Chapter 1 — The Perfect Girl?*

 *Chapter 1 — The Perfect Girl?*

They called me perfect the way people call flowers beautiful: quick, polite, and the sort of praise that smells nice but does not stay.

At school I was Leilani—quiet, polite, the girl who always raised her hand and answered in neat sentences.

At home I was the daughter who folded her clothes, said her salaah on time, and smiled when my mother told me I looked “so grown-up” in my hijab. They liked the neatness of me.

They liked the safe shape I fit into. No one liked the ragged edges. When I woke that morning, sunlight slid across my prayer mat and found the place where my hands usually went. It stared at me: a square of green with tiny patterns of flowers I had chosen when I was eleven.

I sat on the edge of my bed and touched the mat like a small ritual—a check, a promise.

My phone lay face down on the bedside table. Its black surface kept secrets. I liked that about it, and I feared it the same. “Mornings suit you,” my mother called from the kitchen, the way she always called when she knew I would linger. Her voice was soft, the same one that smoothed my hair after bad dreams. There was love in it, and sometimes, a thin, unasked-for expectation.

I tied my hijab the way I had learned—neat folds, careful tuck. The cloth felt heavier on some days, as if it remembered every time I had slipped my fingers inside its hem and prayed for courage.

Sometimes it felt like a shield: a cool, certain thing against the world. Other days it felt like a burden, like an extra weight I wished I could put down for a minute to breathe without being known by other people's eyes.

My reflection in the mirror was a soft answer. 

I practiced smiling until the corners of my mouth felt real.

My mother always said, “Hold your head high, Leila.”

People at school called me Leila more than Leilani; it came easier on their tongues. I let them. Names had a way of changing who you thought you were. At breakfast, my father read the paper with his spectacles halfway down his nose. He liked order—bills paid, curtains drawn, the world sensible on a page.

He is a man who believes in rules because rules make things right and clean.

“You have an essay due today?” he asked, not looking up. “Yes,” I said. I kept my voice small. They did not need to know what my heart did at night—the tug and the ache that had nothing to do with essays.

“You’ll do well,” my mother said, sliding a plate toward me. She always believed in the version of me that succeeded.

Her belief was warm and honest, and I wanted to live up to it. But sometimes, when she praised me, a small voice inside me asked: does she like Leila or the idea of Leila?

On the walk to school the air smelled like rain and the city woke slowly. My friends waited at the gate, already laughing about something I had missed.

They were a bright bunch—someone had painted their hair in colors that worried my mother and wore jackets that made them look like they were wrapped in sunshine.

They pulled me into their circle like a tide pulling a small boat. I moved with them and felt both held and afraid. Peer pressure was a gentle animal. It brushed against my shoulder and asked for a bargain.

“Come with us after class,” Mara said, flicking her hair. “There’s a new café. They have the best smoothies.”

I smiled. “I can’t. I have tajweed practice.”

“Always tajweed,” she said, with a playful roll. “You’ll miss out. Live a little, Leila.”

My heart did a small, untrue flip. Live a little. The phrase passed like a breeze—light, tempting, and chasing shadows I had not named.

I kept my answer. “Maybe next time.”

The day moved in slices: math that made my head ache, a history teacher who loved dates more than people, and whispers about an upcoming school dance—small stars falling through the conversation, things that felt like other people's lives.

When lunch came, Imran walked by our table with a grin. He always had that kind of grin—the one that split the world into “fun” and “not fun.”

He tossed a pen to me like it was a dare. “You’re always so proper,” he said, leaning on the bench. “It’s impressive. Kinda boring, though. You should loosen up.” His laugh spread across the table. He made a joke about the prayer mat as if he was only meaning play.

Mara’s eyes flashed; she liked the danger of his words. For a moment the ground shifted and I imagined saying yes to him, to the brightness he offered. It felt thrilling. It felt like stepping into light.

But thrill can be a sort of darkness dressed as light.

