Anya couldn’t quite get her mind around that possibility. She felt odd even thinking about it. But everyone had seen her bald head already. She couldn’t pretend anymore that she still had hair.
An hour later Anya was standing before her bedroom mirror again, trying to figure out the best angle for her cap. Too far backward, and the cap revealed that she didn’t have any hair at the front of her head. Too far forward, and it showed the vast emptiness at the back. Anya was about to give up and beg Mom to hurry up and put the wig on, when she heard the doorbell. She rushed over and turned her light out. She made sure the shade was pulled as far down over the window as possible. But that didn’t help. It had gotten so sunny this afternoon that Anya’s room was still quite bright.
Anya thought about going to the living room and talking to Keely out there. She was curious about Keely’s surprise. But it was even brighter out there. Out there Keely would be able to see every single empty hair follicle.
Anya leaned back against her bed and waited. It took a long time. Had Keely come to see Anya, or just Anya’s parents?
Anya had just about decided to give in to her curiosity and walk on out to the living room, when someone tapped on the door.
“Anya?” Keely called. “Can I come in?”
Anya opened the door.
At first she almost didn’t recognize Keely. She’d never seen Keely without long hair before; even when they were in kindergarten, Keely’s hair had reached halfway down her back. But now Keely’s hair was chopped even with the bottom of her ears. It made her look different. Older, maybe. More grown up.
Anya was so busy staring at Keely’s hair that she didn’t notice what Keely held in her hands until Keely lifted it up, level with Anya’s eyes.
It was Anya’s wig stand. But someone—Keely?—had drawn eyes and a mouth and a nose on it. It didn’t look blank and anonymous anymore. It looked like Anya.
And instead of holding a wig on top, the wig stand was covered with one thick braid of hair that stretched from one side to the other, tied at both ends and dangling over the ears. The braid was the same color as Keely’s hair. Could it be . . . ?
“You said I couldn’t help unless I gave you my hair,” Keely said simply. “So I did.”
Anya didn’t know what to say.
“How . . . ?”
“I read some stuff on the Internet,” Keely said. “About alopecia areata. And one of the things it said was that wigs made from real hair are much better than fake ones, than synthetic hair. They fit better, with something called a vacuum seal, so they don’t come off. And they look better too. Nobody would know the difference.
“But the real-hair wigs are more expensive and they’re harder to get because, well, it’s not like there’s a bunch of hair lying around that wig makers can use. But there are ways for people to donate their hair, to make wigs for kids. So that’s what I did. For you. I’m giving you my hair. We’re going to send it away and it’ll come back as a wig you can wear that won’t ever fall off.”
She held the wig stand out even closer to Anya, almost like she expected Anya to pick up the braid and glue it on her head right then and there.
Anya started crying. She didn’t really know why. She could see Mom and Dad hovering behind Keely in the hall, watching her reaction. And behind them she could see another woman she guessed was Keely’s mom, watching too. Everyone was waiting to see what Anya would say.
“It’s . . . ,” Anya began. She gulped. “It’s not enough.” She saw Keely’s face fall. Now Keely looked like she was going to cry too. “Oh, Keely, I’m sorry. It’s—I mean, this was really nice of you. To try. And to cut your hair—you had so much hair. It’s just, even with this, even with you giving me your hair, even with the best wig in the world, I still have alopecia areata. I’m still bald. I’ll still have to wear a wig anytime I want to look normal.”
Keely sniffled.
“I wanted the other girls in the class to donate their hair too,” Keely said. “It takes a lot of hair to make a wig. And the ones with short hair, I wanted them to promise to grow their hair out and donate it too. For other kids with alopecia. I wanted you to know—well, it’s not just the hair. It’s not just a wig I wanted to give you. I wanted to show you we cared. I called them all. But I’m not good at convincing people to do things. They’re all still thinking about it.”
Anya tried to imagine timid, mousy Keely trying to convince anyone of anything. She thought of Keely calling all the other girls. She wouldn’t have thought Keely would be brave enough even to dial the numbers. But she had been. She’d been brave enough to come and talk to Anya, too, and no one else had done that. And she’d offered Anya her hair.
“Why?” Anya asked, suddenly bewildered. “Why would you do all this for me?”
Keely looked down at the floor. “When we thought you were dying of cancer,” she began, “Stef kept saying, ‘We’ve got to think of a way to help.’ But we didn’t do anything because we didn’t know what to do. And we were kind of freaked out. I mean, someone our age—dying? And then when we found out you didn’t have cancer, you had alopecia areata instead, it made me think. You’d looked like you felt like you were dying. You looked that sad.
“And I thought, maybe, in a way, it might feel as bad to keep living with something like alopecia areata as it does dying of cancer. I mean, if you die—you die, that’s it. Maybe you even go to heaven, and everything’s better then. But if you keep living, feeling miserable every day, you’ve got to keep getting up every day, facing your problems every day. So when I thought there was something I could do to change that for you, I had to try. You know?”
Keely understands, Anya thought. She understands why it was so wrong of the doctor to say, “At least she doesn’t have cancer.” She understands that it’s not just hair that I lost. She understands why I’ve been lying in bed for three days.
