LOOK AT ME (Muslim Story)

LOOK AT ME (20)

"I don't know what I was thinking!" I exclaimed, my hands moving around so much.

Ahmed and I were in the middle of this forest beside our school, so that we can get away from the mess over there. I desperately needed to talk about what just happened.

"I could've killed her! If you hadn't come and taken me off of her, I could've ended her life! This is why I don't fight. This is why—"

Ahmed cut me off with his silence. I don't know, I just wished he talked more.

"How dare you!" I point the finger st him, "how dare you bring me here to talk and you aren't even saying anything?"

He shrugged.

I groaned, staring at the sky like it was a Picasso painting, "Why the fuck aren't you mad? I almost killed your girlfriend."

"She's not my—" he stopped himself before covering up his words, "I mean she is my girlfriend it's just— she shouldn't have said that to you."

I was caught off guard, "Who cares? She's your girlfriend so you should be with her right now, not with me."

"Someone will take her to the nurse's office."

"That someone should be you."

"Someone else can do it."

"But your her boyfriend—"

"Fuck it." I suddenly heard him say. Ahmed lifted himself off the rock so he can come face to face with me. He didn't look at me or anything like that but he did make it clear that he was about to address me. He brought his smooth hands to my shoulders and began to shake them, my whole boy jerking forward and backwards.

And then he uttered some words I didn't think I would hear him say, "she's not my girlfriend."

It was all too fast, I didn't know how to react. This doesn't make any sense.

I pushed him away from me, "Yes she is." I insisted, "You guys kissed! On the lips, and like everywhere!"

"I know but—"

"You had your hands all over her and you hug her! You're always at lunch with her!"

"Yes that's true but—"

"And you look at her, god man you stare at her! You talk to her all the time and your always being a gentleman."

"Let me explain—"

"There's no way she's not your girlfriend—"

"Emerald!" He shouted, reaching out for my shoulders and shaking them, "Let me talk."

I was breathing heavily. None of this makes any sense. The man I have a crazy crush on doesn't have a girlfriend. The popular Muslim kid is hanging out with me, the school's pathetic looser. The world's most hated student at Harper.

He's with me.

"We aren't dating." He stated. And it's also like he knew I was about to say something afterwards so he shushed me by putting his index finger on my lips.

I let him talk.

"It's an image we're portraying." He let out a
Breath he was holding, "She's forcing me to."

I was eager to ask questions but when I felt his finger push a little further on my lips, smushing it a bit, I knew he still wanted me to stay quiet.

"Remember when I told you my old town was violent?"

I nodded.

"Avery has family from my old town and that family is part of the people who want me dead." He explained, his breath hitching, "she has a cousin who used to be my best friend and his brother. Now he wants nothing but my head on a stick."

"Why?" I asked, my voice muffled.

He shrugged, the hard information hitting him hard, "Because I betrayed him. I went against him."

I needed him to elaborate. This wasn't enough.

As if he read my mind, he slowly removed his finger from my lips, "I was involved in robbery. Me and a couple of friends from school. It started in the tenth grade when we struggled to get jobs."

I sat on the empty log next to me, cocking my head and showing him that I'm interested.

"My friend's older brother formed a group of people to rob rich white people around my block. At the time, my mom was sick. She needed surgery for her pancreas and we couldn't afford it. I thought this would be a perfect and easy way to make money for that. So I made that choice and robbed houses just like them." He gulped, "Then one of us got caught. My partner in crime. I was going to go help him escape but the leader forced me to leave him and let him get caught by the cops. He's in jail now."

I gasped. He isn't a real one?

"At this point, after witnessing someone getting caught, I wanted nothing to with it. What if that was me you know? What if I got caught, and no one helped me? I didn't want to be part of that." He let his head hang low when he sat next to me on the log, our thighs touching, "So I told him I wanted nothing to do with him. And after wards, he said I needed to give all that money back then. If I wasn't going to keep robbing houses, then I had to return all the money I made."

"Oh shit flakes." I cursed.

"But I spent it all." He admitted to me, I can feel his eyes watering. This was sad. "I spent it all on my mom's surgery. And it worked, she's fine. There's nothing I can do to get that money back."

I shook my head. Turns out that the innocent Muslim boy isn't innocent at all.

"And Avery? God—" he groaned, "Shes making my life a living hell. No one knows about what happened in my old town except her and now you. She's threatening to get me jumped if I don't abide by her conditions."

"And these are her conditions?" I stood up angry as angry can be, "To make me jealous? To make me feel like you'll never like me back and never want anything to do with me?"

He chuckled softly.

"It's not funny!" I stomped my foot, "She knows how I feel about you. She knows that everything you do has an effect on me."

He looked at the floor, mostly because my admitting to the whole crush thing is getting awkward for him.

"And on top of that, it's haram." I put a finger to his chest, in all my seriousness. "Everything you're doing with her is haram. The whole kissing thing? Dating thing? Big no no."

"I know." He didn't even bother to question my knowledge about Islam, "And I know what I'm doing is really bad too. I'm just making bad decisions because that's what I'm known for."

I know for a fact that if I were a Muslim, I wouldn't be doing anything that he's been doing. But then again I know that it could be different since he was born and raised one just like I was born and raised a Christian. I don't abide by the rules in Christianity. I barely know anything about my religion!

"I promised I'll help you through it." I put my hand in his, thinking he would flinch and remove my touch but instead he squeezed it as he stood up, "you have six days. I'll give you about thirty thousand more."

"You don't need to."

"Yes I do." I looked in his eyes but he looked away from me, "I need to. I promised I would."