LAURA

Classes start the next week, after the orientation week. While Zara heads off to Block C for the creative writing class, Laura goes off to Block A for the history of art class.

Right from the start, Laura seemed to have it all together. Puberty had hit her in all the right ways. She and Zara were poles apart, but an unspoken bond had always existed between the two. When they were freshmen in high school, Michael was a senior who fell in love with everything about Laura, everything including Laura herself.

Michael went off to university, while the girls finished high school. The summer before university, Michael proposed to Laura. They were young and in love.

Zara on the other hand has struggled with demons all her life. Her alcoholic parents and their constant fights had certainly not made it easy for her to fit in. She was a tool towards which all their anger was always directed. She had some shady scars in unmentionable places. Life had made her, in Michael's words, a shrew. The only friend she had ever known was Laura.

Laura watches as the lecturer launches into an explanation about art history and finds herself zoning out, imagining herself in Michael's arms, where she feels secure and trusted.