Recap...
As soon as he says that, every girl besides Umme and Saafiya runs up to Hamza and asks him if he wants to be his partner. I look at Umme and Saafiya but they just look at me sympathetically.
"I'm sorry Layla but Mr. Chase said to be in a pair." Umme says and I internally sigh when I see Saafiya wink at me.
"Hamza do you want to work with me?" I hear a girl wearing a mini skirt beg him.
"Work with me Hamza!" Another girl asks him.
"No Hamza, work with me." A girl from the back of the crowd of girls that want to work with him says.
"Sorry girls but Layla begged me first." He says and gets up to go write our names on the board with a smirk on his face. What a jerk!
"He'll pick us over you any day!" A girl says once he's out of earshot.
"I mean look at you, your not even pretty." Another girl wearing a low cut top tells me with a disgusted look once she looks me over.
I just ignore them and wait for Hamza outside of the classroom. I feel hot angry tears welling up in my eyes, but try my best to not let them stream down my face. I don't know why but what they said truly broke me in more than one way.
Chapter 19
As I wipe my tears away on my shirt, I try to look any where but up because I'm afraid that Hamza's going to see me crying. I hear him getting out of the classroom and I feel extremely self-conscious; which is a feeling that I hate because I know that Allah (swt) created me the way that he desired.
"Why are you crying?" Hamza says coming out of the classroom.
"It's none of your business." I say looking down and wiping away my tears away that seem to not want to stop pouring down.
"Tell me or we're not going anywhere." He says gently but I know that he's serious.
"It's stupid." I say still looking down.
"If it's something that has made you cry, then no it isn't." He says.
"They said that I wasn't pretty or good enough for you. I told you it was stupid." He doesn't say anything but just walks back into the classroom. I don't enter the room because I don't want to face them.
"How dare you say that Layla isn't pretty! In my eyes, she's prettier than any one of you that told her that she isn't or that she doesn't deserve me! If you think for one second that I'll pick you over Layla, you should know that you are nothing but wrong! If I see her crying one more time even over you guys, I'm going to report you to the principal!" There is silence as he finishes yelling at the girls in the room.
My tears stop rolling down my eyes because of what he said. Will he really pick me over them? I start feeling admiration for Hamza because honestly any girl would be lucky to have him. Although a tiny part of me feels like I'm betraying mystery man; a huge part of me feels that I'm lucky to have Hamza in my life.
"Jaza Kallah Khair." I tell him with a weak smile as soon as I see him. I have a bad urge to hug him, but then again Astagfirullah. He just nods at me and leads us to wherever we have to go.
"You heard that?" He says and when I see him scratching the back of his neck in embarrassment, I smile.
"Yes, and it was the sweetest thing that I've heard come out of your mouth since I met you." I say with a huge smile on my face. I see his face turn bright red, and I laugh.
"Hey!" He yells at me playfully as hears me laugh.
"You know that any girl would be lucky to have you as their spouse, right?" I ask him seriously.
"I would hope so. I mean, I'm the whole package." As soon as he says that, I know that the old Hamza is back.
"Your so full of yourself." I tell him.
"You love it." He says and I just shake my head at him.
"So here is the classroom." He says and opens the door.
"There are only a stack of notes." I tell him as I look on top of the teacher's desk.
"I'll carry them." I tell him, and he nods.
We make small talk the rest of the way to the classroom and as we enter the room, I see that we're the only ones inside but as we leave, I see that the girl who said that I wasn't pretty enter the room. As soon as she saw me, she ignored me like I wasn't there, and I honestly was glad.
You see our school principal is a family friend of Hamza and my parents, so if anything was to be reported by either him or me, you could say that it would be taken seriously. I mean he practically knew our dads before we even were born.
Once we get out of the classroom, I let out a sigh of relief.
"That was intense." He says.
"Yes, it was." I say cringing at the awkwardness.
We finish the round to two more classrooms and by the time we get back to our class, the bell rings for the next period. I gather all my stuff and go to my next class which is English. Since it was the day before the winter break, our teacher told us that we could do anything as long as we were in the classroom.
After the teacher realized that saying that to seniors, the day before winter break was a huge mistake, she told us to read 20 pages of our class novel. I personally did not feel like that was a punishment but considering that the rest of the class was glaring at my English teacher, that pretty much summed it up.
I read the book for the rest of the period in peace and serenity because eerily I qualify reading in my free time...enjoyable which is quite odd to many people. English class goes by pretty fast.
When the bell rings, I go to my locker, and wait for Umme because Saafiya is already there. I see Hamza needing to go to his locker, so I move aside. He smiles at me and leaves the hallway a couple of seconds later.
"What was that?" Saafiya asks.
"Nothing. Why?" I ask her.
"It looked like you guys were having a moment there." She says laughing a bit.
"Seriously Saafiya." I glare at her and she just laughs more.
Umme comes a couple of minutes later because she apparently had a test today for her second period class. We all eat our lunches in silence. I was silent because my mind was still thinking about what happened in first period.
After we finish our lunches, we go to the library and I decide to write my biology class notes because if I got them finished before the break, then I could look them over during the break. I finished my last word just as the bell rang.
I went to my psychology class and the teacher gave us textbook work to do but I already had done it a couple of a days ago, so I decided to go ahead some more and also make notes. By the time home studies class rolled around, you could say that the thoughts running in my head were giving almost about to give me an anxiety attack.
The thoughts from first period were mixed with Farooq from my home studies class, and on top of that, mystery man seemed to invite himself inside my jumbled up thoughts as well. As I sat down in home studies class, I had a huge headache and just wanted to not have been in this situation in the first place. I took out a Tylenol from my backpack and drank it with some water.
