Out Of The Labyrinth

The Cornerstone

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the deserted street. I felt chills run down my spine with each step I took. All of my senses were heightened. I heard an ear-splitting scream. I had never felt fear, panic, disarray and uncertainty altogether to such an extent. I looked around and saw silhouettes of tall buildings. It looked as if I was standing among the ruins of an abandoned city.

My heart pounded ferociously as I frizzled to move towards the source. It sounded as if someone was being tortured. I felt myself getting really close to it. I heard a soft striking sound before everything vanished.

"Amal, honey wake up. You're getting late for school." I heard my mom say.

"I'm up." I told her, reflexively.

A dream. Just a dream, I thought to myself. My heart was still beating really fast. I was feeling more perplexed than terrified. Being grateful that it was over, I got out of my bed. School. It was gonna be a long day. I felt something soft touch my feet and making me feel at home. I looked down. Patches, my cat, purring loudly.

"Hey girl", I scratched her ear before heading to the bathroom.

After washing my face and brushing my teeth, I changed into my school uniform and tied my long, black hair into a messy bun. Grabbing my bag and hiding my iPod in it, I went downstairs. We are not allowed to bring any kind of gadgets to school. But rules are made to be broken, right?

Landing on the last stair, I looked up to find my brother, Hassan and sister, Adan eating their breakfast. Dad was already off to work. Mom was making sure no bit of food is left in anyone's plate. Wasting of food was not allowed in our house.

I was the eldest of the three, which pretty much sucked. Being the eldest, I was held responsible for everything my younger siblings did do and everything they didn't do. We had our breakfast. Mom drove us to school. I saw my friends waiting for me. Waving mom goodbye, I ran towards them. We group hugged a little longer than usual as we were seeing each other after the summer break- three long months. The bell rang. We were going to have fun since it was the first day of a new year at our all-girls school. We entered the classroom together. I saw many new faces. We got seated at the back of the room and started talking about the new girls.

I didn't like many of them at the first glance. I don't like changes much. It takes some time for me to get used to them. Aqsa, my friend, a skinny girl with long dark brown hair, put her hand on the chair in front of her with a thud. The girl sitting on it gave us an ice cold look and said, "Get your hand off my chair." And went back to talking to a girl. Aqsa stared at her for a second and then looked at us and we all started laughing. Then the teacher entered and the new girls introduced themselves. The teacher told us to take out our books.

After what seemed like years I whispered to my friends, "It's just the first class and I am already bored as heck."

I'm the mastermind of everything evil that we do. I came up with an idea to kill boredom. We made notes saying, "You will die in 7 days.","You're in bad luck today", "I'm behind you" and many more and threw them at random people whenever the teacher turned her back on us. One of the notes went in the bag of that rude girl in front of us. We were laughing quitely, anxiously waiting for her to read it. The bell rang and she started putting her belongings back in her bag. Seeing the note, she picked it up and started reading. Her expression was priceless. She actually got scared. We tried our best not to laugh but failed. She looked at us and we tried to pretend that we were laughing at something else. The bell ran again and we said "Thank God" loud enough for the people around us to hear it. The first day was pretty dull but we lived through it.

I got home at around 3 'o clock, as tired as I could possibly be. Literally throwing my bag at the corner of the room, I went down to raid the fridge. Yeah, I'm a foodie. Mom asked me about my day and I asked about hers while we had lunch. Hassan and Adan were upstairs taking a nap. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'. As the evening set, I went out to play badminton with Haania. She's been my neighbor and best friend since as long as I can remember.

"How was school?" I asked, picking up my racket.

"You have no idea. We have this really weird teacher who related bonding to Indian movies", Haania laughed.

"I would have paid to see that!" I joined in on her laughter.

We played our usual casual game of badminton. We would always play in the evening and talk about things ranging from our day at school to preferences in socks. It was getting dark so we stopped.

"See ya tomorrow." I said to her and went in.

Dad was home. We ate dinner and he told us about a new contract he had gotten and that we were gonna celebrate it by going to our favorite restaurant on the coming weekend. After having eaten God knows how much mac and cheese I couldn't move an inch. I felt very tired. It really was a long day as I'd expected and I wanted nothing more than to sink into my soft warm bed and fall asleep.

"I'm so tired I might sleep for ages.", I told my mom as we did the dishes. And so I did until I found myself walking down that dark street again.........