-Lacitia-
There are girls all around me, in their heavy, polished wooden desks. Many of the girls are paying attention, many of them are not. Some are fastidiously taking notes, some are doodling, and some are discreetly whispering to the other girls around them. Each girl wears a crisp blue and white uniform, not quite the colour of the sky and not quite the colour of the clouds. The uniform is pretty, but there are so many other clothes that are pretty. It gets rather repetitive wearing the same thing each day.
I am in class, but I'm not paying attention to what's being said. I can always go back and read the textbook anyways. I have better things to do right now. Right now I am talking to my friend Navalia, who has her long black hair in two long plaits that have their ends pinned to the top of her head. There is a bright blue ribbon in her hair, softly iridescent, matching the colour of her uniform. Other girls have different ribbons in their hair, but Navalia likes matching.
"Mrs. Ansami is so boring," Navalia whispers to me, so quiet that the teachers cannot hear us, and neither could anyone spying for them.
"I know," I reply, "this is the worst class."
"Well at least the other classes are better."
"You're right. They are better. I don't know what's wrong with her. She's so monotone."
"Well, at least we have some time to just talk."
"Yes, it's a chance to cool down after everything that school puts us through."
"So, did you get the new skirt you wanted?"
"Yes, it looks lovely on me."
"Burnt orange is your colour."
"It really is. I'll let you borrow it if you want, though."
"You're so sweet."
"Aww, thanks. You are too."
"I wish we could wear our miniskirts to school."
"Oh, I wish so too. The girls would be so impressed by the clothes I have."
"They would. It would be so much more fun if we could dress how we wanted."
"Oh, so true."
We keep on talking until the ringing school bell dismisses us to different classes.
———
-Alissiya-
The house is empty right now. I'm ostensibly supposed to be guarding the house against thieves, or burglars, or any of the like. But how I can protect the house when I'm a twelve year old girl, I'm not quite certain. There are locks on the door anyways. Locks that prevent any intruders from coming in unnoticed. Why I'm here, I'm not entirely certain. But in this time, when the adults are at work and the other teenaged girl is at school, in this time I finally have some time to myself.
I finally have time to take down the brave face that I've been putting on. I'm allowed to sit on the couch, with no-one to see me. And I'm allowed to mourn and mourn and mourn my heart out until the time when the doors are opened and the family comes into the house, a house that is ultimately theirs, in the same way that I am ultimately theirs as well.
I think about my mother. It's been months since I saw her last. Months since I've been in her embrace. The way that I miss her, it's unspeakable. The grief settles its way deep into my heart, seeping through all parts of me, deep down into my very core. I miss her. I miss her, I miss her, I miss her so very much. And I don't want this life, not if it means being away from her. And it does. It does mean being away from her.
I am a prisoner, trapped by my hunger, trapped by my mortality, trapped by my need. But my immortal soul needs so much more than what my body needs. My immortal soul needs my family. My real family, not the masquerade of a family that I am forced to live my life with. I need my real family. And I cannot even grieve for them, not when my false family are here in this too-bright, too-large, too-cluttered house that is eerily shiny.
I lay down and I let myself feel my emotions. And it's a whirlwind storm that drowns me. But it's also an oasis in the desert. I need to allow myself to feel openly, because otherwise the secret girl inside myself is banging and clawing at the door, screaming to be let out, until her hands and throat are bloody.
Time passes by crawlingly slow, as does every second that I am in this house, or outside somewhere in the custody of the house's owners. But still, it feels like no time at all has passed when I am faced with the sound of the doorbell ringing.
"Coming," I call out. I unlock the door, the wooden door on the inside. I unlock the white gridded gate on the porch. And I welcome in Lacitia, who has her bright purple school bag on her back.
"Hi, Alissiya," she chirps brightly. She's two years older than me but she acts younger.
"Hi, Lacitia. How are you today?" I keep my voice bright and chipper.
"I'm fine. Just tired out from school."
I wish I could go to school.
———
-Lacitia-
I am at the dinner table, a finely-carved, gleaming wooden table. I am with my family, and with Alissiya, and we are just casually talking. My mother is wearing dark eyeliner and coral lipstick. My father has on a plain white truck-shirt that goes well with his dark hair. Alissiya is wearing a red dress. Everyone is happy. We're all together, and everyone is happy.
"What should we wear to Hannah's wedding?" my mother asks.
"I really like the blue dress we saw in the marketplace," Alissiya starts. "The dress with the pearls on it."
"Oh yes, that's beautiful," I agree. "Is that what you're going to be wearing?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I'll see if mom and dad have the funds for it. What are you going to be wearing?"
"I think I want to wear the red dress with the sequins that we saw a week ago."
"Oh, yes," my mom agrees, "that would be so beautiful. You would look so beautiful in that."
"I would, wouldn't I?"
"You look so beautiful no matter what you wear," my dad tells me. "Both of my girls do." He smiles.
