Dad tucks the blankets in around me. Then he sits on the edge of my bed and starts to whisper-sing like he did every night, back when I still let people sing to me. I fill in the last word of every line, just like before, when I used to sing along.
“There was a little—”
“—girl—”
“—and she had a little—”
“—curl—”
“—right in the middle of her—”
“—forehead.”
“And when she was—”
“—good—”
“—she was very, very—”
“—good.”
“And when she was bad, she was—”
“—horrid.”
The bed feels softer now. The blankets feel fluffier. As long as Dad stays beside me, nothing seems as scary. I turn onto my side with Raymond and think about clouds and honey and rolling in the mud. Soon my mind is just a swirl of color, turning like a pinwheel. And the last thing I know, I’m drifting. I’m floating into the air, like when the big balloon carries Winnie the Pooh up, up, and away.
12
The next morning I wake up to a rainbow.
The sun is shining through ice crystals on the outside of my window, making a kaleidoscope prism on the wall above. The black X-ray with the white smudge feels like something out of a dream now, not part of this bright morning where nothing bad has happened or ever could, like someone took a big pitcher of courage and filled me up to the top.
I feel like I can make the craziest hair in the world!
I leap out of bed, throw on my clothes, and pull my tie-dyed hoodie on over them. Then I grab Raymond and hurry to my workshop. I stop long enough to draw a girl with crazy hair in the Magic Mist. I make a wish that my hair will be the craziest in the class, because who says you can’t wish on windows? Then I grab some of my hair accessories, head into the bathroom, and study my face in the mirror, waiting for Inspiration.
Clips or pigtails?
I set Raymond on the sink and try pigtails first. I make seven of them sticking out all over my head. Once or twice, my hands do that herky-jerky thing, but I am not going to let that bother me. Besides, it actually makes the pigtails even more crooked. When I’m done, my hair looks okay, but not good enough. I did use all different colors of rubber bands, but I use them even for regular hair days, and this has to be the craziest.
I take everything out and start over. This time I hold up a piece of hair and drag a comb the wrong way through it. My hair gets all bunched up and knotted. Then I take another piece and another. Once my hand yanks so hard that I pull my own hair and make a little yelp.
“Meena?” Mom says, knocking on the door. “Are you okay?”
I rub the sore spot with my fingers. “I’ll be out in a sec,” I say. I comb the last piece of hair backward and check myself out in the mirror. My hair is all clumps and frizzy ends, like a big mop of static cling. It still needs something else. I grab all different colored pipe cleaners and twist them into my hair so they’re springing out everywhere.
Now this is crazy hair. I grin at myself in the mirror. Even Raymond looks like he approves, and he already has the craziest rainbow-striped fur in the world.
When I head into the kitchen, I see that Mom put Rosie’s hair in crooked pigtails with different-colored rubber bands. So that was a close one! Rosie gasps when she sees me, just like I hoped she would. “You’re like a rainbow,” she says, bouncing in her chair.
Mom looks up from pouring juice and sighs.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“It’s crazy all right,” she says. “But you’re on your own combing it out later.”
Just then Dad comes in the door wearing his scuba running suit. He lights up when he sees me, but when he sees the look Mom is making, he puts on a sort of twinkly frown instead. “What’s up, buttercup?” he says.
I do a happy twirl for him.
“Something’s different about you today,” he says, rubbing his chin. “I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Her hair,” Rosie squeals, clapping. “It’s her hair!”
“Oh, now I see,” Dad says. He walks around me. “Yes, it looks like very delicate work.”
I start bouncing on my toes. It is the craziest. I just know it. There’s no way Sofía can beat this! “Do you think I’ll win the prize for Crazy Hair Day?” I ask.
He laughs. “If Crazy Hair Day were actually a contest,” he says, “and there were actually a prize, I don’t see how you could lose.”
• • •
I see a lot of crazy hair when Dad drops me off at the playground. I see slicked-back and spiky styles. I see pigtails sprouting like fountains. I see kids who look like they just didn’t bother to brush.
