Forbidden Love novel Chapter 1

Red or black…Red or black.

I stared at the two different colored shoes while “SuperBass” by Nicki Minaj played in the background. I sighed; getting up in the morning is one thing, but choosing your outfit is another.

Being the only black person in an all-white environment is difficult for me. I always have to wear stupid classy clothes to be able to fit in with the other white teachers. It’s not helpful knowing that the school only hired me because they needed diversity points.

I love my job, and I love the kids, but sometimes, I wish there were some black brothers and sisters in this mess.

Finally deciding on the black shoes, I put them on before I turned off the music and closed the lights in my fairly small bedroom. I grabbed my two class binders and briefcase then rushed out the door.

I stuffed everything into the backseats of my car, making sure they were secure before I hopped into the driver's seat.

Miraculously, I was able to get to my classroom early and set everything up. I made sure to keep the doors to the classroom open, so the children could come streaming in with their nannies—yeah, nannies.

None of the white rich parents had time to bring their children to school. They were too busy making big cash.

Slowly but surely, my first grade students started making their way into the classroom. As they came in, I gave them highfives and told them to pick a colored stick from a jar.

Once everyone finished walking in and unpacking their things, I began to speak.

“Good morning, kids! I hope you all had a good night’s sleep!” I told them, smiling as I looked at every single student one by one.

“Good morning, Miss Aisha!” the kids shouted back enthusiastically.

“Today, we are going to be doing station groups. When you came in, I told you all to pick a colored popsicle stick. I want everyone who has green to come up to the front,” I ordered.

The kids with the green popsicle sticks slowly started shuffling towards my desk. After making sure they all had the right colors, I sent them to the building blocks section.

Next was the coloring section, then the reading sections, and finally the numbers corner. Once everyone was in their correct groups, I went to my desk and began replying to some emails I got this morning.

Not long after I began going through my email, I heard wailing coming from the building block section. I got up from my seat and looked to see that Jenna was the one wailing.

“Jenna, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Didi took my block!” she cried.

I looked over at Didi who had a cheeky little grin on his face. “What did I say about taking people’s things without asking?” I asked, placing a hand on my hip.

His smile disappeared from his face and was instead replaced by a soft frown.

“W-we not allowed to and—and we suppos…be kind,” he struggled to say.

“Good. Now what should you say to Jenna?”

He looked up at her bashfully. “S-sowwy…Here’s your block.”

Jenna smiled as she took the block, then began building a tower with him.

I couldn’t help but coo, they were adorable.

Five minutes later, I had the kids all rotate and go to a different station. Once the kids got settled down in their new stations, I saw my boss—the principal—poke her brunette head around the door, asking if it was alright to come in.

I nodded my head, smiling brightly at her.

“Hey, Aisha! I see you’re still doing wonders with this class. Out of all the classrooms, you’ve managed to have the kids under complete control,” the principal smiled sweetly.

My smile faltered for a moment. I knew exactly what she was doing. She would always come into my classroom, compliment me and my work, then ask for a stupid favor.

“Thank you so much, Miranda. The kids are absolutely wonderful,” I replied with a soft smile.

Miranda—my boss—laughed a bit for no particular reason. “I have a little favor to ask…Do you mind watching a little girl from Amy’s classroom, please? She’s been a bit of a handful lately and I figured you’d be able to keep her under control since you’re able to keep your class under control! I hope you don’t mind taking in just one more child.”

“Of course, I don’t mind taking her in!”—Even though I don’t want to.—“What’s her name?”

“Oh, you are such a dear! Her name is Jasmine Brown, I’ll send her over right now!” Miranda said as she left the classroom to get Jasmine.

As I waited for Jasmine to come, I took a moment to consider how my life is at the moment. I looked at the kids in my classroom. They’re everything to me. They might not have the best parents in the world, but at least their parents care enough to pay for them to go to an expensive private school.

Scared Academy is one of the best private schools in California. Their education system is amazing, but their prices are pretty high and they lack diversity among their students and staff. Unfortunately, the staff also don’t know how to communicate to their students, and therefore end up treating them like they’re a pair of beat up shoes they own. But, the education makes up for that, right?

Another thing I’ve noticed from working at the school is that the teachers don’t even care about their students. They only care about the money, which is shameful and a tad bit disgusting.

I never understood them.

They think coming to school wearing expensive clothes and accessories is more important than sitting down and learning about their students. Simply put, I did not like it at all.

At that very moment, Miranda walked into the classroom with an adorable little girl who I assumed to be Jasmine.

Jasmine had long, very curly hair that looked like it hadn’t been taken care of very well. Her eyes were neither big nor small, and she was short, which was expected since she was still in 1st grade. She was wearing a cute little pink dress and had on a pissy look on her face.

I smiled as I walked right up to her. I bent down so we were face to face. “Hi, Jasmine! You can call me Miss Aisha. I’m going to be taking care of you for the rest of the day, okay?”

She nodded.

“I also like your dress. It looks very pretty on you,” I complimented her.

That made her eyes light up, and she giggled. “Thank you!”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I need to talk to Miranda, so I need you to go to the coloring section of the classroom. It’s right over there. Can you do that for me?” I asked, pointing at the coloring section.

Jasmine looked to where I was pointing before she nodded her head yes. I watched her as she walked to the station lazily.

I turned back to face Miranda. “How long is she going to be staying with me?” I asked.

“I think she’ll just stay in your class since you have more experience and patience than most of our other teachers.”

I proudly smiled, knowing that I was very damn well one of the best teachers at the school.

“That’s perfectly fine. I’m happy as long as I can do my job. Do you know why she has been acting up?”

“She has her days. Her parents split up and they’re co-parenting. She stays with her dad on weekdays, then goes to see her mom on the weekend. Maybe that’s one of the reasons. Parents can play a huge role in a child’s life,” Miranda sighed out.

“Yeah, tell me about it. At least it seems like her parents are doing the best they can. Mine didn’t even want to keep me,” I sadly laughed, knowing that I was oversharing.

Miranda smiled sadly at me. Her smile told me enough. She was just pitying me.

“I’m sorry, Aisha,” she softly said.

I sighed. “It’s not you who should be apologizing. I’m going to get back to my class now, I know you have more important work to do.”

“Yep, you are correct,” she said, chuckling. “I will check up on you and Jasmine later today. It was nice talking to you!”

“You too!” I replied back before I made my way to my desk, where I got into my thoughts.

I hate how my biological parents had a big affect on me. I never got the chance to meet them since they didn’t want me. I was put into the foster care system and ended up jumping around in different houses, until one day, a beautiful family decided they wanted to keep me.

I have ten siblings. All of them are adopted (including me), except two. Even though I’m not blood related to them, they treat me like I am. They treat me with so much love and passion. I will forever be grateful for them.

I snapped out of my thoughts when I heard the bell ring. It was time for lunch.

I always gave my students a choice for whether they wanted to eat in the lunchroom or in the classroom. In the classroom, we usually put on a movie and watched it as we ate our lunch.