"I just wish I could wear whatever I wanted to school," I fume ruefully.
"I don't understand that rule," Alissiya admits. "Why shouldn't you girls be allowed to wear pretty clothes? It doesn't detract from your education at all. In fact, it might create a more fun learning environment."
"I agree," my mother states. "I wrote to the authorities of the school. But their answer was predictable. The school uniform apparently instills a sense of responsibility and community within the student populace."
"All it installs is resentment," I riposte.
"Well," my dad begins, "you could do an act of civil disobedience. Force them to rethink their policy."
"I could." A smile forms on my face as an idea forms in my mind.
———
-Alissiya-
"Mom," I ask my fake mother, my eyes bright and shining, hiding all the chaos in their deep, dark depths. "Why can't I go to school?"
"What do you mean, Alissiya?" She's looking at me as if she did not expect at all for these words to come out of my mouth. And honestly, I suppose that she didn't. She never expects anything less than absolute gratitude from me. I know that I walk on very dangerous ground.
"You send Lacitia to school," I try to explain. "And that's very good. Good for her. But what is the reason that you don't do the same for me? I'm not, I'm not asking to go to school. I'm just wondering what the reason is?" Fear thuds in my chest. But as always, I keep it hidden deep within me. Her face darkens, her black-framed eyes seeming much colder.
"Why are you asking me this?" Her words carry the subtlest bit of threat, unknown, probably, even to her.
"I'm just wondering why. I mean, it's not that I want to go to school. But won't it make it easier for me to relate to and understand Lacitia?"
"Well, we just don't have the money to send you to school," she explains. "We're middle class and you know we're middle class. We don't have the budget to send you to school. You already know that we spend a lot on you as it is."
"Oh, I understand," I lie. So they have the money for bright, shimmery, lustrous, expensive dresses in chic cuts and intricate designs. But they don't have the money to send me to school. I get it. A middle class lifestyle is worth more than the education of a false daughter from the slums. I get it.
"Also," the lady keeps on talking, "it wouldn't be worth it putting you in school. You're smart, I'm not going to lie, you are smart. But your intelligence isn't quite the sort of intelligence they look for in the school system. You wouldn't do well there."
"Oh, okay. That's perfectly understandable. Thank you for the explanation, mother." I bite down all the rage that is welling inside of me.
"Besides," the lady tells me, "school isn't any fun anyways." There is a hard edge to her words. I'm going to have to win back her approval. Be the good daughter she wants me to be.
———
-Lacitia-
"We should do a protest, make them see us for who we are." I'm talking to the children gathered all around me. My friends are here. But even people who aren't my friends are here. Dozens of people from all the grades are here. And they're all listening to what I say.
"Yeah," a girl with a striped headband agrees, "we should totally rise up. We should make them see that they can't control us, they can't control what we wear."
The girls all around us cheer.
"So what should we wear?" my friend Alaia asks.
"Well" I begin, "we might as well go all out. We might as well wear the most beautiful, expensive things we have."
"Oh, that will be so great!" a girl with red highlights in her hair declares, "it will be like a party!"
"So it will," another girl with dangly earrings agrees. "It will be both fun and rebellious at the same time. Which is a glorious mix."
"So, should we change in the school washrooms, or should we come to school in our party clothes?" my friend Maria asks.
"Good question."
We continue to talk about our rebellion, all standing in the gazebo of the school park, next to the playground. We're too old to be playing on the playground, but a lot of the younger kids like it. There are not many of us coalescing and colluding here, in the shade, where the recess supervisors cannot hear us. But there are enough of us. Enough that we pose a threat to the status quo. This is beautiful.
———
-Alissiya-
"What did you learn today?" I ask my not-sister. She is smiling, as she so often is. There is hatred in her eyes, hidden deep. As there always is. Unknown to her.
"Oh, just, boring stuff. We did draw something cool in art today, though."
"That's nice, what did you draw?"
"We had to make mandalas, and we could draw all sorts of patterns, as long as they had radial symmetry."
"That's interesting. What's radial symmetry?"
"Oh, don't you know?"
"Can you explain?"
"It's when the same pattern repeats in each part of a circle, meaning, around the centre."
"That makes sense." I try to imagine what she could mean.
———
-Lacitia-
Today is finally, finally the day. The day when we are going to put everything into motion. The day when we are going to have our voices and our desires be heard. I am jittering with excitement on the inside, and restless in the outside. Alissiya is helping me with my makeup, which is a godsend, because my makeup needs to be absolutely perfect today, it needs to match my coral minidress with the frills and the shining tassels.
"Thanks, Alissiya," I tell her, spraying my fastidiously curled hair, dyed at the tips to match my dress. I take my backpack, slip on some high heels, and I make my way to the school, which is a short bus ride away from my house.
"Where are you going, pretty young lady?" an older woman on the bus asks me.
