When There's No One Else But You and Me (𝖹𝖠𝖱𝖱𝖸)

Chapter IV

Then he stood, dusted his khakis and left out the door.

☮

His old school was nothing like this. It wasn't this goddamn big. It had 12 doors in total and that was it. In and out. But this-―this fucking maze was going to run him out of energy with how many times he had gone to one door and then was told that the door he was at was wrong and then went right back to the same door because someone he had asked told him so. And he was certain that the students were misleading him, if their giggling and sniggering were anything to go by.

Zain, tired and out of breath, twisted the doorknob to what he supposed was math class.

He was the last person in the hallways.

Great, he thought to himself, what a great start to the school year.

The teacher stopped mid-sentence and turned to greet him with a smile, then he frowned, then painted on a pained smile again. "Why hello there!" He strides over to Zain, and all he can do it stare at his shoes, lifting one up over the other to dull their shine. "How're you young man?"

"Good," he mumbles quietly.

"Couldn't hear you there, young-sir."

Zain clears his seized throat and lifts his head up to take in his teacher. White hair, trimmed beard, broad shoulders and wrinkles just above his eyebrows. "I said that I'm ok."

"Great!" His fingers grip Zain's shoulder and he smiles painfully wider at him before pulling back his arm and outstretching it. "Name's Mr. Picasso. Not the painter of course," he bellowed out a deep, breathless chuckle. There were little scatters of laughter around the room and Mr. Picasso turned to them knowingly, almost as if sharing an inside joke before facing his attention to Zain again. "And what's your name, kid?" Mr. Picasso says, limping his hands that are still in Zain's grasp, before he unclasps the thumb that still sorta kept them together.

Mr. Picasso's thumb leaves an imprinted scarlet red on his skin, he notices.

"Well? Go on then."

"Ummm... Yeah. Yeah. Ummm... Ok. Yeah. Sorry. Zain. Zain is my name..." He pauses, contemplates, then adds: "Malik." He rushes, and he's sure his words don't even sound like words anymore.

"Ohhhkayyy then." Mr. Picasso laughs, almost nervously, before smiling at Zain.

"Well then, Zain, there's a few seats in the back. So you can pick any one of those," Mr. Picasso points out to the little seats in the back. "Sorry for them being so small. We weren't expecting any new students this recent."

"Oh, ok."

He stands there.

"Well, go and pick a seat now. We're wasting so much valuable time on introducing you that this class'll be over soon."

Zain nodded down at his shoes and, without making eye contact with anyone, trudged through the tiny aisle and picks a seat in the very far back, the seat being too small to fit him and his thighs occasionally fell over the edges. Zain was uncomfortable, no less, but he couldn't do anything, like Mr. Picasso said, there were no more bigger seats so he just told himself to suck it up and pay attention to his class.

"Now students!" Mr. Picasso clapped his hands and students stopped whispering and glanced up at the teacher who, once realized that everyone was eyeing him, began chalking down something on the green board. "Today we're learning about geometry. So please," he turns around to his class and widens his smile, "take out your notebooks."