Saving Noor

Chapter 1

Noor's POV

It was a hot summer day with the sun rays hurting my eyes like that ball of fire was particularly created to torture me. "Shit," I cursed as I remembered that I had yet again forgotten to put sunscreen on. How I forgot that everyday was beyond me but then again I was never one to fuss about skincare or makeup that much. I liked looking good but I  never put much effort into it and while I admired girls who did, I never saw myself as one of them. I was too damn lazy. 

I got out of the car and ran towards the gate of my university slowing down to show the guard my card as he nodded at me. I was in a rush because I had promised to meet my friend Rehma before the 9am lecture started. She hated being stood up and I did not want to dent one of the only friendships I had managed to forge at university in my second semester. Rehma had been trying to convince me to meet this new friend of hers for some time and I had a feeling I would not be able to avoid meeting him today.

According to her, I was a lousy friend, the one who never stuck around after classes ended, the one who was always in a hurry to go home even if someone asked her to stay back. I never told her much about why I couldn't stay, why I couldn't be normal and why I had such a hard time maintaining friendships. That dark part of my life was reserved for myself, I would never burden someone else for things I could handle alone.

Since I in her words was not a 'constant', she had resorted to making other friends at university, something I was not interested in. After spending almost 7 months there, I had come to the conclusion that I did not fit in and I wouldn't no matter how hard I tried. Other people were confident, didn't have self esteem issues and could speak up in class without having a minor panic attack. They could have normal conversations without freaking out, they also didn't have the fear of getting laughed at, I simply stood out for all the wrong reasons.

"Hi. Sorry I'm late. Didn't feel like getting out of bed this morning," I said as I sat down at the table she had been occupying at the cafe having tea. "You say that every single time I ask you to come early," she rolled her eyes.

"True but you know how I am. I love sleeping," I said, taking a biscuit from the pack in front of her. "Fine. But you're meeting Shaheer today. I told him we could all hang out after class," she said in her 'don't argue with me on this' tone and I knew I couldn't say no today.

"You've seen him plenty of times. He's in some of our classes", Rehma told me. "Oh. Nice. What's his name?", I asked what was expected of me. I always tried to sound like a normal person, do and say things any other person would. With the events that had unfolded in the past couple of years in my life, I had lost most of my personality. I was this bland, uninteresting human now who tried to fit in no matter what.

"His name is Shaheer, you'll like him. He's a decent guy," she answered. "I don't know. You know I'm not that social," I said looking at my phone to check the time. I hated being late for class. It triggered my anxiety.

"Oh come on Noor! Don't start with this again, we need more friends. No one knows us in university. We can't spend 4 years like this!," she started her usual rant where she always complained about not having more friends. I never understood why this affected her so much. I wanted new friends too but never had the energy to do something about it. My self esteem had me convinced no one liked me anyway so I saw no point. "Okay I'll meet him. We can hangout," I told her. "Good. He's meeting me after class. We'll spend the free slot with him," she muttered excitedly. "Cool," I answered.

We went our seperate ways. I had macroeconomics for my first class whereas she had financial accounting. We were both doing our bachelors majoring in accounting and finance. While I could have taken the courses she was taking this semester, I hadn't. I liked being alone in class with no one to see my grades or judge me. Rehma was not a bad person but she did judge people a lot and I sometimes couldn't stand her mean comments. My low grades bothered me a lot. I had been a great student my entire life but had lost interest in almost every single thing in the past few years, my grades being a reflection of what I had become, a shell of my previous self.

After an excruciating 1.5 hours of class and a surprise quiz that I undoubtedly failed, I went to the student activity centre where I knew Rehma and her friend would be waiting for me.

"Dude I'm so tired," I said as soon as I saw her because I genuinely was. I hadn't had breakfast and I couldn't bring myself to eat at university, another problem normal people didn't have. The one biscuit I had in the morning only satisfied my stomach for like half an hour. "Me too. Let's sit down. Shaheer's there on one of the sofas," She lead me where a few people were sitting on one of the blue sofas in middle of the centre.

"Shaheer, this is Noor. The friend I was telling you about," she said and I watched as a guy with curly hair and glasses who was engaged in a conversation with the guy sitting next to him stood up. He was wearing a blue checkered shirt with beige pants.

"Hi. How are you? I'm Shaheer," he introduced himself smiling. "Noor," I muttered carelessly, not knowing that the moment when our eyes met would forever be etched in my mind, that our stars would forever be crossed.

A/N: so here's the first chapter. Please vote and comment if you liked it. It will give me the motivation to write longer chapters and update more frequently. Enjoy. :)