eight months later.

"Look at his face, he was in a fight again."

"Did you see how he sped into the parking lot with his bike?"

Khalid could hear the whispers from the students as he walked to his first class. He put on his black jacket and ignored them. After his family moved into the beautiful mansion his grandma left them people started to notice him in school. They created a false idea of who he was and what was really happening in his life, only if they knew.

They called him a biker boy. They said he was a bad boy.

At first he couldn't blame them, grandma Lucy gave him a motorbike in her will. But that didn't mean he was a bad boy. He did all his work, he passed all his subjects. If he was able to buy a car he'd buy a car. Another reason why they saw him as a bad boy was because of his tardiness. He was always late in the mornings, classes started by eight am but he always came to class by eight fifteen or eight thirty. It wasn't really his fault. If his 'good for nothing' father didn't try to start something early in the morning then he'd come early. But no one understood what was going on with him.

"You finally decided to join us Mr. Johnson." The English teacher, Mr. Jasper commented, earning a few snickers from jobless students.

The young boy's brows were knitted in a frown as he grabbed the slip from Mr. Jasper's wrinkled hand and proceeded to the desk at the far end of the classroom to avoid speaking to anyone. As he walked past a certain group of students he heard them guffawing at pointless things. Khalid shook his head and sat down. He did not how they even made it to the eleventh grade, these group of students never studied. Instead they were always partying or causing trouble.

Mr. Jasper stood next to the white board and proceeded with his class. "Okay students, so before we were interrupted. . .we were just about to write a narrative story that includes the words, 'Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.'

I believe you are all ready, so please start and remember you have only forty minutes to write. Also this shouldn't be more than four hundred words!"

Some students were already complaining about how short the time was but Khalid was delighted and fervent to use his imagination. He immediately fished out his pen and notebook from his backpack and tuned out the classroom as he began his task.

❧

"Good thing you're here just in time. The books we ordered are finally here!" Exclaimed Emily, the bookstore manager.

Khalid had been working in 'majestic books' for seven months now. He was very clumsy at first and also a bit rude. But Emily broke down his walls, she wouldn't take no for an answer. They had fights— dramatic ones but she never gave up on him. They had a kind of sibling relationship,it was a very strong bond.

The boy gave her a toothy grin and dropped his black backpack behind the counter. He knew she needed help unboxing and arranging the books in the shelves. "Come on let's get working."

Along with the help of two other employees they were able to unbox and arrange most of the books. They kept the rest in the store and agreed to finish stocking the shelves the next day.

Majestic books was a very unique bookstore, it felt homy. The bookstore was wrapped around tinted windows. It was in the middle of town but somehow that part of town wasn't very noisy. Inside the store there were huge wooden shelves standing tall like mighty warriors. It wasn't crowed, in fact the whole place was big enough to have a grand wedding! The walls were painted grey and were adorned with colorful quotes from random novels. It seemed like everything there had a story to tell, even the chairs. There were sets of wooden desks that had names of amazing authors carved on them by frequent customers that always came to read.

Khalid loved working here, he felt protected by the tinted windows and tall shelves. No one knew that he loved books and that he sometimes wrote his own novels except Emily. The nosy twenty one year old girl was always observing him and trying to get into his business and she won. He let her in, he needed someone to confide in after all. She knew almost every thing about him, but funny enough she didn't know that his father was an abuser.

It was almost time to go home and he did not want to go.

Emily walked up to him holding a novel. "Hey! Guess what I found?" She asked, wiggling the book in front of his face.

He chuckled a little before answering, "a book. . ."

"Well duh! It's a book but I want you to read it, I just finished reading it and I think you'll like it," she said putting it in front of him.

"Hmm, the secret River by Kate Grenville." He raised his eyebrows not sure if this book was going to be interesting.

He decided to open a random page and read out loud. "In the rooms where William Thornhill grew up, in the last decades of the eighteen century, no one could move and elbow without hitting the wall or the table or a sister or a brother." Khalid looked up and saw Emily giving him her famous puppy dog eyes, he knew he had to read it. "Fine fine, I'll read it."

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‣ side note:

the secret river by Kate Grenville
is a fantastic book! i had to read it
because it was in my literature
syllabus.
hope this chapter was good!

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