The Easiest Target

Easy

Toki takes tentative steps towards me, only stopping when I take a step back. "Hadeel, please..." he whispers.

"No," I say, barely recognizing my own voice.

I repeat it and shake my head, tears welling in my eyes. His silence in his own apartment spoke volumes. I don't have any more room in my heart right now for any more drama.

"Hadeel," Toki whispers, coming closer.

I clench my jaw tight, gulping down the pain in my throat. The school year literally just started and for the first time in my life, I hate school. My escape from home has become another place to call hell. I rub my tears away and force myself to look him in the eyes. His beautiful, sharp, dark brown eyes. He learned to conceal everything behind the apathy he perfected ... yet to me, it's so fake. He's fake. His smile. His extroverted persona: he's a fake. I can tell he's hurting, too, but I don't have the capacity to comfort someone that stabbed me in the back. Not any more. Not again. Not him.

"No," I shake my head. "I can't." I snatch my ragged black backpack off the table — a hand-me-down from Adam because I'm a girl not worth the effort to my parents.

"Hadeel, wait," he begs. I walk around him again and he calls my name loudly once more. I leave the library as fast as my legs can take me. I run through the halls with my hood pulled up so no one can see the tears pouring down my face.

Toki is as close to a crush as I ever came to having. I was too wrapped up in my fantasies to ever consider real guys but Toki introduced me to my world. He's the reason I got into drawing. He's the reason I want to become an animator. He's the one that encouraged me to start posting my work online.

Was he just laughing at me the whole time?

I lock myself in one of the girls bathrooms before it becomes filthy with pads, toilet paper and tampons, (all used, by the way) take out my drawing pad, sit there and sketch until the janitor knocks on my stall, startling me.

"School finished, miss. You need to get out."

I quickly pack and scramble out of the bathroom. At least he doesn't have to clean that stall. I'm calmer in the empty halls. Maybe I can go steal a change of clothes from a locker and just find a corner to hide in all night — live on school grounds.

I glimpse the sky through a classroom window, rolling my eyes. The sun is setting and it's raining like crazy. My parents will alert the National Guard if I don't get home soon. I don't have a phone they can blow up with calls and messages. I'm not stupid enough to pressure them to get me one. My mom would bug me about chores, picking up my siblings, and being home the second it turns two o'clock.

It's probably why they agreed to marry me off to Azan: after being charged with hitting him, on top of all of the odd behaviors I'm known for thanks to my damn cousins, no Yemeni man will consider me for marriage. What an utter tragedy. Not exactly ideal for parents who want grandchildren before they get their first wrinkles.

The screeches of chairs backing away from desks and feet shuffling startle me. There's still a class here?

A group of students file out and Toki is one of them. He glances around, downcast until he spots me. He opens his mouth to say something and Azan steps out after him, yawning.

He glares at me, a look that isn't any less attractive on him. He has the warmth and kindness of a young boy in his eyes yet all of the facial hair and angular features of an asshole.

"You don't have a phone?" Azan says, coming towards me.

I don't answer. I have no energy to run, either. He waves a hand in front of my face. "Yo, you deaf or something? Your parents are freaking out. School called them and said you skipped. Where were you?"