know that she had missed a singing competition because of the delay in the prize ceremony. Thank god she missed it, I mean no offense to her, may her trophies grow by leaps and bounds, but April singing is a nightmare coming to reality, a tested method of torture. None the less she was upset, and upset like hell. Frustrated, she went to sleep as soon as she got back home, after all she couldn’t have missed her school the next day, it was a very important day, the result of her final exams was to be announced and she had already rehearsed how she would go to collect her report card and then smile when the teacher congratulated her on scoring the highest once again. She would pretend to be surprised and say things like “ I never expected to come first, thank you madam” then proudly come back home. That night she dreamt of lovely things happening to her and her parents being proud of her intellect and winning attitude.

Next morning was pretty warm, all cozy and sunny. April got up early; got dressed, re-rehearsed things she would say to the teacher, took her breakfast which was of course porridge and boiled eggs. She truly believed in the “eat healthy, live smart” slogan and took all the proper food at the exact right times. Her mom and dad were ready too, so they went to her school by their car meticulously driven by her dad. Propitious vibes were building all around her, this happens to her every time she goes to collect a prize, but April wasn’t aware of the vagary events that were about to happen. Confidently she walked up to collect her report card. Things were going the way she had planned; the teacher smiled at April and congratulated her while giving her the progress report, for coming second in>

“Second!!!” yes, the most unusual thing had happened, she had lost. April Evers who always won had lost. Though this wasn’t really a competition, but being second was like being at the nadir for April. The smiling teacher now looked like a sardonic tormentor. April was not querulous as you would have expected her to be, and that’s because she couldn’t believe this. She couldn’t thank her and act as if surprised now, which for the first time she truly was. She inquired just one thing, who was first, who was the one who broke the legacy of April Evers. The only one, who could surpass the levels set by our vying April. It was Amy Hardy. After that they silently drove back to home.

“Amy, Amy hardy, the fashion queen Amy, the most popular girl of school Amy. Amy, who has more boys around her than I have books in the whole of my shelf. How can it be Amy!!!” this was the only thing April kept on repeating for the whole of the day, she had never rehearsed a winning speech this number of times.

But I didn’t introduce you to Amy hardy, isn’t it. So let’s get back to the time April was in the garden waiting to win the poetry prize. At the same time Amy hardy was waiting for her prize too. Her prize was no poetry, or singing or dancing award, not even a math, or physics or biology genius award as you would expect a topper to win. She was waiting for her prize, her free facial that she was about to get as a benefit of being the most regular customer to the beauty saloon. What was more important, the poetry prize to April or this facial to Amy was very hard to say. When April was frowning over missing the singing competition, for which I thank God even today, Amy was lamenting over her broken nail. When April was asleep dreaming, Amy was in a party trying to flirt with Lance London, the only guy who didn’t really paid much attention to her tantrums and honey colored skin which was a lot talked about in the boys common room of school.

Well, I am not going to tell you more about lance, because I don’t want to be perfidious by telling you about events yet to happen. You will meet him anyways after some time, so for now let’s talk more about April and how she felt now.

“I have to defeat her in what she is good at, I have to get even with her!” after this reaction I will give you no prizes for guessing what our April was thinking of doing, but poor Mr. & Mrs. Evers were not as smart as you and me, so they asked for further explanations, to which April explained them how she would become the next queen of vanity. After all April Evers always wins. April had already planned a makeover, and was now making notes of what all she will need to do, to become the prom queen and win the fashion show that was to be organized about two to three weeks from now. This was the only competition she came across, and was still not highlighted in her flowchart. The only one she didn’t even want to participate in and now nothing seemed more important than being the beauty queen.

April Evers was about to slough from her she combated her own scruples and decided not to study, or compete in anything else till the fashion night, or show or whatever it was, but first she would have to find out the exact date. She did that pretty soon with the help of Dawn. Her mom and dad were even now supportive, and had even started to help her, as her mom sifted recipe books to find the low calorie food that would now replace the eggs and porridge, her dad was preparing a timetable, with no competitions or result dates but all appointments with beauticians, hairstylists etc, etc. this wasn’t really new for him, as Mr. Evers had been preparing such timetables for his wife for almost 20 years now. Doing it for April definitely felt strange, though. So all appointments were made and April was getting her makeover done. Her specks got replaced by soft blue lenses, but what was scarier for her was to look at the curling iron. 

