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.
Eight
Ghost
IT WAS THE demise of the notebook that sent Pink over the edge.
He’d spent the rest of the day trying his best to make Suraya smile. He’d gathered her favorite flowers—wild jasmine—and sprinkled them all over so that her whole room was filled with their sweet scent. He’d enticed the bees into giving him some of their fresh, golden honey, which he collected in a cup made from leaves—Suraya loved honey and lemon in her tea in the evenings. He’d even slipped away as she did her homework to go to her old school, creep into the teachers’ lounge where her mother sat marking papers that afternoon, and whisper a suggestion in her ear. That evening, Mama came home bearing piping hot packets of Suraya’s favorite nasi lemak from the stall near the post office, the coconut rice, sambal, hard-boiled egg, and fried chicken all still steaming as they sat down for dinner.
It might have worked. It might have made Suraya’s heart just a little lighter. But for Pink, it wasn’t nearly enough.
That night, he sat on the windowsill staring out into the inky blackness as Suraya slept. He did not move for a long, long time.
When he finally did, it was to rub his long back legs together. The familiar chirp of the grasshopper’s song echoed out into the darkness. If you were listening, you might have dismissed it as just another part of the soundtrack of midnight, along with the buzzing of the mosquitoes and the chirping of the geckos. But then again, this song wasn’t meant for you.
Then, there was a tiny skittering sound that grew louder, as if hundreds of little feet were running, then they stopped right beneath Pink’s window. He bent his head low and whispered his instructions. It took a long time.
Eventually the little feet skittered away again into the shadows, and Pink curled up with Suraya as he usually did, a satisfied look on his face.
The next day, Kamelia and Divya weren’t at school. And when they did return, days later, they sported new identical short haircuts and sullen expressions.
“Why did they do that?” Pink heard Suraya whisper to a classmate. “I thought they loved their hair.”
“They did,” the classmate whispered back. “But my mom was at the pharmacy the other day and she met Divya’s mom and Divya’s mom told her that they had the most TERRIBLE lice infections. Like, so bad that it looked like their hair was MOVING, all by itself. Divya’s mom just, like, had no idea what to do.”
Suraya touched her own long hair, in its neat braid. Pink knew she loved her hair and couldn’t imagine cutting it all off. “Couldn’t they just have used some medicine? Did they really have to cut it?”
“It was so bad the medicine wasn’t even working anymore! They both had to get their hair cut, and I heard they CRIED.” This was said with a particular relish; everybody in the lower school feared the two girls, and they certainly didn’t mind them suffering, at least a little bit.
“Poor things,” Suraya said softly, and the other girl snorted.
“If you say so,” she said. Then she quickly slipped away. It wouldn’t do to be seen talking to Suraya, not when the new girl was so clearly in Kamelia’s crosshairs.
Pink poked his head out of Suraya’s worn shirt pocket to drink in the sight of the two girls, their long, shiny hair now cropped close to their heads, and smiled a slow, wicked smile.
It was only what they deserved.
Nine
Ghost
AFTER THE LICE incident, Kamelia and Divya’s reign of terror seemed to lose steam. They didn’t exactly stop being their mean, bullying selves, but they seemed to shrink slightly, as if losing their hair meant losing some of their power.
For Suraya, this meant happier, lighter times. She could often make it through entire school days with nothing worse happening to her than a tug of her braid or a small shove in the chaos before assembly. It didn’t mean making friends became any easier—unpopularity is a leech that’s hard to shake off once it sinks its teeth into you—but she accepted this as she always had, and was content. She put her head down in class and concentrated on her work; she spent every recess with Pink in the secret spot they’d found on the first day of school, in the dappled sunshine that filtered through the frangipani leaves. Slowly, Pink could feel her unclenching, settling in, settling down, and he was glad.
In fact, Suraya and Pink could quite happily have gone on this way forever, if not for the new girl.
She appeared one day about a month into the school year, standing quietly next to their teacher Puan Rosnah as she made the introductions. “Class!” Puan Rosnah clapped her plump hands hard, and the sharp cracks brought an abrupt stop to their chatter. “Class! We have a new student. Her name is Jing Wei, and I’m sure you’ll make her feel very welcome.” There was an obvious emphasis on the last two words, and the class snickered. Suraya looked with interest at this new girl, who was gazing back at her new classmates in a way that seemed entirely unconcerned. She was small, this Jing Wei, with black-rimmed glasses that seemed to take up half of her face, a sunburned nose, and hair cropped short like a boy’s—a rare sight in this school, where hair served as a sort of status symbol, and the longer and shinier it was, the better.
Introductions over, Jing Wei slipped into a seat in the middle of the class and took out her history book. If she was aware of the curious stares and hushed whispers of the other girls, she didn’t show it.
It was pouring with rain when the bell rang for recess, and the girls raced for the best spots in the canteen and the school hall. Suraya followed slowly, her hands clutching her plastic lunch container, her eyes on the new girl. Jing Wei walked serenely among the boisterous crowd, carefully staking out a spot for herself in a stairwell just off the hall, away from the noise and the damp. She had a book in one hand and her own lunch box in the other.
Pink could feel Suraya hesitate. Go and talk to her, he said. Go on. Why not? We’ve got nothing to lose.
(Later, Pink would think back and wonder why he’d said this; why he hadn’t just said Come, let’s go sit over in that corner, just you and me, like we always do. But big moments don’t come with price tags, and Pink would have no idea how much this moment cost him until much later.)