Hi everyone! New part. The explanation of the creep...remember to guess in the comments below :)

"In this world we assume that those without words are without voice." -- Ash

           The Creep first started texting me on March twenty-third of this year. Ok, that sounds freaky—me remembering like that. I only remember because it was my birthday. My seventeenth birthday, to be exact. Well, mine and Harun’s.

            It was a lazy, languid Saturday morning. I woke up early, warmth and gold stroking my face, Mother Nature’s alarm clock.

            I always remember the first thing I set my eyes on when I open my eyes. Every year, on my birthday, it’s like a mental tradition. I always pray to God that it’s something He created. Today, it is.

            Who opened my blinds, I don’t know. But when I open them (my eyes), the first thing I see is green grass, the color of childhood summer memories and stains on fresh white cotton dresses, green grass being kissed by the Sun.

            Marigolds, fighting to be noticed, spring out of the ground in merry groups, little schoolgirls giggling on the playground. God, this is so beautiful, I think. My heart stirs, filling with appreciation at the aesthetic beauty of nature, fresh with the fingerprints of God, proof to me that He exists.

            Sometime in the middle of the night, my phone fell on the ground. The touchscreen reflects light from the Sun, catching my notice. I pick it up. Ten new messages. Damn.

            I scroll through all of them, my smile growing as I see all my cousins’ names on the screen, texting to wish me and Harun in a happy birthday.

            There’s one number that I don’t recognize. I open the message.

            Ok, I wasn’t expecting anything when I opened the message. It’s quite possible that one of my friends or family got a new number. But this message stood out because it wasn’t a birthday message.

Hey Eiliyah(:

That’s all it said. The thing is, nobody knows how to spell my name correctly unless they know me well. For some reason, people usually forget about one of the i’s or the y become an extra i or they forget the h.

‘Who is this?’ I text back. While I’m replying to my cousin Fahad’s birthday message (he started lecturing me about high school boys and why not to get distracted by them), my phone buzzes again. After I hit send for Fahad’s message and after it’s sent, I check the newest message. ‘You looked beautiful on Friday’ the message reads. It’s from the same number.

            ‘Fool, don’t waste my time’, I shoot back. Springing up out of bed, I throw my phone on my bed and skip—yes, skip—to Harun’s room to wish him a happy birthday.

            I forgot out The Creep all day. Why would I remember? At the time he was like a blip on my radar, insignificant to the overarching plans and lists of things to do. Harun and I both chose we wanted to be go to Four Cabreras, an elegant restaurant two cities over. It was in Burnsmont, where Sayeeda lives.

            It was my parents, Harun and I, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my two older brothers, along with all my nieces and nephews (four of them), and Sayeeda’s family that went out to dinner. Seriously. I’m still trying to understand why Indian people are always reproducing. No wonder we’re overpopulated inIndia

            Four Cabreras is a formal restaurant, so we got all dressed up. I had on a silk dress with a light evening jacket on top; Harun was actually wearing a tie. My outfit was a present from Sayeeda, and it was proof that the girl is my bloody soul mate. She got all the details right; silk with a narrow bodice and ruffled skirt, silk black jeggings, and a blazer. She even did my hair for me—braided away from my face (I can’t braid to save my life).

            It was when we got to the restaurant, when we were seated, when my nephews Musa and Isa quieted down, when we were given our menus that my phone rang. Everyone looked at me, and I took my phone out to turn it off.

            I was about to when I saw the same number texting me again. My phone shows the first few words of the message. I click on the message, curious as to what it says.

If you want to know who I am, I’ll tell u. we talk and stuff but I don’t really kno u…and u don’t really kno me.

            Sayeeda raises her eyebrows at me as she reads the screen too. “Who is it?” She whispers. I shrug.

            “I have no idea. But don’t let any of them find out. They’ll go ape crap.” I nod towards my three brothers. They’re all digging into the appetizers. Boys and appetites: something never, ever to get in between.

            She grins excitedly. “My baby has a secret admirer!” She pinches my cheeks and I jerk away. My mom catches my eye and looks at us funnily. My sister Juwaryah sighs and gives me a how-did-we-come-from-the-same-gene-pool look. I get it a lot.

            “Shh! Dude, it’s not a secret admirer. It’s a creep.” I whisper firmly. She only looked at me gleefully.

            The day after the dinner, Sunday, I don’t get any texts. I start easing up about the whole creepy dude texting me. The day is spent doing homework, homework, and…more homework. Harun and I tutor each other in our weak subjects—for him, history; for me, matrices in Calculus.

