Not a Tuesday Yet

"Hurry! Hurry!"

Jana groaned as Layla ran into the house for the third time.

She leaned back against the headrest with the particular exhaustion of someone who had been having this exact morning for years. Her eyes drifted to the silver wristwatch dangling loosely around her wrist the way it always did. The way it had for two years now, ever since she first told herself she'd take it to the jeweller, tighten it a little, fix what could be fixed.

Yet here she was, still clinging to dead hope with both hands.

She blared the horn with her fist, no longer bothering with her fingers.

"I swear Layla is doing this on purpose," she muttered.

She had just pushed the door open, fully prepared to storm inside and drag her sister out by the ears if it came to that, when she heard her voice.

"Just chill, J. I'm here."

Layla closed the door behind her and slid into the passenger seat looking completely unbothered, the way only someone who had turned being late into an art form could manage. One would never guess she was the one who had kept them waiting.

But that was Layla's number one rule for being cool, as she called it.

The Three C's.

Chill. Calm. Careless.

All three drove Jana absolutely insane.

Jana spent the next four minutes delivering a detailed lecture about how one's entire life could unravel from the simple, preventable habit of showing up late. There were wild gestures. Wide eyes. Several dramatic predictions about the future. The car remained parked. The key remained unturned.

Beside her, Layla chewed her gum lazily while arranging her maroon veil. She draped each layer into place the way she'd learned from a TikTok tutorial she'd been obsessing over all week. The deep colour pulled out the hints of red in her oversized basketball jersey and matched surprisingly well with her straight denim skirt and chunky white sneakers.

As though she had all the time in the world.

Which, according to Layla, she did.

"Can we go already?" she asked when she was finally satisfied.

"It's a Monday. It's a Monday," Jana murmured, mostly to herself. 

"Seat belt."

"Just a second."

Layla leaned forward to inspect herself in the rearview mirror. Her eyebrows were doing the thing again—tiny stubborn hairs refusing to stay in line no matter what she did. She hated that Jana would never let her trim them.

"I think evolution started from us," she'd told her sister once.

When Jana gave her the usual exasperated look, she'd added, "I hate that you have to hear this from me, but our eyebrows look like they're still deciding whether they want to stay on the ape side or move on to the human stage."

"Astagfirullah!"

Jana had immediately kicked her off the bed before launching into full Islamic-scholar mode.

Now Layla simply sighed and smoothed the offending hairs down with her fingers.

The early morning sun was already playing tricks on her eyes, refusing to settle on hazel, warm amber, or bright green the way it always did at this hour. The black liner around them only made the uncertainty more noticeable. Her slightly broad nose sat in the centre of a face dusted with freckles that stretched across her cheeks. Her lips were dry, strawberry-pink, and perpetually suffering from her nervous habit of biting them.

She looked away from the mirror and glanced at Jana.

The familiar feeling returned.

There was one thing about not loving your own reflection.

There was another thing entirely about waking up every morning beside the refined version of it.

The polished version.

The one who wore a warm smile whenever her lips weren't moving. The one who seemed to glow with equal parts noor and powder. The one whose nose ring always caught the light at exactly the right angle.

And who didn't have a single freckle.

The sisters recited their azhkar as the car pulled away.

After that, a comfortable silence settled between them.

Layla slipped on her headphones and disappeared into whichever indie artist had taken over her life that week. Jana waved enthusiastically at old Mr. Frank, who was out walking his dog in his usual red checkered shirt.

"Oh, good morning, Layla and Jana!" he called, his voice pleasantly hoarse.

"Good morning!" Jana answered for both of them, as always.

Her smile widened a little more every time a neighbour greeted her with that same unreserved warmth. Somehow, it always made her mornings ten times better than they had any right to be.

When they reached Hayat's house, Jana parked quickly and reached into the back seat for the box of cookies she'd forgotten to deliver the night before. She hurried up the porch and pressed the doorbell.

A polite little ding.

Then she pressed it again immediately.

She did not have time for polite dings this morning.

"Hayat, where are you?"

Her hand froze mid-air when a sleepy red-haired woman in Minnie Mouse overalls appeared in the doorway, yawning.

"Salam, Hayat! Bye, Hayat!"

Jana shoved the box into her hands and turned on her heel before Hayat's eyes had fully opened.

Hayat stood in the doorway, a lazy smile spreading across her face.

"Thank you, Jana!" she called after her.

The car was already moving.

Thirty minutes later, they pulled up in front of Murkchville High.

"Have a nice day," Jana said. "I'm going to be busy at the bakery today, so you can either have dinner without me or come by later."

Layla gave her a smile so wide and so thoroughly fake it could have been laminated and hung on a wall.

"Yeah, no. I'll stay home, thank you."

She had just reached for the door handle when Jana noticed Principal Murray striding across the pavement toward them. Something about the purpose in his walk made her pause.

