The Outcasts

She Won't If He Won't If You If I Won't

I've had the scissors in my hand for about an hour. I've probably opened and closed them over five hundred times fantasizing about a world with short hair. I've done it before, forcefully. It looked terrible because they just took huge chunks of my hair and cut it off.

I raked my hands through my hair seperating some of the big locks of hair. Then I held one of the two hundred spirals that I have and I put it in between the scissors. . .

I let them drop from my hand. I couldn't find the good place in my heart to do it. I just see her in me. She was so much like me I can't even change anything about myself because it would be changing her.

The sun shined in my bathroom, reminding me of the day ahead if me, and I let my shoulders drop.

I can't do it today. Just not today.

That's the problem. One day I'm up for the impossible, but the next day the impossible just beats me down.

I walked back to the living room and laid down on my couch. I hid under the covers.

I want to sleep and to never wake up.

I had a dream. That scared me. It scarred me a little. About my future. It was a fairytale. I didn't know that that could happen. I just want to sleep. To escape to my fairytale. My own fairytale. The only thing I look forward to. When I go to sleep. And the only thing that keeps me asleep.

✴ ✴ ✴ ✴

"Okay, sweetie. I need you to follow the light for me." The girl sat in the trauma center obeying the resident. "Good, now lift up your right arm." The doctor guided her arm up, moving it in circles and pulling in and out. "Awesome, we'll do your other arm and then your back."

She was fifteen. She had dirt and stains all around her stretched out clothes. But she smelled fresh and clean like she had just taken a shower. Her short, uneven hair was as red as fire. Her eyes were three different shades at once. Her skin the color of milk.

"Okay, great. I'll be right back with another doctor. Stay here." The girl nodded, not looking at the doctor in the eye.

There was so much movement in the room. There were doctors running, people crying, patients yelling in pain.

She just sat there, Staring down at her feet trying to avoid all eye contact.

There was a patient who came in. It was a boy.

He was crying so badly. The tears were running down his face in big droplets. His face was cherry red. He was holding his leg like it hurt.

His mother came in behind him with a blank face. She looked nervous, as if she was scared for the outcome of this visit.

They took him into an area and closed the curtains.

The girl looked around at the other doctors who were too focused on their patients to notice her. She slid off the bed and started to walk slowly towards the curtains.

"The infection caused paralysis in his leg. If we don't amputate, the infection will spread and it will kill him." She peaked through the curtain and was facing the little boy from the side.

His hair was so black, it almost looked blue from the hospital lights. And his eyes were deep and dark like an ocean on a rainy day.