“I wasn’t really facing anything,” Anya admitted. “I’ve really just been hiding.”
She reached out, made herself pick up the thick braid of hair draped over the wig stand. It was kind of gross, touching someone else’s cut-off hair. But she didn’t let herself shiver. She reminded herself that Keely was sharing. This wasn’t Keely’s hair anymore. It was hers.
“Thank you,” Anya said.
Twenty-Six
Anya’s seat was still empty Monday morning.
As she slid into her own chair Keely felt a little jolt of disappointment. All that she’d done—all that she’d tried to do—had been for nothing. She missed her hair. It was weird to be able to feel the air on the back of her neck. She kept automatically tossing her head, like she always did to flip her hair over her shoulder. Except she didn’t have enough hair anymore to flip.
She was sure everyone was staring at her, whispering behind her back.
Like they’d done with Anya.
“Good morning, class,” Mrs. Hobson said. “I have some good news for you. Anya will be returning today. She has a doctor’s appointment this morning, but she’ll be back this afternoon. While she’s away, I would like to remind all of you about behaving appropriately around her. I’m sure I can count on all of you not to ask rude questions, not to make cruel comments, not to act like anything’s different at all.”
Someone was slipping something into Keely’s hand. Keely felt the brush of fingertips and was left clutching a piece of paper folded over many times. Keeping her eyes trained on Mrs. Hobson, she unfurled the paper under the desk. When it was flat, she casually slid the paper onto the desktop and glanced down.
LOOK AT STEF!!!!! the note said.
Keely turned her head. She’d been so focused on Anya’s empty chair, she hadn’t really looked at anyone else in the whole classroom. But there was Nicole, two rows away, motioning with her head and rolling her eyes. Keely looked beyond, at Stef.
Stef had short hair now. It was the same length as Keely’s.
Stef pointed and grinned, and mouthed words even Keely could understand: �
�I donated mine, too!”
Stef had never said she was going to do that.
Confused, Keely glanced back at the note on her desk. Under LOOK AT STEF!!!!! it said, SHE IS SUCH A COPYCAT!
And Keely understood that people were still mad at Stef. Keely herself wondered if Stef had donated her hair just to try to get everyone to like her again, not because she really cared about Anya.
Did it matter? Regardless of why Stef had done it, some kid somewhere in the world was going to get a curly red wig because of Stef.
Keely raised her hand.
“But Mrs. Hobson, something is different,” she said. “Anya lost her hair and now she has to wear a wig. And everyone saw her and she ran away. And Stef and I both donated our hair to help kids like Anya, with alopecia areata, or even kids with cancer. And some other girls are thinking about doing that too. Lots of things have changed.”
Keely knew she wasn’t saying what she wanted to say. She wanted to tell everyone that Anya losing her hair had been really good for her, Keely, because it had made her brave, and it had made her think for herself and not just follow Stef. But that didn’t seem fair to Anya, because nobody could say losing her hair had been good for Anya.
Everyone was staring at Keely anyway. She’d forgotten that she never spoke out in class unless she had to. She’d even forgotten to wait for Mrs. Hobson to call on her.
“Okay,” Mrs. Hobson said slowly. “I see your point. How do you think we should behave, Keely?”
“I think we should ask Anya,” Keely said.
Twenty-Seven
Mom pulled up in front of the school.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” she asked.
Slowly Anya shook her head. “It’s just school,” she said.
She opened her door but didn’t get out right away. She turned back to face Mom.
“Mom, this is a bad day, right?”
“Well . . . ,” Mom said. “You got out of school for a half day, and I took you to Wendy’s for lunch. So if you look on the bright side—”
“No,” Anya said. “I don’t want to look on the bright side right now. It’s a bad day. The doctor said the new treatment might not work any better than the last one did. And now I’ve got to go into school, where everyone’s going to stare at me because they saw me without my wig last week. So it’s a bad day.”
Mom started to protest, but Anya wouldn’t let her interrupt.
“And I just wanted to say, even on a bad day like today, I still think that you and Dad should have another baby. Even if the baby has alopecia areata, too.”
Mom’s jaw dropped. “What? Who told you we were—”
“I heard,” Anya said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
Mom seemed to be thinking. “Did you hear anything else?” “Yeah,” Anya said. “You’re worried about me swimming and going to sleepovers and getting dates when I’m in high school. You cry about that.”
Mom frowned apologetically.
“You’re my little girl,” Mom said. “I just want to protect you—”
“But you can’t,” Anya said. “This is making me grow up. So I think you should have a new baby if you want someone to protect.”
Mom just stared at Anya. Then she smiled a little ruefully. She had tears in her eyes, but they didn’t escape and roll down her cheeks.
“All right. I’ll talk this over with Dad again. I’m glad . . .” She swallowed hard. “I’m glad you feel this way.” Very carefully she brushed aside the bangs of Anya’s wig and kissed her on the forehead. “You are growing up,” she said. “With or without hair.”
Anya nodded and eased out of the car. She signed in at the office and began walking down the long, long hallway to her classroom. Nobody else was out in the hall—there was still time to turn around and run back to Mom. No one would see.
