Instead of him

Leena Nur was wrapping up her senior year at Leading Senior High this summer and with that, her domestic duties were also coming to their end. High school was nothing to miss for Leena. Instead, it was the bridge between childhood and adulthood. For the entirety of her life, she had been stuck there, forbidden to cross. Leena was neither young and never close to being old enough for anything. She considered it the curse of being the youngest and only daughter of a traditional East African family.

As the sole daughter of her doting parents, Leena was their pride, their joy and also...their live-in maid.

She was the youngest sibling of four brothers and as if being surrounded by them every living moment was not enough, her relentless neighbor, and brother's best friend made sure to loiter around to make her life worse. It was fine, she told herself, since she was determined to move out soon because of it. She knew she was close to the freedom she had been stealing tiny licks of since forever. She was graduating and that meant something so, so important.

College. New Friends. And most irrevocably exciting, boys.

If her father had heard that, let alone her brothers, Leena would have been locked deep inside her closet-sized room. However, she was determined they never would because by that time, she'd already be far away in America with her potential soul-mate, sipping hot cocoa and wrapped in lovely scarves she knitted. All she desired now, was to get through the rest of her high school career quieter than a mouse and receive that acceptance letter from UCLA. She could do it. Right?

If she could just evade that annoying neighbor of hers.