Hello, Mr. Umbrella

Chapter Fifteen

Two days have passed but Aliyah's miseries didn't follow them to the past. Safiya's conspiracy about GG and Mr. Umbrella was still stuck to her head, the only cure she could ever think of was: getting drunk on smoothie—and it wasn't working as expected. Instead of drinking away her sorrows, she was drinking them in through the smoothie's straw. Her stomach flatulated as she stared down at the goddamned swirling nutritious yellowish thick liquid.

Getting drunk was made easy in the movies though. Maybe because they really used strongly intoxicated boozes.

Alcohol. That was the last thing Aliyah would taste in her life—since Islam prohibited alcoholic drinks. Religion aside, she hated any sort of intoxicants; even when the composition of the drink was: 20% of fruits, 79.99% of water and 00.01% of alcohol, talk less of drinks brewed with different varieties of alcohol. Being powerless, honest, intoxicated and out of sanity wasn't something she'd want to experience—not even in a place as public as Jeremy's café.

Alcohol was a hard pass. Maybe after she decided on leaving Jeremy's café alive, she could try getting drunk on another junk—Oreos and liquid chocolate probably.

Unable to stand, Aliyah glued her butt to the wooden chair and kept giving out weird smiles to the patrons whenever her stomach rumbled loudly. Drinking six cups of blended banana sure had its perks—Aliyah was battling with two things; constipation and gastralgia.

The opening of the café's door eased Aliyah's situation. She knew it was Daphne, since she had never missed any of Aliyah's SOS messages. Aliyah muttered a small prayer of gratification as soon as Daphne walked in. Her superhero, her best friend and lucky charm had come; everything ought to be easy. Daphne was Aliyah's savior, she saved Aliyah's careless butt countless times, but Aliyah would never forget the period incident.

As gross as it was, Aliyah could never forget the day her period came unannounced at school, during a chemistry pop quiz. She was devastated, her dress was ruined with red tacky liquid. Like a psychic, Daphne knew what was happening; or maybe she saw the mess. She offered Aliyah the expensive blazer she was wearing, in order for her to cover her stained dress. That was a very deep and heartwarming thing to do. She always has a solution to everything and hopefully she'll have a remedy for Aliyah's present constipation situation.

"Thank Allah you came Daph." Aliyah said, struggling to get up, but her abdominal region sent waves of pains to her brain and she sat still.

Daphne controlled her rapid breathing. "I came as soon as I saw the SOS text. What's up babe? Period problems?" Daphne asked absentmindedly, "I brought a pad." She added that part silently.

Aliyah's face turned bright red out of embarrassment, "It's not that," she whispered back. "Have your seat." She ushered Daphne to her seat.

Sitting down, Daphne noticed the empty large smoothie plastic cups on the cafe's tiled floor. "Babe. Don't tell me you drank those," she said, pointing at the scrunched cups on the floor.

"Okay. I won't." Aliyah said in the middle of her funny stomach sound.

Daphne sucked on her teeth, "babe, you're not okay. Can you even walk? Are you in serious pain?" She asked, checking out Aliyah's tired and saggy eyes.

Aliyah smiled at the fact that she was blessed by Allah for having such a sweet and caring friend as Daphne. "I'm not fine, but I'll be, since you're here." Aliyah honestly answered.

"Okay." Daphne cooled down, "so how was club-GG? Any lead on them?" Daphne changed the topic of conversation.

Aliyah inhaled tiredly. "Oh please, don't get me started on how I crushed that meeting and put myself on the top list of Gossip Gurl's accomplice. I don't want to hear their name." Aliyah said tiredly, stirring her last cup of smoothie absentmindedly.