But a lot of people turn to look at me.
“Wow, your hair!” Eli yells, running up. He’s got his slicked back on top and spiked out at the sides. He reaches over to feel my head. When he pulls away, the staticky ends stick to his hand like magnets. Other kids start touching my hair too. Pretty soon hands are reaching for my head from every side.
I can’t wait for Sofía to see me! I scan the area and spot her mom walking away, so Sofía must be here somewhere. I adjust the pipe cleaners to make sure they’re at their pointiest and stretch up on my tiptoes.
There she is! Sofía’s heading for the playground! She’s still kind of far away, but even from here, I can tell that her hair is braided into two long ropes that curve out to the side and up over her head. When she gets a little closer, I see that they join together in the shape of a heart. The whole thing is sprayed with something red and glittery and makes her about a foot taller!
“Look at Sofía,” somebody yells. The heads around me all turn. Then everybody is running over, huddling around Sofía, touching her hair and gasping. “How did you get it to do that?” someone asks.
Sofía touches her sparkly heart hair. “I used a coat hanger,” she says.
A coat hanger! Why didn’t I think of that?
I sink down onto a bench and watch everyone swarm her. When the bell finally rings, I scuff my feet down the hallway and shove everything into my cubby. I slump in my desk and cross my arms tight across my chest. When Lin comes by and picks up my spelling homework, she shakes her head. Her short hair is spiked with so much gel that it doesn’t even move.
“Mrs. D will make you do this over,” she says. “We’re not supposed to do anything in print anymore.”
I groan and put my head down. Just because we’re learning stupid cursive this year, Mrs. D wants us to use it all the time now. But what’s wrong with printing? Maybe my letters don’t want to join up with the others. Maybe they’re not interested in blending together with every other letter in the world. Did anybody ever think of that? Maybe they want to be left alone. And just because they stuck together at the start of third grade doesn’t mean they will forever.
I grab my homework back from Lin and cram it into my desk. I am not getting clipped down for printing. And I won’t give up on winning Crazy Hair Day, either. I didn’t spend ninety-nine days in third grade just to lose to a dumb coat hanger! So while Mrs. D starts counting hands for lunch and Lin puts our homework in the basket and Aiden finishes sharpening pencils, I walk very casually to the tissue box in the corner. I pretend to blow my nose. Then, when no one is looking, I grab what I need from the art cart and slip it into the front pouch of my hoodie.
I’m just getting back to my desk when Mrs. D holds out the lunch slip. “Here you go, girls,” she says. I grab it from her and head out of the room.
As soon as we’re in the hall, I turn and hand Sofía the slip. “Here,” I say. “You do it.”
I do not say anything about her hair. Not. One. Word.
Which is actually pretty hard. Because it looks amazing.
She blinks at me and frowns. “We’re supposed to stay together,” she says.
Like she knows anything about staying together.
“I’m just going to
the bathroom,” I say. “Can’t anybody even pee by themselves around here anymore?”
I spin around and hurry into the closest bathroom. For a second I’m afraid she’s going to follow me, but she doesn’t.
So I get to work.
It’s harder than I expected. I know I only have a few minutes, and my hair doesn’t exactly cooperate now that it’s brushed in all different directions. But I manage to get it pretty close to how I want it to look. When I’m finished, I turn upside down and fluff out the hair one last time.
“Meena?” I hear Sofía say from the hall. “Are you okay in there?”
I am awesome in here.
When I step out of the bathroom, Sofía puts a hand over her mouth.
That seems like a good sign.
We walk back into the room. Now I’m the one who feels taller. It’s super quiet since everyone is working on their language arts journals while Mrs. D writes something on the board. Sofía slips back into her desk. I plop down and clear my throat. When nobody looks, I bump my knee against Eli’s.
He looks up at me and knocks his journal on the floor. “Is that marker?” he says.
