"I just couldn't resist."
"Only sacred things deserve to be messed with."
It all ended with a dead kid near the train tracks.
Six years later, the story repeats itself and two long-forgotten friends might find out that when death tries to play match...
- Got so much to lose, got so much to prove, God don't let me lose my mind -
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I'm grabbing my lunch from my locker when Paris slams her body in the metal door beside mine, looking way too excited for her own good.
"Geez! Your hair!" I scream.
She resembles a giant sun, freakishly long strands of neon lemon coloured hair going down her waist, the rest of it ensembled in two space buns on the top of her skull. She looks positively radiant, smiling widely at me and turning her head left and right to show me her updo from all angles. On her, the school uniform looks worthy of a fashion show, white shirt and plaid skirt hugging her skinny frame.
"You like it? The color is called morning saffron."
"I fucking love it!" I exclaim, blinded by her looks, "Are those your real hair?"
I take a strand in between my fingers, soft ray of sunshine against my alabaster palm.
"Of course not, those are extensions. I got them delivered from England, actually. It's a brand that always wanted to work with me, but I figured I would let them wait until they up their game."
"And did they?"
"When I accepted their offer, they gave me a year-worth of hair products and a big fat check," she giggles, pushing her hair back exaggeratedly and I clap my hands in admiration.
"Girl, one day, you're going to rule the world," I tell her, and she bows like a queen, crossing her ankles and bending her knees.
"Well I won't forget you even when I'm the first black woman president," she exclaims, then grabs my arm to pull me towards the cafeteria, almost skipping in her excitement as I try to keep up with her pace.
Paris and I have been friends since Junior High. She's an Instagram model, rides horses in her spare time, dyes her hair a different bright neon color every few weeks, and was named Paris because her upper crusted parents had a surrogate mother in France birth her.
Our stuck-up school doesn't allow its students to dye their hair. She had to fight with the director, arguing that the rule was 'hindering her business opportunities' to get him to write a special note saying she was the only one in the whole establishment who could dye her hair whatever colour she wanted. It was a big story, even finished in the school's newspaper and Paris' popularity skyrocketed, enough for the seniors to know about her when she was still in grade 9.
"I can't wait for this year to be over," she tells me, looking down at her phone and scrolling on her feed, "I think I'm going to take a sabbatical and travel around the world before I go to college. My parents wouldn't let me not go to University, but I feel like I need to see what's outside of this microscopic town before I settle down anywhere."
"You could always go study abroad," joins Crystal, lunchbox in hand, and catching up with us from behind, "You have a French citizenship, right? You could go study in Paris, with all the cute French guys."
