Aeipathy ➳ Normani ✓

sixteen

C H A P T E R  S I X T E E N

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Normani reached bent down and stretched her arms to reach the furthermost corner in her locker in a quest to find her ballet slipper.

Her hand collided with the tired, silky material of one of the straps and she grabbed onto it and pulled the shoe out.

She closed her locker again and waved back at the girl who was exiting the dressing room with a smile on her face.

Normani sighed in bliss. She along with her other classmates had gotten back their final practical results for ballet and she was happy with the A she'd gotten, especially since she hated the dance form.

Ballet had been her final assessment – set a week after her other written and practical exams. Now all that separated her from summer vacation was her dirty locker.

She'd spent ten minutes clearing everything out and was just about done. Her college junior year had come and gone in the blink of an eye and summer was upon them once again.

She couldn't wait to catch up on sleep, eat copious amounts of food and binge watch series, simple pleasures that she'd had to sacrifice for that year.

It had been her most challenging in the three years that she'd attended NYU. Normani couldn't count the number of times she'd cried from the pure stress – assignments, practicals, tests and exams.

She'd even suffered from the exam entrance scare: when a module had been far too challenging for her and she'd almost not gotten a grade that was good enough to gain entry to write the exam for it.

Her mental health had suffered tremendously that year – along with the general academic stress that came with her degree, her laptop, with all of her study material had been stolen a week before a major exam too.

It had taken a very public panic attack in the middle of a Walmart for her to listen to the signals her body had been giving out to her.

The year wasn't entirely bad though and she'd had her fair share of great memories: she'd modelled for Sketchers, had been booked for photo shoots by a start-up magazine that was already gaining popularity amongst her peers, made more dance covers with Peaches – all of which had brought positive attention to her public social media profiles.

She still had the audition for a Miss Nchekubwe in August and she was still as excited for it as the day she'd gotten the invite.

She was glad that the academic year was finally put to rest and she'd finished with a miraculous 3.4 GPA.

With a satisfied smile, she closed her locker, placed her slipper into her bag and set about to leave campus.

She walked to the nearest Starbucks to wait for Anika and Faye so that they could all head home together, the latter had become an almost permanent fixture in their home life and often times Normani forgot that Faye didn't live with them.

She and Anika had been together for a glorious thirteen months and Normani had never seen her best friend so happy.

Normani ordered a cappuccino freezo for herself, chai latte for her best friend and orange juice for Faye and waited for them.

The couple arrived five minutes after she'd gotten their beverages, glued to the hip and giggling together.

"There's my second favourite couple," Normani said as they took the seats across hers.

"Who's your first?" Faye asked.

"Me and Keith, of course," Normani said.

Anika rolled her eyes, "wow, that's totally not conceited."