Finally, everyone turns to look.
I flip my hair off my shoulder. “It’s rainbow highlights,” I say.
Some kids gasp. Some laugh. A few even jump out of their desks to get a closer look.
“Class—” Mrs. D starts to say.
I shake my hair and turn my head so everyone can see how the streaks go all the way around. I made sure the red and orange and yellow stripes in front stretch from my forehead to the ends of my hair. I’m pretty sure the green and blue and purple streaks do, too, but it was hard coloring them on the back of my head.
Then I look at Mrs. D. She doesn’t say anything. She just gazes back at me with a wrinkled brow.
I bet she’s deciding on a prize for Crazy Hair Day!
Except then she squeezes her eyes shut and cradles her forehead. “Meena,” she says, “did you use permanent marker to do that?”
Well, duh. “I wanted it to last,” I say.
Her shoulders slump. She sighs.
When Mrs. D. finally opens her eyes, all she says is, “Take out your free reading books, please. Group B, meet me at the table.”
Mrs. D goes over to the behavior chart and moves my clothespin down.
I stare at my clip. It’s the first one down today. It’s just sitting there below all the others now, at Think About Your Choices.
But I did think about my choices! I thought about how I could beat Sofía at Crazy Hair Day. And I did! Didn’t I?
I glance at Sofía. She only looks back for a second before her eyes drop down to her desk.
And after that the one hundredth day of school ends up being a big, huge flop.
I don’t win Crazy Hair Day.
I can only hula-hoop to twelve.
And it turns out the whole class has to share a hundred M&M’s!
Trust me. That’s way less chocolate than you think.
13
My rainbow highlights fade a little when I wash my hair the next morning, but the guy at the hospital can still see them. “Is that a thing now?” he asks. “Kids coloring their hair?”
I glance at Mom. She doesn’t answer but just crosses her arms, raises an eyebrow, and waits for me to speak. She’s not as mad about my hair as she was yesterday, but she’s not going to help me out here either.
I shrug at the guy. “It’s my thing,” I say.
“Got it,” he replies. He pats a table-bed that’s sticking out of a white machine. “Hop on up here for me, would you?”
I didn’t wake up in the hospital this time. I came back so they could take more pictures of my brain. This time they’re using an MRI machine. That stands for Magnetic Something Something.
A shiver curls down my spine just looking at that thing. It’s like a giant washing machine from the future. It even says GE on the front, like the one in our laundry room. I hold tighter to Raymond. “Can I bring my zebra?” I ask.
The guy looks at Mom.
“No metals,” she says. “I even took the grommets off her hoodie.”
He smiles at me. “Zebras welcome. All aboard.”
I pull up the hood of my tie-dyed sweatshirt, tighten the strings so it closes around my head, and climb up onto the table.
Before we came this morning, I painted my nails all different colors and took my time picking out socks that didn’t match. I ate two bowls of Rainbow Pops and made sure to put on my shoes with the colorful laces. But now, even covered with my rainbow armor, I feel wimpy and small next to this big white machine.
Mom helps me squish in these little foam earplugs. They fill up the empty space in my ears and make everything sound muffled. The guy gives me a pair of headphones and then goes into a little room behind a window. I see him talk into a microphone and hear his voice through the headphones, right through the earplugs. “I need you to be perfectly still in there, okay?” he says.
I nod.
“Go ahead and lie down.”
The table starts to move me backward into the machine. It’s smooth and round and cramped in here, like the tube slide at school, only white. Music starts playing through the headphones: “The Wheels on the Bus.”
I roll my eyes, even though I’m not supposed to move. What does he think I am, five?
The machine starts to whir and hum. Something inside the machine goes BANG, and I flinch. Banging sounds fire up all around me. Even with foam in my ears, it’s as loud as when Rosie used to drum on our pots and pans. But I stay still. I don’t cover my ears. I try not to blink. I’m not sure I even breathe. Only my toes are twitching, sticking out of the machine. Mom is out there too—a million miles away. She puts her hand on my leg. I want to reach out and grab her hand. I want to squeeze Raymond tighter.
