Girl
THE DAYS PASSED, as they always did. Suraya survived them as best
she could, working hard at her classes, avoiding K—whose name, as
it turned out, was actually Kamelia—and the rest of her gang of
bullies when she could, tolerating their torments when she had to.
Thankfully, their paths didn't cross often—Kamelia was fourteen
and in form two, a whole year ahead—but they were grouped into
the same sports house. Twice a week, after classes, Suraya had to
change into her track bottoms and bright red house T-shirt with a
gnawing pain in the pit of her stomach and the miserable knowledge
that Kamelia and her goons would find new and creative ways to
make her life difficult when they could. Often, she would get home
and catalogue the fresh bruises blooming all over her thin body, the
result of spiteful pinches, well-timed pushes, and once, a hard kick to
the shin when nobody was looking.
Pink watched grimly through it all. I could hurt them, you know, he
told her. I could shatter each of their bones into tiny pieces. Make
them sorry they ever even looked at you. Make them pay. It's what
the witch would have done.
It appalled her that his dark streak reared its ugly head so easily
these days. But she just shook her head. "No, Pink," she said. "For
one thing, I am not my grandmother. And for another . . . well, they'll get tired of it eventually. And besides, better they do it to me than
some other girl who might not be able to handle it."
She saw him peer more closely at her face and tried her best to
rearrange her drooping mouth into a smile. But you cannot handle it,
actually, he said.
Suraya felt her mouth pinch tight together. Pink had a way of
saying things that made her feel the exact opposite of how he
wanted her to feel when he said them, kind of the way her mother
telling her not to sing so loudly around the house made her want to
scream every line to every song she knew until the rafters shook.
Pink was the extra parent she'd never asked for. She could tell he
wanted her to break down, agree with him, admit that he was right,
and all she wanted to do right now was cross her arms, dig in her
heels, and prove him wrong. "Silly Pink. Of course I can."
She knew that he knew she was lying.
This is when the odd things began to happen.
They weren't happening to her, which is why at first, Suraya didn't
really notice them, in the way that you don't really notice a single ant
meandering lazily along the contours of your foot. But when one ant
becomes two, and then seven, and then seventeen, and then a
hundred, the pricking of their tiny feet and the stinging bites of their
tiny teeth become harder and harder to ignore.
This is the way it was. It began with nothing, really: one day,
there was a stone in one of Kamelia's pristine white canvas shoes
that made her limp and curse, and which wouldn't dislodge itself no
matter how many times she shook the offending shoe. On another
day, her geography workbook was drenched and soaking, even
though she'd fished it out of a perfectly dry backpack. On yet
another, the marker exploded in her hand as she worked out a math
problem on the whiteboard, covering her from head to toe in black
ink.
On and on and on it went, and at first, it was easy enough to
brush off as a mere run of terrible luck. Only, the bad things kept on
happening, and somehow they only ever happened after Suraya had
been the victim of one of Kamelia's cruel jokes, and soon this link
became impossible to ignore.
Coincidences, Suraya thought desperately to herself, trying hard
to ignore the memory of Pink's flicking antennae, the wicked grin on
his little grasshopper face. But the day they played volleyball during
PE and Kamelia somehow managed to get hit by the ball nine times
in a row—once as a hard smack to the shoulder, which made her
squeal so loudly it echoed through the courtyard—even Suraya had
to admit that coincidences could only explain away so much.
Kamelia's gang didn't know what was going on, but they did know
that somehow, whenever they did something to Suraya, something
happened to them in turn. And they didn't like it.
I should talk to Pink, Suraya told herself firmly. Ask him what's
going on. Tell him to stop, if he's the one doing all of this. But she
never did. Sometimes she told herself that it was because she was
certain he would stop by himself; sometimes she told herself it was
because it wouldn't make any difference anyway. What she never
told herself was the truth, which is that she didn't want to start a fight
with her only friend in the entire world.
She didn't want to go back to being alone.
Waiting for the bus home one afternoon, a shadow fell across the
whirling dragon Suraya was sketching in her notebook. She tried her
best to ignore it, tried to focus on the scales she was painstakingly
and precisely inking on its great tail, but her trembling hands made
the pen hard to control.
"What have you got there, Kampung Girl?"
Around her, the other girls waiting for the bus, sensing trouble,
quickly walked away.
"It's nothing," Suraya said, quickly snapping her book shut and
fumbling with the zipper of her backpack, trying her best to stuff it
inside before they could get it.
Too late. Divya had snatched it right out of her hands and was
riffling through the pages with her long fingers, nails shaped to
delicate points. Divya was Kamelia's best friend, and she took
particular delight in digging those nails hard into Suraya's arm when
teachers weren't looking, so hard that they left deep red half-moons
in her flesh for days afterward, so hard that Suraya often had to bite
her lip to keep from yelping.
Divya was grinning now, her eyebrows arched, her eyes wide in
exaggerated mock-surprise. "Look at this, K," she said, tossing the
book to her friend. "She thinks she's some kind of artist."
Kamelia flipped through the little book, frowning. "Wow, Kampung
Girl. Looks like you spent a lot of time on these. You must really like
to draw, huh?"
Suraya stayed mute, her eyes never leaving the book in
Kamelia's hands. She had learned early on not to trust the older
girl's seemingly pleasant tone or inane conversation. Her words were
like a still river; crocodiles floated just beneath the surface, ready to
catch you with their sharp, sharp teeth.
"It'd be a shame if . . . whoops." A sick ripping sound tore through
the afternoon air, and Suraya stifled a gasp of horror. "Oh dear.
However did I manage to do that?"
Divya snickered. "Here, let me take that before you do any more
damage . . . uh-oh." Another tear, so harsh it seemed to pierce right
through her heart. Divya stared right at Suraya as she crumpled the
paper into a little ball, smiling a nasty smile. She tossed it over her
shoulder into the open drain behind her; as it sailed gracefully
through the air, Suraya caught a glimpse of ornate dragon scales.
"We're just so-o-o clumsy," she said, and Kamelia laughed.
"Stop," Suraya whispered. "Please stop." But all this did was
make them rip faster and laugh harder, and soon nothing was left of
the notebook but its thin brown cover, bits of paper dangling
pathetically from its worn spine.
"Don't worry," Kamelia said soothingly. "We'll get rid of this trash
for you." And they tossed it into the deep, dark drain and ran off
home.
Suraya walked slowly over to the drain's edge and watched for a
long time as the stinking water carried the little white pieces away,
like pale ships on a filthy sea. She never even wiped away the tears
that coursed silently down her cheeks.