Chapter XXI

Police Officer: Was Sunny aware of her monstrosity?

Me: Sunny was aware, reflecting on the situation, that she had not been truly empathetic toward her, that she had not been a friend.

Police Officer: Who?

Me: The girl without a name.

***

In the bathroom getting ready for school, Sunny murmured a word or two at her reflection; she was no longer enervated with pain. The girl in the mirror did not react with as much as a twitch. Sunny tried to beat her to the toothbrush with a lightning movement, but the girl was just as fast. Sunny was always dissatisfied with her appearance. She was too frequently told that her eyes were small and her nose oversized and always believed that it was unreasonable that people weren't allowed to have a say in their appearance. She always wished she could change what she looked like. And now, she realized that she could. She stayed in the little magic room until she created a perfect dolled-up version of herself. Then, she stepped out, a heatwave of hot.

Sunny walked the halls with her double vision and persistent headache, watching as their jaw dropped to their knees. Boys stared. She posted a photo the same night and when it hit two hundred likes, Sunny almost laughed out loud.

I sensed a worrisome rebellion streak charging at her from the distance. Her parents' business was no longer providing an unhealthy outlet for her inner chaos. The phone calls, the busyness, the nights are gone, it all didn't matter. Sunny wondered what dreams her mother had for her that had gone unfulfilled. Who her mother would have chosen her to be, had she been given the choice. It felt cool to be so totally out of her mother's control, for her future not to be contained by her past. For a while, it seemed that even if the moon were to fall, she would feel all but panic, for Sunny and her Kitties would push it back up together.

****

Daily combo: Shepherd's pie $12. Sunny read the menu, then went ahead and placed four orders. The big bill came back as a few smaller bills and some coins. Sunny texted the girls.

Sunny: food's readyyyyyy bitchessss.

It was an ongoing feature of The Kitties texual communication that repeated letters or punctuation marks were used to signal enthusiasm and intimacy. In the absence of these orthographic quirks, they took it as a signal of drag and disruption. Proper spelling was a cold formality-- a period was a knife. Sunny sent two eggplant emojis, a choice that resembled her change in status— she was cool enough to use that emoji.

Selena: Fuck yesssss.

Tate: YUM.

Tate: We'll be there in a sec.

Ashley: !!!!

Sunny handed each of them a dish of minced meat under a layer of mashed potato. They walked down to the bathroom stalls, smiled at a few boys down the wall. They arrived, only to realize that their spot had been taken. Tate sighed, Selena rolled her eyes. Then, the Kitties walk around the school searching for empty seats around boys. A second later, Tate is on someone's lap, and Ashley is stuffing French fries into a hot boy's mouth. Selena face-timed Brad.

"Sucks that we can't smoke today," she said.

Sunny, uninterested in all above, wandered to a small round table at the end of the cafeteria. What caught her eye was the singular brownish-looking girl sitting there. She plotted herself across from her on a hard stool. The brown girl looked like someone who was unhappy but kept her unhappiness a secret to protect those around her. Sunny had always feared those with such kind capacity to care fiercely of others before their own image. The girl was a bird kid, and occasionally stuffed anonymous notes of encouragement decorated with doodles of mockingbirds into lockers. Sunny might've received one. She also might've forgotten. The girl said hi and told that Sunny that her name was Rasha.

"Hey, Rasha. You're new?" Sunny asked, gobbling down the savory comfort-food classic, enjoying the specialty of the occasion of shepherds pie.

"No. I've been here since first grade," she said, softly. Rasha wore appalling shoes with flaps that opened and shut like the mouths of dinosaurs, or sock puppets. It was not just her ordinary obtuseness, but also her great distance from any measurable aesthetic experience that frightened Sunny. She looked like a village wife.

"Oh, haven't seen you around."

"You have," she said, timidly. "You probably just don't remember now that you're with them."

"What?" Rasha looked right, then left, then leaned in.

"Look. They're not your friends," she said, under her breath. "They're dangerous." Resistance. Resistance made Sunny pull away, preventing her from experiencing any sort of authentic, truth-wobbling moment this was lead up to be. Sunny opened up to defend her besties when down sat Selena. She hard time adjusting to the harsh brown color that radiated off the girl.

