Girl by Blake Nelson

Chapter 1

It was October of my sophomore year and it was raining and I was sitting in my room with my geometry homework watching it get dark outside. Downstairs my mom was fixing dinner and I could hear the news on TV and my dad would be home from his dentist office soon. And I was drawing in my notebook and leaning on my elbow and then the phone rang. I sat up. I listened and my mom yelled, "Andrea! Telephone!" I ran into the hall and picked it up and it was my friend Cybil. I asked her what she was doing but she wouldn't answer so I yelled, "I got it!" As soon as my mom hung up Cybil started crying. I asked her what happened and where was she? She said she was at a pay phone at Sunset Mall. She'd been there all day and she couldn't go to school because she'd shaved her head. I asked her why she did that but she was crying so much I couldn't understand her. I told her to come over if she wanted and she sniffled and said she would. Then I hung up and went back to my room and I could smell the food cooking downstairs and then the garage door opener turned on which meant my dad was home.

Cybil was not my best friend. Darcy McFarlane was. Cybil was sort of my loner friend I guess. She was odd and not really in any cliques. I mean she wasn't unpopular, she just wasn't anything. She was good at sports and was on the soccer team and she was friends with some jock girls.  And sometimes she hung out with Marjorie Peterson, who smoked cigarettes. But mostly she just drifted around and she would come talk to you sometimes but never try to get in with your other friends or anything like that. And it was weird because I didn't know why she would shave her head. It wasn't like she was into extreme fashions. Or maybe she was. The truth was I didn't really know what Cybil was into. But it looked like I was going to find out.

I watched out my window. Then I saw her coming down the street. She wore an oversized raincoat and a stocking cap that was so far down on her head she looked like a mole. Then I  thought my parents might freak out so I opened my window and waved for her to go around to the garage door. She did and I met her there and snuck her up the stairs. She looked terrible. Her eyes were all red and swollen and her raincoat was soaked through to the skin. I got her into my room and shut the door. She looked at me once and then down at the floor and then she pulled off the stocking cap and her skull was just like . . . just really weird and bare and like a shadow. Then she started crying and I sat with her on the bed. I asked her why she did it and she mumbled something about Todd Sparrow and she thought it would be cool and she didn't know why. And I was like, "Who's Todd Sparrow?"

But she didn't know that either, he was just some guy downtown, some guy she met. I got toilet paper from the bathroom. I sat with her while she blew her nose. I stared at her head. I felt sorry for her but in a way it was her own fault. She did it. And then I touched the stubble and it was like a million little dots and it felt like sandpaper except weird because the skin was soft like a baby.