But her legs kept carrying her forward, to Mrs. Hobson’s class.
She tried to open the door quietly, but it didn’t matter. Everyone turned around and stared. Anya gulped.
“Anya, hello!” Mrs. Hobson said too heartily. “We’re so happy to have you back with us.”
Nobody looked happy. All the other kids stared in silence, straight at Anya’s wig, like they were all trying to develop X-ray vision to see beneath it.
“I have to admit, I’ve never had a student with alopecia areata before,” Mrs. Hobson said. “And we weren’t sure whether you’d want to tell us about it, or if you’d rather not even discuss it. Keely suggested that we just ask you, and you can let us know what you prefer. And we will abide by your wishes.”
Anya looked at Keely, who gave her a tentative smile.
“Of course I don’t want to talk about it,” Anya wanted to say. “I just want it to go away.”
But it wasn’t going away, and she couldn’t pretend anymore that no one knew.
“I have alopecia areata,” she started. “You all saw what I look like now without a wig.”
She looked out at her classmates. Keely and Yolanda and a few others were gazing at her sympathetically. Tyler looked like he was trying not to laugh.
Well, why not let him?
“I know you’re all probably jealous because I never have to wash my hair now,” Anya said. “And my parents never tell me to go brush my hair. In fact, it’s better for the wig if I don’t brush or comb it much at all. So I have my mom telling me, ‘No, no, put that comb down!’”
Tyler laughed first. A little ripple of giggles spread across the room.
“And when summertime comes, if I get hot playing soccer, I’ll be able to just take my hair off,” Anya continued.
“Oh, man! You’re so lucky!” Tyler shouted out.
Anya closed her eyes briefly. “Summertime?” Why had she said that? She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she still didn’t have her hair back by summertime.
No, she could bear it. She might have to.
Anya opened her eyes. For the first time her gaze fell on Stef.
“Oh, my gosh, Stef,” she blurted out. “Did you donate your hair too?”
Stef ran her fingers through her now short hair.
“Yes,” she said. “Doesn’t it look great? I thought this was the least I could do. Alopecia areata’s sort of like an allergy, right? I know what that’s like. I broke out in hives once just from putting glitter gel on my face. I have such sensitive skin. Anyhow, I think every girl in this class should donate her hair too. The ones that can, I mean. It’d be the greatest thing. They’d probably even put an article in the newspaper about us or something.”
Anya stifled the urge to giggle. Stef certainly did like to be the center of attention. If there was a newspaper article, she’d probably tell the reporter the whole thing had been her idea. Anya’s eyes met Keely’s. Keely looked amused too. It was like Anya and Keely were having a secret conversation: Let her talk. We don’t care.
“All right,” Mrs. Hobson said. “It’s time for math. We can talk about all this some other time, if Anya wants.”
Anya slipped into her seat—a girl with a wig in a classroom full of kids with hair. A girl who would be totally exposed if Stef got her way and there was an article in the newspaper.
But she was also a girl who had friends, including one who’d given up her own hair for Anya. And, Anya reminded herself, she was a girl who might have a new baby brother or sister someday soon.
And maybe, just maybe, she’d get her hair back too . . .
Anya remembered what she’d asked her mother in the car: “This is a bad day, right?” It didn’t seem so awful anymore. And, with or without hair, she could imagine better days ahead.
Afterword
Alopecia areata affects more than four million people in the United States. The disease usually begins—as Anya’s did—with one or more small, smooth patches on the scalp. Some people lose only small amounts of hair and regrow it within a year. Others may lose all the hair on their scalp (this is called alopecia totalis) or on their entire body (alopeci
a universalis).
Although alopecia areata affects people of all ages, the disease generally begins in childhood. There is no cure; medical treatments may or may not help. And the hair that does grow back may fall out again, sometimes repeatedly over the course of many years. People with alopecia areata say that’s one of the hardest parts of having the disease—never knowing when or if they’ll have hair.
If you want to help kids with alopecia areata, you can—just like Keely did. A group called Locks of Love accepts donations of hair to make wigs for financially disadvantaged kids who have lost their own hair because of alopecia areata or other medical problems. More than 80 percent of the people who donate hair to Locks of Love are kids themselves.
Locks of Love requires that donated hair be at least ten inches long, clean, dry, and bundled in a ponytail or braid. For more details, contact Locks of Love, 1640 South Congress Avenue, Suite 104, Palm Springs, Florida 33461, or visit their Web site, www.locksoflove.org.
For more information about alopecia areata, contact the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, P.O. Box 150760, San Rafael, California 94915-0760, or visit their Web site, www.alopeciaareata.com. Another helpful website, designed as an online forum with lots of links, is www.alopeciakids.org.
MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX is the best-selling author of many books for children and teens. Her books for young readers include Running Out of Time, Among the Hidden, Among the Impostors, Among the Betrayed, and The Girl with 500 Middle Names. Her work has been honored with the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award, American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers citations, and several state Readers’ Choice Awards. Margaret Peterson Haddix lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.
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