Lucia had to get the second bus, none of her friends got the second bus but that was the point. Damn her mother.

She sat in silence whilst the wet streets slid past, at least on the second bus it wasn't likely people would need to sit beside her. Her mother had forced her to start wearing a hajib, she found the headscarf hot and anoying, even on a cold day like this. Ridiculous religious nonsense. She expected there may be an insistence to join the mosque soon. God she hated that woman.

As a devout atheist she despised all religion, she wondered for the millionth time if she could claim asylum somewhere on religious grounds, or rather anti-religious. Salman Rushdie had done it hadn't he?

The rain was really bouncing off the road. She normally liked a good rainstorm, especially if there was thunder, today however, it just added to her dreary outlook.

Her friends had tried, they really had, they took shifts being with her at breaks and having lunch with her. It wasn't the same, the grounding meant she couldn't go to their coffee shop, or bowling or anything fun. School, homework, bed, rinse, repeat. It was dull.

She sighed as the bus pulled into the school, another day. She told herself it was another day closer to her eighteenth birthday and freedom. She was having horrific thoughts however that perhaps she may not get to go to university. Her mother seemed to be enjoying her stranglehold, if she convinced her father not to fund university. Ugh.

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She traipsed slowly up the stairs, her registration class was on the top floor of the maths department. The last bus was still fairly early and so she had nothing to do for a few minutes before the bell. Recently she had taken to sitting on the floor by the classroom reading. She had always felt alone in registration since none of her friends shared it with her but now she felt alone.

She got to the top step of the flight and someone came from nowhere and shoved. She hadn't been paying attention, had been in the centre of the large staircase, hadn't been holding a railing. She toppled backwards, rolled over and over down the stairs, she may have screamed but by the time she smacked into the landing all the breath had been knocked from her. She was dazed, at some point her head had hit the ground and it hurt. It hurt badly but not nearly as badly as her arm, she tried to get her breath but it hurt to breath. She lay there in an undignified heap for what seemed like hours.

Eventually the registration teacher arrived, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes since she fell but the panic, the pain, the inability to breath all made it the most frightening moment of her life, tears were running down her face.

"Oh my god! What happened?" The man tried to help her up but the pain increased and she used the little breath she had to scream. She did however have the cognitive awareness to rail against the god he was calling on. "Hold on Lucia, I'm calling an ambulance."

She sobbed between shallow breaths.