part 103: (nicholas)

**”Bismillahir rahmaanir raheem”
-in the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful-**

Gone were the days where a state of the art RC helicopter would impress nick. Nick had turned into someone not even his own mother recognised.

Tasha had given up on grounding nick or taking away privileges. Because everytime she did, Nick did something worse.

Nick refused to get help for his addiction.to him it wasn’t harmful. It was harmless and helping him cope. It was just some innocent, clean fun that he was having.

“You are the cause of me changing… You are the problem. Not me or anything else” nick blamed tasha everytime she tried to tell him that he needed help.

Nick had failed the 11th grade miserably and was just allowed to continue with school because of tashas constant pleading with the principal. However he kept warning her that if nick doesn’t behave, they would expel him. They cannot tolerate misbehaviour like his.

“I don’t even want to go to school anyway…. So who cares if they expel me…” Nick hit back at tashas warning with a shrug.

“I care nick… Stop being so selfish! Its not only about you. What about mine and toms reputation in this town?” Tasha replied. She was getting terribly frustrated at his ‘don’t care’ attitude.

“Oh! Since when do you care about what people say?” He spoke back rudely.

By now nick already had a tattoo of a snake on his back (which tasha was unaware of), a tongue ring(which she was totally unaware of) and a pierced left ear(which she freaked about when she finally did notice it.)

“What? Its the new ‘in thing’ mother…. Stop being so old fashioned!” Nick laughed while tasha just shook her head in disbelief. Imagine her expression if she knew about the tattoo or tongue ring.. She’ll probably get a heart attack.

The thing with tasha was that she was totally lost. She had no idea which way to go with nick. She couldn’t be too strict, nor could she give him too much of freedom. But how was she supposed to discipline him? Or was it a little too late for disciplining?

And everytime she was too hard on him, he would lock himself up in the room until guilt ate at tashas heart and she would eventually have to apologise or bribe him with something new to forgive her.

Most of the time it would be a new cellphone, perfume or watch or a bag full of clothes.

“You’re spoiling him…” Tom remarked whilst reading the newspaper and not making eye contact with tasha.

“Well his my son and maybe I over react sometimes.. What else do I do to make it up to him?” Tasha sighed.

Tom disagreed but he didn’t dare interfere or tell tasha that. Most of their fights were usually about the way she’d raised nick.

But according to tasha, it was hard on her and she had no help so no-one has the right to criticise her or blame her for nicks upbringing.

Nick however, felt a certain inclination to hanzalah since he’d started at the same school. But he wouldn’t dare let anyone know. He could lose close friends because of that.

Nick was the ‘cool’ guy and it wouldn’t be all that ‘cool’ to be hanging around with the ‘weirdo’ of the school. That’s why he met him in the library or other places where people wouldn’t notice.

He found hanzalah to be peaceful and content and always happy no matter what people called him or how people treated him. But he couldn’t quite understand why.

Hanzalah had no friends in school and it didn’t matter to him.

People laughed in his face at his style of dressing but he never retaliated or changed his ways.

He took it all in and yet always had a smile on his face..

Maybe because hanzalah had the perfect life? A perfect family with both parents.. Or so he thought!

***********
Authors note:
Sorry sorry sorry… Please bare with me.. Like I said, posting everyday is just not going to be possible so I’ll surprise you with a post whenever I can inshallah. Jx to all those who follow and read this story and even more jx to those who take the time to comment.
Lotsa love…
Bibi ayesha

Posted by silent living…