            That’s the great thing about having a twin—the homework help. IB stands for International Baccalaureate, an academically-rigorous program. The work itself is harder than college (according to IB graduates that come back to visit teachers), and even though it’s tough to make all A’s like I did in middle school, I know I’m much better off than most kids.

             “Get matrices now?” Harun signs at me. His expression is teasing.

            I shoot him a grateful look. “You are the best little brother in the world.”

            His hands are immediately moving so fast that I can hardly comprehend it. “I’m only three minutes younger than you.”

            “Three more minutes of seeing the world than you.”

            He snorts. “Yeah. Three more minutes of seeing doctors.”

            “That’s why I’m so awesome, Harun.” I tease. The second he processes what I’m signing, he shoots me a patronizing look.

            His face gets serious. “Yeah. You’re pretty blessed.” He signs, smiling.

            He was smiling, but as his sister, twin, and best friend, I knew there was something behind that smile. Harun never talks about the fact that he’s deaf. Well, he does when someone asks him, but he never initiates the conversation.

            I see the way my mom and dad look at him, wishing they could do something about it. I’ve overheard my mom begging to God to ease his struggle, to take her hearing and give it to him. It’s things like that—private requests and thoughts—that stick in your mind forever. It scars you, having to listen to that, having to be looked at like you’re the one that got off easy, the one that robbed your twin of the opportunity to hear.

            “Mashallah.” I sign. He nods. The light in the room dims as the clouds cover up the sun. The moment is over. We continue doing homework. My phone buzzes. Once, twice, thrice.

            “Who is it?” He looks up and asks. He felt the vibrations.

            I check. It’s the creep, the unmarked number. “Nobody important.” I reply laughingly. God, what the hell is up with this person texting me?

            ‘Eiliyah, I don’t get why you’re in disbelief. Is it so hard to believe that I like you?’

            I grit my teeth. Seriously? I text back ‘Fool, stop playing with me. I don’t have time for your BS.’ Please God just have him leave me alone. Or is it a she? Who even knows in this world anymore?

            When I look up, Harun is staring right at me. “What?” I ask. He shakes his head and goes back to writing about the American Revolution as if it’s the most important thing in the whole goddamn world.

            I didn’t tell him about The Creep. Sayeeda is the only one that knows about him/her/it. I could tell Sadhana or Sarah, but they would continually press me for more details and discuss it between each other, and I can’t risk having anybody overhear.

            In a small world like IB—our graduating class only has around a hundred students—spreading gossip is like lighting a piece of paper; all you need to do is ignite that small corner and everything else spreads on its own.

            A few weeks after The Creep initially started texting me (towards the end of junior year), I had an idea. I tried ignoring The Creep as much as I could, but he had mentioned that he was an IB senior. Actually, I had asked if he was an IB senior boy and he responded with a ‘Yup. IB senior(:’

            So he/she/it never exactly stated his/her/its gender. God.

            Anyway, my idea was to go through a list of IB seniors to see who it could potentially be. Even though we’re a small class, there are certain people that I’ve never had classes with for whatever reason.

            I had texted Nathaniel about it—Nathaniel being my best guy friend—and he said he would try to look on Facebook and cross-check it a list of email addresses on the mailing list for important IB reminders and notifications (like SAT test days, stuff like that).

            I was pouring over the list when Harun barged into my room. Since knocking isn’t really effective for him, he sometimes forgets to knock when he walks into rooms.

            “Hey,” He greets. “Do you have good history notes? Mine are pretty bad.”

            I nodded and reached into my backpack to get out the notes. My fan was on full blast, and the lightness of the paper the list was on flew and landed on the ground. Harun picked it up and handed it back to me.

            “What’s this, Eiliyah?” He asked.

            “Um…a list…”

            “Of all the IB juniors?”

            “Yeah….”

            “Why?”

            “It’s a long story.” I said, sighing. He sat down on my bed.

            “I have time.”

            Life is characterized and influenced by decisions we make. Not really for the decisions that we spend time on, but the spur-of-the-minute decisions that are required to be made quickly.

            It was decision time. I decided to tell Harun.

            First, I closed my door all the way. If my parents walked in…that would require a lot of explaining.

            “So it was the day of our birthday…” I began. He sat still for a long, long time as I told him the story. After I was done, he finally spoke.

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Ohhh! So who's the creep?

What do you guys think so far? Let me know!

~ Ash ♥