It looked like a dangerous weapon to her. After getting lots and lots of clothes, getting makeup tips from the best of beauticians, hair styling, new matching sandals, a huge collection of purses, many girly watches, one with a hidden calculator (after all she couldn’t be away from mathematics for a long time) she was ready to be the new glamour diva of school. She also managed to catch up with the latest gossip about Amy; she now knew that Amy was trying very hard to become friends with Lance London. See I promised you that you’ll meet him soon.

So lance is a good looking guy who plays great guitar and is an above average student, a very helping, friendly and charming fellow, the boy next door, and another thing that makes him special is that Amy wants to be his friend, and he is not interested. As April already knew of the gossip, she decided that the first thing she would do is become friends with him. She called him, only to find out that he was out trekking with his friends and would be back the same day as of the fashion night. So nothing much was to be done now, just to wait for the fashion night.

The big day arrived. It was fashion night, the day when April will walk down the ramp and win the fashion show and make friends with lance. That would be one heck of a defeat for Amy. She dressed up and after 4 hours of getting ready she looked like some princess from a fairy tale. She was definitely ready to do some rock n roll. When she reached school, all eyes were on her, but hers kept searching for two people: Amy and Lance. And soon she found them both, both were looking at her, Amy with envy and Lance surprisingly with a little confused look instead of the impressed one. She walked straight to lance and started a friendly talk with him, she told him that she had called, and asked him questions about his trekking, he smiled and talked to her in a jolly buoyed manner, but to her surprise he didn’t compliment her once for the changed look, as all others had been doing since she had entered. Anyways she was happy (she had already seen the jealous look on Amy’s face). The propitious vibes were building again; she knew she would win again. She asked Lance if she could be friends with him but before he could say a word, she rushed to the stage on hearing her name being announced for the ramp walk. She had just started to walk on the stage flaunting her especially chosen attire with dreams of winning already dancing in front of her eyes when, ooops!!! She fell. And when she heard people laughing and throwing jibes at her, it was then she came to know that she had tied the straps of her sandals the wrong way. Her face flushed with embarrassment, with tears of humiliations running down her face, and the sandals in her hand she ran to an empty table and started to cry. Very soon she felt a hand on her shoulder and the mellifluous voice of lance filled her ears “If I knew that falling on the stage would make you cry, I would have told you about your sandals.” These weren’t the lines of assuage she was expecting from him. “What, you knew that I would fall, lose the contest, and you didn’t feel like telling me, so that I could have managed. Do u know how important it was for me to win this show, to make you my friend and get even with Amy, she stole my rank from me. How could you do this to me?” most of these words were difficult to understand for lance partially because of the noise and partially because of April’s sobbing, but being smart he judged the whole situation and then said the following things to April. His words were definitely remembered for a long time. “April, I didn’t knew you wanted to be my friend, you could have always been my friend, I always liked your simplicity, you honesty and the fact that you dint pretend, that is why I was surprised today to look at you dressed up like this, and Amy, don’t you know that she cheated in the exams, the whole of the college is talking about it. Look, April, your winning does not make you special, your attitude does, and I don’t think this flaunting revengeful girl is what you are. April Evers always wins, you did win the day of our result and you even won today, as a matter of fact, tonight is your biggest victory, because today you won your real self back, you won back your attitude, your simplicity and also won a friend, who’s me in case you don’t know, and I will always be your friend for the person that you are, but I will always be this way and will never let you change. So if its ok with you will you be my friend?” with this they joined hands, and April smiled, not the lopsided plastic smile, but the true, hearty one. And with this April won the most important thing of life, she won her smile, as beautiful and innocent as of a new born.

After this, things changed. Though Mr. & Mrs. Evers lance, Amy, even Dawn haven’t changed but our dear April has completely changed, mightily. She has now got plenty of friends; she smiles more often, enjoys life like normal teenagers and most importantly, now she always wins, and will always win because whatever happens she never feels lost at heart. And one thing common to all the people she know is, that they all now believe “April Evers always wins”