When a Brown Girl Flees by Aamna Qureshi EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Aamna Qureshi
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Depression & Mental Health
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 4 MB
- Price: Free
It was an ordinary Monday when I left.
June 27, two days after graduation—twelve days before the wedding.
I was driving past the train station on my way home from my tutoring
job, my mouth cold from an iced caramel latte, my hands sticky with sweat,
music playing on the radio. It was summer music, easygoing and upbeat,
coaxing listeners to move with the rhythm. e weather was blazing, the
sun scorching, and I saw shirtless boys riding bicycles, their laughter
carefree in the wind.
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An ordinary summer day.
e summer after senior year was meant for relaxation, to find myself
before college. It was meant for all the mental sorting I needed to do before
stepping on the path toward a new life. I was supposed to form healthy
habits, watch the sun rise, drink good coffee, spend time with friends. I was
meant to garden and read and cook and breathe and live. No internships, no
summer job, no homework. Freedom.
But I would experience none of these things.
e thought of leaving came to me while I was stopped at a red light. I had
another five minutes before Ammi would call, wondering precisely how far
from home I was. Five more before she called again to double-check. en
ten before I was grounded.
I turned to look out the window. ere it was—the train station I passed
every day. I had only ever been on the train once before, on a school-
chaperoned trip to San Francisco from where we lived in Sunnyvale.
What if …
But my thoughts were elusive, and I gave no words to them in my mind.
I simply turned on my blinker and switched into the empty lane beside me
in a daze. Faintly, I told myself, You’d never dare. Faintly, I thought I’d turn
back the instant I entered the parking lot.
Brown kids didn’t just run away.
But I found myself parking, then pulling the key out of the ignition.
oughts swarmed my mind, incoherent buzzing turning into pro-con lists
and consequences.
I closed the door to my thoughts and opened the door to the car.
It didn’t seem real, like when you know you’re mucking up a drawing, but
you keep scribbling anyway, knowing full well you could toss it and start
again. I grabbed my bag and stepped out of my car.
My phone rang. Ammi, the screen read, vibrating in my hand as I held it.
My finger hovered over the Accept button. en the ringing ceased. My
body was fluid, dreamlike.
I felt nothing.
I turned my phone off and dropped it onto the seat, then slipped my keys
into the sunglasses holder.
Nothing.
I went to the kiosk and bought a train ticket. I got on the train, my bag
bumping against my leg as I walked down the aisles.
Nothing.
I sat.
Still nothing.
en the train began to move.
My breath was sucked out of me in a clean swoop, anxiety filling my
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