The Size of our hearts

7

I stared at the math equation in front of me. It looked harder the more I looked at it, my eyes flickered over to Hamid's notebook, of course he was answering the question effortlessly. I stared back at my notebook and put my pencil in my mouth as it performed a dance in between my teeth.

Then Mr.Pierre came in followed by a boy wearing a black hoodie, his hood was on and covering his face. He had a white sports bag slung across his chest. "Attention please! Now you have a new student and I will allow him to introduce himself." Mr. Pierre announced.

I turned to Hamid and he had this weird look on his face, he looked kind of worried. I slowly tore my eyes away from him and back to Mr.Pierre.

The boy slowly took his hoodie off and smirked as his eyes rolled off the floor and up to us. "My name is Jafaar." "Does Jafaar have a surname?" Mr. Pierre asked. Jafaar didn't say a word but his smirk grew wider as he stared at Hamid. Hamid looked back at him sadly. "Well I'll leave you to it." Mr.Pierre said as he made his way out of the classroom.

Jafaar breezed past Hamid and winked at him. Hamid dropped his pencil and scoffed as he leaned back into his chair. I looked back at Jafaar, realizing that he was the boy on the bus yesterday.

"Hey you okay? Who is that?" I said quickly trying not to make the question seem like an important one.

Hamid looked over at me, obviously annoyed. Then he dropped his eyebrows and then in a soft hesitant whisper he said "My cousin."

Of course I wanted to know more but I decided math class wasn't the best time an interview. I nodded my head and went back to my work.

******

The bell rang for lunch, I stared at my unfinished homework and texted Kiyana that I'd meet her at the lunch hall.

I finished up my work and dropped it on Mr.Martoi's desk, grabbed my bag and was about to head to the lunch hall when I heard Hamid's voice.

"Jafaar why are you here?" It was coming from the Janitor's closet, I took a quiet step towards the door and heard Jaafar, "Well my Dad thinks I wanted to go to school like a normal teenager so I guess you can say I'm here to live the life." He said as he laughed.

Hamid went quiet. "Jafaar I..." "No no no cousin I want more from you than a petty apology" I heard the ruffle of clothes and the door unlocking I quickly dashed back into class. And sat down on the nearest seat.

I saw Hamid walking out angrily towards the lunch hall. I took a deep breath and was about to stand up when Jafaar walked into the room. I swallowed nothing in particular as I attempted to walk out. He looked across the room before raising his left eyebrow and turning to me. "What do we have here, you were on my seat." He said as he stepped in front of me.

"This isn't your seat" I said quickly taking a dislike to him.

"So you noticed me this morning enough to remember my seat." He smirked.

I scoffed and brushed past him. "You wish" I muttered under my breath as I walked to the Cafeteria.

I stepped in to the Cafeteria as Kiyana ran past me with her phone to her ear.

"Kiyana" I tried calling after her but she wasn't answering, she ran down the stairs and out the front door. I was two paces behind her, I pushed open the door, and ran up to her, she entered her car, I tried opening the passenger door but it was locked, I banged on the window, she turned over to me, her eyes filled with tears.

Then hesitantly she clicked on the unlock button. I got in the car and closed the door and almost immediately she hit the gas pedal and we were off.

"Kiyana, what happened?" I asked as I stared at the spedometre and noticed the hand was quickly turning clockwise.

"Kiyana slow down, just calm down!" I yelled as she avoided a cyclist.

"No. Neveah I can't calm down and stop yelling at me!" She said through her tears.

"Okay I'm sorry but what's happened"

"It's my mom, she overdosed again, they're doing all they can to help her."

"Oh My God... Kiyana It's gonna be okay." She took a deep breath as the hand on the speedometer began to move back to a normal rate.

"I won't lose her too Kiyana, everything's already bad enough, Dave... I don't know what will happen to Dave."

"You won't lose her, I promise." I said with no certainty at all, but I forced myself to believe it because I wanted her to believe it too. She looked over at me before averting her empty gaze back to the road, as we pulled up in front of the gate of the hospital.