The Weight of Blood (3)

But behind her, Coach Bates stood by the locker room exit, her arms crossed. Watching.

Maddy had no choice but to go to class.

SECOND PERIOD. US History.

Jules Marshall sat in the back of Mrs. Morgan’s classroom next to Wendy, twirling a strand of red hair around her index finger. She was scrolling through her nudes, trying to decide which one to send her boyfriend, when she happened to glance up at the door.

“Holy shit,” Jules whispered, gawking.

Wendy, taking furious notes, followed her best friend’s gaze. “Oh. My. God.”

Charlotte covered her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming, but the sound slipped through like a cough.

Maddy’s hair arrived in the classroom before she did. The dark frizzy strands swelled around her tiny frame. She looked more hair than human. Mouths dropped at the sight.

“Holy shit,” Jason Conway said, falling on his neighbor and teammate Chris Lively, howling with laughter.

Mrs. Morgan, standing at the whiteboard, held her marker midair, blue eyes bulging.

“Maddy?” she gasped.

Maddy didn’t respond. Head down, she clutched her books to her chest in one hand, using the other to grip the strap of the heavy book bag hanging off her shoulder. She shuffled to her third-row seat while her classmates failed to stifle their collective giggles.

Mrs. Morgan quickly scolded herself for being no better than the brats she was tasked to educate. After all, it was just hair. She didn’t dare ask for a late pass, drawing more attention to Maddy. It was clear why she was late. Instead, she turned back to the room and put on her poker face.

“Settle down, everyone,” she ordered. “Take out your homework and turn to chapter fifteen in your text.”

Maddy slid down into her chair, trying to squeeze herself to the size of a snow pea as Mrs. Morgan quizzed students.

“Now, can anyone tell me . . .”

Jules’s face and neck turned beet red as she shook with silent laughter to the point of tears. Wendy laid her head on her notebook, trying to hold it together.

“Hey! Jules? Wendy,” Mrs. Morgan snapped. “What’s so funny?

“What’s so funny?” Jason said incredulously. “Bro, do you see that Afro?”

The classroom erupted with snickers.

Maddy breathed through her nose, tears puddling. She folded her hands, praying harder than she ever had before for rescue. After class, she needed to run. Didn’t matter how much trouble might fall on her. She had to get out of there.

“Jason,” Mrs. Morgan said, seething. “Do you want to go to the office and explain why you’re disrupting my class? Do any of you? If not, then I suggest you knock it off.”

The class simmered down, but not completely. No one was paying attention to Mrs. Morgan. All eyes were on Maddy.

A wicked smirk spread across Jules’s face. “Watch this,” she whispered, plunging a hand into her book bag. She retrieved a sharpened number-two pencil, twirling it around her fingers. Wendy and Charlotte held their breath. Closing one eye, Jules aimed, then softly launched the pencil across the room. It made an arc in the air before landing in Maddy’s hair. Maddy didn’t feel it at all.

The girls convulsed with laughter. Jules grabbed another pencil.

The pencil planted in her hair stuck straight up, as if placed there on purpose. Snickers grew into loud cackles. Maddy didn’t bother turning left or right to see what was happening. She knew they were laughing at her. They were always laughing at her. Skin burning, her pulse beat harder.

Mrs. Morgan had turned around just in time to see the second pencil sail and disappear into a forest of tight black coils and curls.

The class all but rolled in the aisles, laughter echoing down the hallways.

“Hey! Who threw that! Wendy? Charlotte? Jules?”

“It wasn’t me!” Jules said, all innocent, her hands raised. “My pen is right here.”

Wendy could barely contain herself, her freckled face turning into a cherry.

Maddy squeezed her eyes shut tight to keep them from twitching. “Please stop it,” she mumbled in a small voice, then felt a soft tug of her hair.

“Yo, it even feels like a Black chick’s hair!” someone shouted behind her.

“I said, knock it off!” Mrs. Morgan shouted.

At that moment, Debbie Locke’s hearing aid squealed like a mic dangerously close to a speaker. She hissed through her teeth and shook the device free from her ear.

“What the fuck?” she mumbled, palming it. But no one heard her. They were all too busy cackling at Maddy Washington’s hair, a giant sculpture sitting in the middle of US history.

“Stop it,” Maddy begged, tears streaming, as the voices descended.

“Do you see the size of that shit? It’s huge!”

“Hey, Maddy, where’d you get that ’fro?”

“Mad Mad Maddy with the Mad Mad Hair!”

“Stop it, please, stop,” Maddy begged, trembling.

The only two Black students in the class eyed the room in disgust. Mrs. Morgan noticed. Her creamy skin flushed red.

“I said, that’s enough!” she shouted.

A crack in the window next to Wendy began to snake its way up, splintering out like a family tree. Wheezing for air, Maddy gripped the desk, and the room spun. Something prickled and hummed across her skin.