Until Now

Chapter 11: New and Old

I was Broken.

But, I mended.

Alfa (6-word poem)

Minha grew fond of Winchester. Something about its environment reminded her of Islamabad. Winchester was much colder than Islamabad. She talked to her parents every single day. It was summer in Pakistan and her siblings were enjoying the vacations.

A month had passed at University. After the first Hall prank the seniors had kept it low. They were quiet. But according to Ashley they were preparing for a bigger prank.

Ashley's cousin was also a student at Winchester. So, Ashley knew a lot about the basic prank kit for freshers.

Minha became a little bit conscious of her attire. She blamed it on her roommate Chantel, who didn't have to iron her clothes every single day, whereas Minha spend an hour daily from picking the outfit to matching the shawl and jacket with each one of them. She tried to do hijab but after one miserable attempt went back to loosely draping the duppata on her head and shawl around her shoulders. Sometimes she skipped the duppata and elegantly covered her head with the shawl.

There were only a handful of Asian students at the university. But only few of them were her in department. The business department was filled with students from Pakistan.

It was Saturday and Minha was wasting her time on instagram. Looking at her previous class fellows pictures in their respective engineering colleges sometimes hurt her but with time the hole in her chest had been partially healed.

Life is strange. We keep on dreaming this one dream and when it breaks, we lose the courage to dream another one. She was going through the same transition phase.

Her mind was showing interest in Psychology but her heart was still struck at engineering. The heart wants what it wants. Despite all these things, Minha was trying her level best to accept her fate. Which was the most difficult decisions of them all.

Minha slowly escaped from her addled mind when Ashley's voice hit her ears. She wore her shoes and ran to the balcony. Ashley was waving at her. "We are going to submit these assignments to Man Yasmine. Do you wanna come?"

It was Saturday noon and Minha didn't have a class. She had already submitted her work but Ashley, being the phlegmatic human, she was, was submitting a day before the deadline.

"Ok, I will come." Minha replied. After hurriedly adjusting her duppata on her head she walked out of the room. She met Ashley at the right passage behind her hall which leads them to main campus.

Ashley was standing with one of their other class fellows; Eugene who was pretty shrewd as compared to Ashley. "Hey, I told you to make it before deadline but you will never change I guess." Minha rebuked her.

"There is no fun in discipline darling," Ashley winked at her. "So, how did you make it in a day?" Minha questioned her. "Simple I didn't." Ashley's answer shocked the hell out of Minha.

"Whhhaaatt?" She was irritated at Ashley's answer. "Eugene and I made it together. Girl, calm down." All the other students strolling by them gave Minha a quizzical look as she was unusually loud.

"He helped me," Ashley said while wrapping her arm around Eugene's' shoulders. Eugene nodded at them. "Ashley is really smart." Eugene said forcefully.

Ashley gave Minha an "I told you so" look. When they reached the campus, Eugene went to submit their assignments while Minha and Ashley walked to the cafeteria.

"What did you do to him?" Minha questioned her. Ashley was brought up in a household full of boys which made her quite different from other girls. Her brothers taught her a lot of things from combat to handling a gun and giving death threats to people.