My home studies teacher told us that since the winter break was coming up, we could make winter themed cookies. We would have to share the two class kitchens with four groups and each group would be assigned a specific cookie shape.
It was just my luck that I got Farooq in my group. We were assigned to make Mitten shaped cookies. The other three groups were to make snowman, snowflakes, and hat shaped cookies. Our teacher said that the group to have the tastiest and best presented cookies will have each group member receive a prize.
Since we had 7 people in our group and I was the manager, I assigned each group member an ingredient to be brought to me in the right quantity. I gave everyone something to do while I went over to watch everyone do the job correctly. Farooq much to my dismay kept making an excuse to stand beside me.
The worst part was when he started flirting with me. I busied myself with the tasks around the kitchen because I didn't want to talk with him after finding out that his intentions were not pure. He was about to put a hand on my arm but I pulled away just in time and glared at him.
"You'll come around." He says.
"I don't like you Farooq." I tell him straightforwardly.
"Everyone likes me. It's just a matter of time before I have you." As soon as he says that, I give him an extremely disgusted look. Astagfirullah. Hopefully Allah (swt) will pair me up with someone that is pure.
When the cookies come out of the oven, a couple of people from my group and I started to place fondant on them. We also put some frosting on top of them lightly to give the texture of a real mitten. I decided to ice a couple of them because not everyone likes fondant and also I left two of the cookies plain as well because some people don't like too much sugar.
By the time we were finished, there were still 10 minutes before the bell was going to ring, so we decided to clean our area up. After a couple of minutes, our teacher said that it was time for her to taste our cookies. She took a cookie each from each group but didn't say anything regarding the taste or the looks of the cookie.
"The winning group is...Layla's!" As soon as our teacher says that, our group erupts in loud cheers.
"I knew that we could do it babe." Farooq says smiling at me mischievously. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do if Farooq is mystery man because I know that the only thing that I would most likely do is cry myself a river.
"First of all, I'm not your babe, and second of all you just stood around doing nothing!" As I yell at him, I am grateful that the rest of the class is super loud right now because I am pretty sure that I would be in a lot of trouble if our teacher heard what I said. I personally don't like raising my voice but he just doesn't get it.
"You will be soon." He says winking at me and going to his group of friends before I could come up with a remark. I knew that even if I did, he wouldn't be able to hear me over the loud noise of the students in the classroom.
Our teacher has a couple of students hand out to everyone a couple of cookies that we made and the hot cocoa that she made. I spend the rest of the class eating the cookies and drinking the cocoa in silence because it sure sounded like to me that Farooq was mystery man, and that ladies and gentleman didn't seem like good news to me.
A couple of minutes later, our teachers hands out a gift basket to everyone from my group. The basket it self is woven and inside it is a mug, some hot cocoa packets, chocolates, and a stationery set with an elegant lid pencil and pen in it.
The boys in my group, including Farooq thought that the gift was too unmanly and gave it to some girl in our class. Farooq gave me his basket even though I already had one. When I told him kindly that I didn't want it, he said that he didn't want to hear it.
When the bell rang signalling the end of the day, I took a sigh of relief that finally the day was over. It made me extremely happy to know that all the drama that happened today at school, wouldn't have to be faced by me for another two weeks.
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AN: I have realized that Subhan Allah, I have amazing readers, and voters. I honestly have loved reading every single comment that I received while writing this book and truth be told, when I see your comments, I feel like I have to write a bit of the next chapter because there really are people that read my book and I hope that they enjoy it.
Please remember to...
VOTE
COMMENT
FOLLOW
SHARE (with friends via Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter/Etc. :))
I honestly find it motivating when my readers especially vote and comment because I like knowing that there is someone that likes reading my book.
I know that I have updated way earlier than the date that I said that I was going to update, but you see every person that commented motivated me so much that I kept writing till 3 o'clock :).
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Quranic Verse:
The Quran 100:08 (Surah al-Adiyat) "Indeed! Mankind is violent in the love of wealth."
I feel as if I don't have to explain this Quranic verse but please don't think of this Ayah applying to only world leaders but also to all of us. We should always know that wealth is only temporary because once you die, all your worldly gains will diminish.
Your good and bad deeds will remain only and there is extreme Barakat (blessing) in spreading Islamic knowledge to others. The reason I say this is because even after you die, people will be spreading the Islamic knowledge that they have acquired from you to others, and this will bring you rewards even in the grave.
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I feel like updating early gets me less views but I have some viewers that really want this book updated ASAP (you know who you are ;)), and I feel like they shouldn't have to wait long for a chapter to be updated. I mean they comment and vote on my chapters, and that is all that I ask each and everyone who reads to do this.
Goals for this Chapter: 16 votes, 20 comments, and 3k READS
Please let me reach 3k Reads because over the last couple of chapters, I have seen that people have stopped reading my book. Please share this book with others because I want others to know how it is possible to have a Halal Love Story without contradicting religious beliefs. I also want the youth of this Ummah to know basic Duas and acquire basic knowledge on Islam that they might have not known before.
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I want to say Jaza Kallah Khair to all my readers that have helped me reach:
2.7k Reads, 184 votes, 101 comments #141 in Spiritual
NOT EDITED
Next Update: can be update as late as January 10th because I might have vacation plans coming up and also exams but remember that I do hope to update earlier and In Sha Allah (if Allah wills), I will.
Plus I have updated 3 chapters this month, so please remember to KEEP COMMENTING because I honestly did NOT think that I would be able to update even one seeing as how busy I am. This chapter was also written with me staying up until after midnight, so please excuse the mistakes.