Chapter One

Hurry up!

I tried running, but only slightly. Running would only make me sweaty and loose my breath. It would also bring a lot of attention and probably create a stir. I tried focusing on the path ahead and tried to pacify my surging lungs.

The environment was filled with lively and and joyful people, buzzed with energy. All of a sudden, I began to feel anxious. They’re all watching me. My throat tightened; the path became dense, packed with too many people to count.

I began searching for someone suspicious, though I wasn’t sure what they would look like. I tugged at my cloak’s hood bringing it closer to my face as I had a thousand times already, though nothing could keep me from feeling utterly exposed.

Hurry up Freya! My mom called out. She made me come to the market with her. According to her, I never go out and I’m always living in my head.

This is the second time I’ve been to the market all my life and I’m just nineteen. Thought I’ll be turning big twenty in a couple of months. I’m super excited about my coming birthday, I’ll finally get to college and make decisions about my life.

Ever since my dad left us two years ago, my mom totally changed. She became grumpy, made almost everything about her; sort of controlling my life, at the same time didn’t care about my needs and things I wanted for myself.

My college was delayed due to some financial difficulties. My mom couldn’t juggle everything all by her self. Since dad left without any notice or word. I think that’s what annoys her the most.

At some point, I feel pity for her. She relied on my dad way too much that when he left, we were hanging by a string.

Finally, we made it home alive. I tend to exaggerate things a bit. “ no, no, we’re sorting these things together, you can’t just leave it for me.” My mom told me as I tried walking into my room just after we got home. Of course I went ahead and helped.

Its been an awful, stressful and annoying day. I’m too lazy to shower. I just laid in bed hugging my pillow trying to relax and forget the day. Just then, my phone rang.

“ Hey baby…” I answered the incoming call as I tried sitting up.

“Freya! You said you’d come over this evening”.

I pulled my phone from my ear and looked at the screen to be sure I’m talking to my best friend Nova Willams. She rarely calls me by my name. We usually call each other baby or any other sweet name, unless one person is angry or the situation requires us calling our names.

“I’m sorry babe, it slipped off my mind. I’ve had a hell of a day.”

Nova is more like a sister to me than a friend. Ever since we became close, we also became inseparable.

I told Nova all about my day without missing a single thing. I was meant to sleepover at her place, but I was too tired to gather even my thoughts together. At the end of each month, we’d always sleep over at one person’s place. Nova came over last month and it’s meant to be my turn this month, but things were hectic this weekend so I’m pushing this sleepover to another time.

I woke up late the next morning. It was almost impossible for me to get up from my bed. I was as weak as a kitten. But I had to get up. I and Nova had an interview for a job not to far from our houses. Nova lived few blocks away from mine. Her mom found us this job at a furniture store. Her parents have a lot of connections.

Well, they do work hard for everything they have. So that’s fair.

We applied as for the position of a sales Associate.

We submitted our CV weeks back and got a call for the interview four days ago. We just need to to show our faces to the owner and I’m very confident we’d get the job. The owner is a close friend of Nova’s mom.

We were done with the interview. It was a simple interview that didn’t take much of our time. Told you we just had to show our faces.

I and Nova kept whining on how stressful the job already looks. It requires a lot of talking and mostly convincing, and we aren’t so good at that. Though we’d be going through a training for it on our first day of work.

We both decided not to go home immediately we were done with the interview, so we took a walk to a pastry shop were we chatted over a doughnut and smoothie.