Void Black
My cheeks nearly melt off my face.
A flash of a camera goes off around me, and more flashes follow.
Faces blur; voices become garbled in my ears.
I will my legs to move.
Above all the noise, my legs listen. I turn around, half running toward the inner courtyard doors and out of the school. My bag bumps into my hip with every step, and my heart hurts from the fear and humiliation.
It’s not until I’m at the school’s gates that a hand shoots in front of me, and I stop dead in my tracks.
Jamie gasps in air, hands supported on his knees. He looks up, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Wait.”
My voice doesn’t work, so I stare at him.
He straightens up and stares back. Tries saying something three times before going quiet.
“What?” I finally whisper. My voice has been stolen from me.
He looks at his shoes, a harsh red marring his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
I draw in a sharp breath that feels like a knife in my chest. “That means nothing to me.”
“Who did this?”
I back away. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”
I hate he’s looking at me when I’m like this.
That he’s seeing me at my lowest and most fractured.
I hate how helpless he looks. It breaks my heart to know it’s the hijab on my head that makes me an obvious target.
Something that I’m supposed to love and wear as a badge of honor is being made into something humiliating.
I push past him. My mouth is too heavy to say anything else without the dam I’m holding back in my eyes breaking.
Jamie doesn’t try to stop me, doesn’t yell wait again.
I’m glad he doesn’t say anything. My humiliation burns away, and all that’s left is red-hot anger.
There’s a volcano inside me, and all I see is Mama’s limp hand when her friends washed her body before her funeral.
All I see is blood, and all I hear is Alexis’s nonchalant tone.
All I hear are her excuses over and over again.
I don’t know how I make it home, but I’m suddenly standing in the middle of my room, looking at myself in the mirror.
My gym shirt hangs loosely from my head and neck, a couple of strands of my hair escaping and plastered to my cheeks.
In the privacy of my room and the quiet of this empty apartment, I let myself cry.
The tears splatter onto the floor, and I cry as noisily as I want. I wish Mama were here to hug me. I wish Amal never left for Qatar. I wish Baba would storm the school and rain hell on them for what happened to me.
I’m so alone in this, I feel my bones fracturing, a wound punctured in my heart, bleeding me out.
I peel off my gym clothes and throw them into the corner and study myself. Even with my appetite back, my frame is narrower than it was a couple of years ago, my shoulders sticking out at odd angles. My hair, once something that gave Mama joy to see, falls around me in clumps, half wet and limp.
This hair that I loved and grew for Mama doesn’t belong here.
I rummage through my desk and drawers, and my hair cradles me as if sensing what I’m about to do, pleading with me to reconsider.
I find my scissors, draw my chair right to the mirror, and begin. Something about it is strangely cathartic. The excision, the satisfying sound of the scissors shearing my hair and watching it fall to the floor.
When I’m done, I stand and my shoulders feel lighter, a coolness tickling my neck and ears. The weight is gone, lying in brown waves at my feet.
It’s a messy job, some strands longer than others and all of them jagged. But I like it.
I look down at the rest of my hair, and a sudden sob bubbles out of me. I sink to my knees, holding my stomach and heaving in gulps of air.
It was supposed to be hers.
But these tears are different. They’re a heaviness disappearing, rain falling from congealed clouds that part. These tears are healing.
I sniff, blow my nose into a tissue, and gather my hair together before finding a plastic bag and putting it in. It was a part of me, and now that it’s not, it needs to be buried.
I take another shower, washing and scrubbing the day off me until my skin is raw and pink. I slip into my favorite green pajamas that say flowers for a healthy life and lie in my bed, twirling my hair between my fingers. The absence of the rest of my hair is jarring, like a ghost limb.
I don’t bother checking my phone. If Alexis texted, I don’t care.
Once upon a time our friendship was real, but the years and her passiveness wore it down.
I didn’t see the signs at first, because I wanted to see her as the six-year-old girl who had lunch in my apartment.
The one who asked about the blessings, until she didn’t.
In the corners of my heart, I hope she reaches out.
But I know she won’t.
All the lies I told myself are uncovered.
The way her mother would look at me and how she hated saying my name.
The passive-aggressive comments about my hair and hijab.
How one-sided this friendship was, me bending over backward for her and Alexis never lifting a finger in return.
Not standing up for me, so she doesn’t ruffle any feathers.
Never asking about me and being Muslim, like that part of me doesn’t exist. Like it was a burden.
My chest hurts when I remember that my way into Opus is gone. The frustration nearly cleaves my heart in two. I press my pillow against my face, gripping it so tightly, I nearly tear through it.
“No,” I half scream in a broken voice.
I roll to my side, facing my desk, where Mama’s sketchbook waits patiently for me.
The anger is still in my bones. Enough has been taken from me. Enough has been done to me.
My fingers itch, and it’s like my room becomes doused in sunlight. The colors are on fire, burning.
A thought blooms in my mind, spreading all over from me and into the room around me in rivulets.
I don’t think twice and get up to grab the sketchbook, open it to an empty page, and start sketching.