She stepped out of the car before she'd consciously decided to.

"Bye, J!" Layla said, suddenly appearing beside her. "Bye. Go now. Leave."

"Good morning, Principal Murray." Jana offered the bald man in the blue suit her warmest smile, the one reserved for situations exactly like this.

"Good morning, Miss Jana."

He smiled back, though his eyes moved between the sisters in a way that said everything before his mouth did.

"I, uh... Miss Layla hasn't informed you, I see. Or perhaps you haven't been receiving the emails."

Layla found a lone patch of green on the pavement and stared at it with intense interest.

"Emails?" Jana looked from her sister to the principal, her heart already beginning its usual sprint at the first suggestion of bad news. "Informed me about what? Is something wrong?"

Layla finally looked up.

For one brief moment, the three of them shared a silence that said everything.

Five minutes later, they sat across from Principal Murray, a desk separating them. His elbows rested on the surface as he leaned forward with the weary sigh of a man who had rehearsed this conversation.

"Layla is a very bright child," he began.

Oh, what did she do?

Jana kept her expression perfectly pleasant.

Is this how they start an expulsion conversation? What could she even have done? The prank phase was middle school. She grew out of that. Unless—

"Miss Jana?"

She blinked.

"Yes?"

He laid the records across the desk gently, as though softening their landing might soften what they said.

It didn't.

Jana's heart broke in the quiet, familiar way it always did when confronted with the one thing she and Layla had never managed to conquer:

Math.

A D-minus sat on the page like a tiny white flag of surrender.

She stared at it for a moment before turning to find Layla mid-yawn, one hand lazily covering her mouth. Utterly untroubled.

She was going to deal with her.

"She also hasn't been participating in after-school activities," Principal Murray added, folding his hands together. "I'd recommend either a private tutor or the school's enrichment program. Because at this rate, if things continue as they are, we may be looking at summer school. Or even repeating the grade."

"Oh, it won't come to that." Jana's response came out much smoother than she felt. "We'll—I will take care of it. I promise."

She turned toward her sister.

Layla received the glare with all the concern of someone checking the weather forecast.

"Could you give us a minute?"

"Of course."

Once they stepped into the hallway, Jana said her sister's name very quietly. The way she only did when the volume had nowhere left to go.

To her credit, Layla knew better than to test those waters.

They found a quiet corner, where Jana immediately closed her eyes and began her breathing exercises.

"Jana, it's not that deep."

"It's not that deep?!"

A passing student glanced over with a barely concealed grin.

Jana immediately reeled herself back in and dropped to a whisper.

"You deleted my emails." One finger went up. "You have been sinking, Layla, I—" The words fell apart somewhere between her throat and her mouth.

She pressed her lips together instead.

Layla watched in silence. Anger and guilt churned together in her chest.

It's just math, she told herself.

"We'll talk about this at home," Jana said finally, gathering herself one breath at a time. "But let's establish something right now. You are not repeating a grade." She pointed another finger. "You chased away four math tutors in less than a month."

And she had.

Each in her own remarkable way.

The first one she'd called a bum to his face. He left before the hour was up.

The second had shown genuine patience and promise until Layla informed him—with complete confidence—that she was better at math than he was.

Jana later discovered this was remotely true.

The third tutor spent an entire session enduring Layla's attempts not to laugh at his mustache, which somehow proved worse than actual laughter.

And the fourth—

Well...Nobody talked about the fourth.

The case was closed.

What could be said was that it was not the murder kind of bloody, and that was as much detail as anyone was willing to provide.

"So here's what's going to happen." Jana crossed her arms. "You're going to walk back in there, apologize to Principal Murray, and promise him something vaguely resembling improvement. Then we're finding you another tutor." She paused and something shifted behind her eyes. A slow smile spread across her face. "And if you chase this one away too?"

Layla immediately narrowed her eyes.

"Say goodbye to the game set."

Layla's mouth fell open. "You wouldn't dare."

"I'm not finished." Jana tilted her head pleasantly. "The art station goes too."

"Jana—"

"And you're going to summer school."

She stood there with her arms crossed and her smile perfectly in place, privately aware these were the emptiest threats she'd ever made in her life.

But seeing even a hint of panic on Layla's face was exactly the fuel she needed to survive the rest of the morning. So she smiled and waited.

The sisters held unblinking eye contact.

Then, slowly, Layla's mouth curved at the corner. "You know what? Now that I think about it..."

Jana immediately sensed danger.

"Summer school doesn't actually sound that bad."

"LAYLA!"

And that, as it happened, was a perfectly typical morning with the Ghazali sisters.

A considerably smooth one, all things considered.

The kind where nobody cried, nobody got stomped on, and nobody was banned from school property.

Which was really all anyone could ask for.