She nodded.
“At school?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I thought you’d say no.”
“We might have asked questions,” Felix said. “We might have taken you to a salon.”
“I wanted to do it today.”
“Why today?” I asked.
“Because they made him cry again.”
The rest of the story came slowly.
Liam had joined Maya’s class six weeks earlier.
He had recently completed chemotherapy.
His hair had not yet begun growing back, leaving his head completely bald.
Some of the same children who had targeted Maya soon began making comments about him.
They asked whether he polished his head.
They called him an egg.
One boy pretended the sunlight was bouncing off his scalp.
Another child asked whether cancer was contagious and moved away from him during lunch.
Maya understood what it felt like to enter a room wondering what cruel remark might come next.
So she began sitting beside him.
At first, they barely spoke.
Then Liam noticed the fantasy novel she was reading and said he liked the same series.
Soon they were eating lunch together every day.
Whenever someone laughed at Liam’s head, Maya moved closer instead of turning away.
The previous day, Liam had told her about the wig.
His parents, Noella and Duncan, had found an organization that created custom wigs from real hair for children who had lost theirs during chemotherapy.
Several suitable donations were needed to make each wig.
The hair had to meet specific requirements, and they did not yet have enough matching pieces.
That morning, Maya took the large kitchen scissors from our junk drawer and hid them inside her backpack.
At lunch, she went into a bathroom stall.
She separated her hair into two thick ponytails and began cutting.
The scissors were dull.
While cutting the second ponytail, they slipped, leaving one side much shorter.
She tried to fix the remaining hair by reaching behind her head, but each attempt made it worse.
When she finally looked in the mirror, she panicked.
She wrapped the two long sections in paper towels, stuffed them into her backpack, pulled up her hood, and returned to class.
Liam saw her at dismissal.
When she explained what she had done, he quickly wrote the note before they went home.
“I didn’t want him to continue being bullied. I know how it feels,” Maya said.
Felix pulled her into his arms.
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