After lunch, we all shuffle into the near-empty hallway. Chaewon and Jess hurry over to their stall, and I follow, passing Flávia and Chyna. Flávia gives me a secret smile as I pass her, and I can’t help the jolt of electricity that momentary smile sends through me.
Chaewon and Jess’s stall is smack bang in the middle of everything. The absolute perfect spot. As soon as we get there, Chaewon begins to sort through things, ensuring everything is perfect. Jess watches her, a bemused expression on her face.
“I wish your stall was close by so we could help each other out,” Jess says.
I wish that too. I could really use a helping hand.
I shrug. “It’s okay. Priti’s going to come over to help me.”
I stroll over to my near isolated corner, and I stop in my tracks.
“Nice setup you have here.”
I turn to find Cáit O’Connell smirking at me, her eyes flitting from me to the table “setup” in front of me. It’s nothing like I left it earlier. The banner Flávia made me is ripped through the middle, with jagged edges where NISHAT’SMEHNDIhad been. The fairy lights Jess and Chaewon had carefully strung around the entire table are stripped off and lying on the floor, the glass on most of them broken.
I rush toward the table, trying to push back the lump in my throat and the tears prickling behind my eyes. The henna tubes I had carefully placed on the table are slashed open, and the henna is staining the crepe paper and table, but I’m more concerned about my design book, which I had tucked away in a hidden corner.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I finally find it under the table. Whoever did this must have accidentally dropped it and not even noticed. The loose pages I had stuffed into it are spread across the dirty floor but it’s otherwise unharmed. I shove the pages back in and pull the book to my chest. I have never been happier to see a book before, and I’m often very happy to see them.
But there is still the matter of my stall being trashed.
When I look up from the table, Cáit has gone back to her own stall, arranging different cosmetics into a straight line. The rest of the hallway is awash with happy noise—of work, play, excitement.
I slump down on my chair. All of my hard work—gone. Just like that.
“What the hell happened here?” Jess and Chaewon are standing over me; Jess is glaring at the bare table with furrowed eyebrows, like it’s wronged her, and Chaewon is peering at me with soft eyes like I’m a kicked puppy she needs to protect.
“Someone … I don’t know, they messed my table up.” I somehow manage to get the words out even though the lump in my throat has set up camp and is showing no sign of dissipating anytime soon.
“We have to tell Ms. Montgomery!” Chaewon says, at the same time that Jess casts a glare across the hall and declares, “I’m going to kill Chyna.”
“You don’t know it was her.” Chaewon interjects.
“Who else would it be?”
I shake my head. “It could have been anyone,” I say. I think about the way Cáit smirked when I came over. Did she do this? Chyna? Ali? The list of people who hate me simply for being me is too long, and I’m not sure what I’d do about it even if I knew who did this.
30
“APUJAN!” PRITI’S VOICE CUTS THROUGH THE THRONG OFpeople darting around the hallway, eyes hungrily taking in everything that’s on offer. She’s grinning from ear to ear—until she takes in my sad, trashed stall.
“What happened here?” she asks.
I’ve been trying to clean it up. I successfully wiped up the spilled henna and cleaned up the trashed fairy lights, but there are still bits of glass and shredded crepe paper lying about. The slashed banner I folded up and slipped into my bag. It can’t be salvaged, but the idea of throwing it away makes my heart hurt.
“Someone trashed my stall,” I say. People passing by have been giving me sympathetic looks, but apparently they’re not sympathetic enough to offer to help.
“Ali?” Priti whispers.
I shrug. “I don’t know, maybe. It doesn’t even matter.”
“You should tell Ms. Montgomery.” She looks around, but Ms. Montgomery hasn’t returned from her lunch break yet. “Ok—Ms. Grenham. Ok—”
“No,” I cut her off firmly. “What are they going to do?” Priti doesn’t know that I’ve been late to P.E. almost every day since being outed because now I have to change after all the other girls have left. She doesn’t know the things I hear them whisper about me sometimes. She doesn’t know that there’s nothing to be done about it all—just like nobody ever called out Chyna for all of the awful, racist things she has done, nobody is going to face consequences for their homophobia in this school.
“Apujan.”
“Just leave it,” I say.