But I don’t move.
And then, just when the music ends and I think I’m finally getting away from this thing, the song starts right back at the beginning—and so does the banging. The lyrics play over and over while I lie there, frozen, bombarded by colorless noise.
I wish I were in my workshop, where nothing is clean, and it smells like glue, and I can reach my arms out and twirl around. But it seems like I’m in here forever with the machine banging and the wheels turning, until finally everything stops.
The table starts to slide out of the tube. I take a big breath and open and close my eyes a bunch of times to fill up on blinks.
“You’re doing great, Meena,” the guy says. “We just need one more set of pictures.” He’s standing by the table now.
And he’s holding a needle.
A numbing sensation floods my whole body. I don’t say anything at first. When I do ask him, “What’s that for?” my voice sounds calm and quiet.
“It’s for contrast,” he says. “It will make your blood vessels show up better in the pictures.”
Mom looks at me with wide eyes. She looks back at the guy. “I told her it wasn’t that kind of a test,” she says. “I told her she wouldn’t need one.”
He lowers the syringe. His eyebrows scrunch together as he looks from Mom to me, then back at Mom again.
He looks sorry. But all he says is, “She does.”
• • •
“You want to go somewhere for lunch?” Mom asks when we’re driving home.
I’m not hungry at all. I lean my head against the window and cradle my arm where it’s still sore from the shot.
She reaches over and strokes my hair. “Then how about we make a quick stop at the art store?” Mom says. “You can pick out some new paints. Or that air-dry clay you like.”
I shake my head and keep my eyes on the thin, streaky clouds out my window. I just want to go home.
When we finally pull into the driveway, Mom parks right over the little spill of oil, so I can’t even see the rainbow splotch when I get out. Dad is waiting for us in the kitchen. He scrapes his chair back from the table and holds his arms open for me.
“There she is,” he says.
I don’t even take off my coat or kick off my shoes. I just shuffle over and slump against him.
“What’s the tale, nightingale?” he asks quietly, hugging me.
I swallow. “I had to get a shot.”
“Ah,” he says. “Not your favorite.”
“Not my favorite.”
My body goes slack inside his hug. I’d let him pick me up and carry me if it meant I didn’t have to hold myself up anymore. I used all my energy on the guy at the hospital. It’s not like I meant to fight him. I didn’t mean to kick him or bat at his arms or shout “Wait a minute!” over and over until he finally called someone to hold me while he gave me the shot. I didn’t mean to cry. And I definitely don’t mean to start crying again now, when it’s over and done with, but the next thing I know I’m snuffling and Dad’s shirt is getting wet.
“It’s not fair,” I mutter into him. “Why is this happening?”
He rubs my back and kisses the top of my head. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe it’s just your turn. Everybody has tough times, Meena.”
“Everybody?” I ask.
“Sure. We all have ups and downs.”
I humph at that, because it reminds me of the clip chart at school. I picture my clothespin and how it’s always moving down, while Sofía’s shoots up to the top. “It seems like some people have nothing but Ups,” I say.
I wonder when it’s Sofía’s turn for a Down. And just like that, I know I can’t stand going to class and watching our clips going in opposite directions. I step back from Dad and dry the rest of my tears with my sleeve. “I think I’ll just stay home from school today.”
He ruffles my hair. “Nice try.”
I groan. “I’ve been through kind of an ordeal here, you know.”
“Oh, really?” he says, grabbing my backpack from its hook. He zips my lunch bag inside and gives Mom a grin. “Then I guess beating you there will be a cinch,” he says.
I stop sniffling and look him over. He’s usually faster than me, but he’s not wearing his running gear today. He’s in his work clothes with those stiff, heavy shoes.
And I have on sneakers with rainbow laces.
Meena Meets Her Match Page 7