I felt the prayer mat under my bag like a quiet judge. My chest tightened. I thought about Ustaz Hamid’s words from last week, about the small sins that begin with a smile and end with a loss.

He had spoken slowly, like stirring honey into tea. “Guard your gaze, Leilani,” he had said. “Keep your heart in a safe place. Love is beautiful, but it must be true and it must be clean.”

Imran tossed his grin and walked away. Mara hummed and knocked her knee against mine under the table.

I laughed in the right places but my throat tasted like salt—leftover tears I had not yet cried.

At tajweed practice that evening the mosque felt like a different city. The carpet was warm from the afternoon sun; the Quran’s words seemed to hum under my fingers.

Ustaz Hamid sat at the front with his book open like a map. “Remember,” he said, “your faith is not a list of don’ts. It is a way of living that fills you from inside.”

His voice touched the place in me that wanted rules but also wanted mercy. He spoke of mistakes as lanes, not walls—ways to turn back.

His eyes met mine for a moment and I felt a softness, a permission. He did not preach. He guided. 

That small thing steadied me.

On the bus home, my phone buzzed. The name on the screen was a friend’s—one who liked sending memes that were funny and sometimes a little too close to what I should not see.

The world in my pocket whispered: look. Click. 

One press and a laugh; another press and a secret. The temptation sat like an insect on my skin—annoying and persistent.

I told myself no. I told myself it would be better to read the little green lines of the Quran on my phone than to scroll.

I made a small dua, quiet and clumsy, the sort that children whisper when they are afraid of the dark. “Help me, Allah,” I said. The words hung in the air, honest and shaky.

When I reached home, my mother was at the sink, the soap making little mountains in the bowl. She looked up, and for a moment I wanted to tell her everything: the tug of Imran’s smile, the buzz of my phone, the way the hijab sometimes felt like a heavy shawl I could not shake off.

But she had her own tiredness—small lives to manage, bills and a father who read the paper. 

I swallowed my confession.

“You prayed?” she asked, wiping her hands.

“Yes,” I said. It was true. I had prayed. I had cried a little at the end, the way the heart lets steam out in quiet places.

That night I stood before my mirror. The mirror had witnessed many things: the practice smiles, the hairs I had once cut myself in a panic, the nights I had whispered Quran until the edges of the words blurred.

It reflected my hijab, neat and proper. It reflected my eyes, tired and wide.

I examined the lines of my face like someone reading a map that did not yet know where it led.

There are moments when being two people at once becomes too heavy.

I could be the daughter who obeyed, the student who excelled, the friend who laughed.

I could also be the girl who felt something else stir inside—a want for attention, for warmth, for a hand to hold that did not promise forever.

These two selves did not always agree. Sometimes one pushed the other into a corner.

I closed my eyes and remembered the prayer mat’s pattern under my feet.

I thought of water—wudu, clean fingers, fresh intention. I thought of light—small, a candle in a room, the kind that does not burn but reveals.

I whispered the line I had been saving for nights like this, the one no one knew was mine:

“But if only they knew the battles I fight when the lights go out…”

The words settled in my chest like a secret bird.

I made a promise in the quiet that night—to be honest with myself, even if honesty was messy.

To try, one small step at a time, to keep my heart safe and to seek help when the tug became too strong.

To learn that strength could be gentle and that faith could be a harbor, not a prison.

Outside, the city slept. Inside, my room breathed.

I folded my hands over the small green prayer mat, closed my eyes, and prayed for courage to be the kind of person who could admit their weakness and still keep moving forward.

I prayed for the kind of love that was whole and true. I prayed for guidance—the slow, kind kind that Ustaz always spoke of.

Tomorrow, school would call my name again. Mara would joke. Imran might grin. My phone would buzz.

And I would stand, as I had always stood, between two lights—one that promised quick thrill and one that promised lasting peace.

For now I lay down with the soft weight of my hijab at my neck and the prayer mat at my feet, willing myself to sleep.

The battles were not over. They had only just begun.

To Be Continued, in shaa Allah... 🥰❤️