Where Destiny Found Me

CHAPTER THREE: WELCOME TO MONROE

*AISHA POV*

New York hit me like a slap.

Not a bad slap. Just a real one. The kind that wakes you up.

I stepped out of JFK Airport and into October air that was nothing like Lagos heat. It was crisp. Cold, even. I was wearing a light cardigan over my long-sleeved dress, and I was already regretting every decision I'd made about my wardrobe. The wind cut through me, and I pulled my hijab tighter around my face, trying to shield myself from the shock of it all.

The city rose up around me like a living thing buildings so tall they blocked out the sky, cars honking in a symphony of impatience, people moving with a kind of purposeful urgency that Lagos never quite had. Even the air smelled different. Like exhaust and ambition and a thousand different stories all happening at once.

"First time in New York?"

I turned to see a woman smiling at me older, warm, with kind eyes that crinkled at the corners. She was wearing a thick coat and carrying about five shopping bags.

"That obvious?" I asked, trying to smile back.

"You have that look," she said. "Like you're trying to see everything at once. It fades after a few weeks. Or maybe it doesn't, and you just get used to it. Either way, welcome to the city."

She walked away before I could respond, and I was left standing in the middle of the airport arrivals hall, feeling very small and very alone.

I called the Uber with shaking fingers—my first time using the app and climbed into the car with my two suitcases, which suddenly felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. They held everything I owned. My entire life, compressed into 23 kilograms of luggage.

The Uber driver didn't make conversation, which I was grateful for. I pressed my face against the window and watched New York unfold before me. The highways, the buildings getting taller as we got closer to Manhattan, the people everywhere, always moving, always purposeful.

"Monroe University," the driver announced, pulling onto a tree-lined street that suddenly felt worlds away from the highway we'd just left.

And there it was.

The campus was exactly like the pictures, which somehow made it feel less real. Ivy-covered buildings that looked like they'd been standing since the founding of the country. Students sprawled across the lawn, laughing, studying, existing in this bubble of privilege that I'd never experienced before. There was a fountain in the center of the quad an actual fountain—and beyond it, the Manhattan skyline cutting through the sky like a promise.

"Welcome to Monroe," the driver said, pulling up to the residential buildings. "That'll be forty-two dollars."

I handed him forty-five, my hands still shaking slightly. Everything cost so much more here. I was going to have to be careful. Very careful.