"Why the fuck aren't you eating," said Selena. Rasha wasn't at all in the meaty mood. She wasn't chewing anything. The brown girl went blank, and finally murmured, "I-I-I'm fasting." Rasha tucked away her glance and stared down at her lap. Sunny sensed embarrassment.

"Your fattening?" Replied Selena, pretending not to hear correctly. "Yeah, now that you mention it, I notice it. Two big old cinnamon rolls," she said, with one hand rested on her face and the other pointed at Rasha's stomach. "Just the nameless girl with no friends." Selena snorted.

It was at this moment that Sunny realized Selena didn't like her. Immediately, she scooted over towards the blonde girl. She stared at the big red dot in the middle of Rasha's forehead and the scarf she had over her head. She rejected her as Rasha and instantly saw her as an alien.

Selena placed her around Sunny, who couldn't help but smile. It was a strange feeling, not being the marginalized nerd. It felt good to be on Selena's side. Powerful.

Rasha lowered her head and became incredibly silent. Sunny kept looking at her, and over time it felt as if she were looking at her old self. That look of vulnerability was creating an inability to act, a feeling of defeat, embarrassment. She had become so immune to this humiliation that only when she saw Rasha wear it did she feel the unease again.

It was tolerable at first, as the first few seconds of a mosquito bite. But before a minute went by, the itch became unbearable. Selena giggled a bit. Sunny giggled a bit. She didn't necessarily think it was funny, but it was an incredible moment in which she realized she had made it. They were on the battlefield, but Sunny wasn't the one being shot anymore.

"Ramadan is a great blessing," said Rasha almost apologetically. "And it's... it's a large sacrifice... it's a part of who I am. You can't make fun of that." Selena opened her camera on her phone to look at her hair, then turned it over to capture the shakey girl on the verge of tears. Selena made amateur comments at Rasha, waved her heads, and was very dramatic. Selena liked toying with her.

"Ha. You call 30 days of starvation a blessing? There are other ways to be skinny you know. It's called working out, lazy bitch. Eat the damn food, Muslim." The comment tickled Selena's funny bone and she giggled and giggled. At times, she would give Sunny with the look, and Sunny took the cue and chuckled. Laughter came like the great flood, and Rasha's face soured into an ugly green. Sunny felt the ants crawling up her feet, the bells ringing in her ears, Lyssa's voice telling her to stop.

She turned and whispered into Selena's ear, "Are we being too mean?" Selena scoffed and rolled off her tongue that they were just practicing 'the art of comedy'.

Rasha looked sideways at Sunny, her glance almost begging her to call things by their name. Sunny understood her to cry for help but ignored it.

"I vowed not to eat or drink until a month later, and I'm not going to break this promise," Rasha said firmly, trying to appear stronger than she actually was. She got up and stormed away. Sunny and Selena look at each other and laughed.

"Weak-ass Indian bitch can't even take some thoughtful sarcasm," said Selena. "Such a weirdo. I mean, who the fuck wraps themselves in a scarf?"

"Or put a dot in the middle of their forehead," said Sunny, slightly shivery.

"Yeah. W-T-F was that shit," said Selena. "Did you see her nose? And those teary eyes! The hungry Muslim, where she at?" There was a moment of silence, as their minds began ticking of a classic line that would pinpoint all their contempt towards her. Sunny thought too, and recalling my mother's selection of movies, she said, "Gone-With-the-Wind."

Sunny paused, heart tightened at the mean comment. What was wrong with her?

"Ha-Ha-Ha. Nice one, Sun." Suddenly, Sunny was confident she had said the right thing. The girls giggled evilly until Rasha came back. The tears were dry and her bottom lip quivered. She stood on the other end of the table, stabbed a fork into the last leftover bit of pie, and licked Sunny's plate when she was finished. What an eater of leftovers, Sunny thought. Selena smiled. Sunny stared. They had found a new freak.

The rest of the day, Sunny felt a type of indignation that arose after learning some combination of tragedy and gruesome charismatic skill. This, Sunny thought, would be the closest she'd get to living. Still at the bottom of her shared intimacy with Selena, Sunny hated the idea of Rasha forcing out the story of her shame, a spectacle she feared precisely because she knew she deserved it.