"Just to a protest," I answer her. "We're fighting for our rights to wear what we want at our schools."
"Good girl," she replies, smiling with her red lips. "May the gods aid in your journey."
The bus stops and I walk out, and in no time I am at the gates to my large school, which shines in the sunlight. About one in five of the girls are dressed like me, are dressed lavishly in colours and cuts and patterns of all different sorts. They all look glamorous. We all look glamorous. We all scan the crowd of incoming children, and smile upon seeing each other.
There are no teachers at the gates of the building, nor are there any in the halls. But in the first class I go to, the teacher looks over the crowd of students in front of her, and she immediately calls the principal.
"What do you girls think you're doing?" she asks. She doesn't sound mad, and the usual warmth of her voice is still there. But still, there is something annoyed to it. Which makes her a hypocrite to be honest, standing there with her blue skirt and cream blouse that is not quite up to standard for the teachers' uniform.
"We're standing up for ourselves," one girl replies.
———
-Alissiya-
She left her uniform at home. She honestly left her school uniform at home. And, everyone is gone from the house. No-one is here to see what I do, to see where I go. This is a golden opportunity, an opportunity which I cannot afford to miss out on. This is something that I've wanted all my life. It's something that I've never known that I could have.
Yet it is something that is deeply dangerous. It is something that I know is deeply dangerous, something that I know that I should not do. The rational, reasonable part of my mind is screaming at me to stop, it's screaming at me to not carry out my plan, but I am just not thinking rationally right now. I'll never have a chance like this again.
So I slip on the uniform, which is a little large on me considering that Lacitia is a couple of years older than me, and I board the bus.
My heart is thudding the entire ride to school. I feel like I'm going to vomit. It is simultaneously the best and worst sensation that I have ever felt in my lifetime, except for the times when I get to be with my mother. I'm not thinking straight, I know I'm not thinking straight at all, but I don't care. I don't give myself time to examine all the reasons this is dangerous. I don't give myself the opportunity to come to my senses.
At the school, I am able to slip in unnoticed, and I am able to melt into the crowd of students, all dressed like me, dressed in blue and white. I have to pretend that I'm supposed to be here. I have to pretend that I belong here, with all these middle class children from middle class families living their middle class lives. I have to pretend, and I have to make it believable.
That should be easy. I've been pretending all my life.
And it is easy enough. I go with the students that look my age, and follow them into one of the classes.
"And who might you be?" the teacher with her crisp blue skirt and inquisitive blue eyes asks.
"My name is Avilia," I lie, "it's my first day here, after moving to this city."
"Strange. The school didn't notify me of any new students."
"That is strange indeed." I have to think fast. "Maybe they just forgot. I'll tell my parents to contact the school."
"Okay," the teacher acquiesces. "Go take a seat."
The class is about history, and it is one of the most interesting things I have ever heard in my life. We talk about the thought processes and the values of people in the late Middle Ages, and about all the social developments that were going on at the time. We talk about how the power structures of society affected the way people viewed themselves and society, and we talked about how technological inventions lead to new ways of seeing the world. It's absolutely entrancing.
———
-Lacitia-
I am in the assembly room, along with all my fellow protestors. We're all so pretty. But we're also all getting a talking to. Well, I knew that this would happen.
"What you girls are doing is commendable," Mrs. Valzim, the principal, is telling us. "It is exactly the type of citizenship we long to foster in this school. But the problem is, you have to understand that the rules that are put in place are put in place for a reason. In this school we are breeding an atmosphere of diligence and professionalism, and the uniforms are a part of that..." I stop listening to her as she drones on, opting instead to post to my Connectio account some selfies of myself in this pretty outfit, bravely standing up to those who seek to oppress me.
———
-Alissiya-
"Hello. I'd like to talk to a miss Avilia." There is a woman in a crisp white blouse entering the door to the class, just as we are about to leave. Her hard eyes land on me. This is bad. This is very, very bad.
"That's me." I try to keep my voice even as I follow her out the door. It's not like I could run right now, they'd just trap me. And, if I try to resist, that will make me look all the more suspicious.
She leads me down the halls, not saying anything as her polished shoes hit the hard school floor. My heart is racing. And, the rational part of my mind, which I had been suppressing until now, is telling me that I should have listened to it. I knew that this would happen. The part of me that I so thoughtlessly suppressed knew that this would happen. But still, I was blind and foolish and thoughtless. Why was I so impulsive? This is all literally my fault.
She stops at a private office, and I can see that there are two police officers there, guns and handcuffs glinting on their belts. I act surprised, I act confused.
"Did you think wouldn't catch on?" the lady asks.
"Catch on to what?" I ask in fake earnestness.
"We know you didn't pay to be here. We don't know who you are or where you came from, but stealing an education is a very heavy offence."
"But I didn't steal anything. Maybe my parents forgot to sign me up."
"We keep fastidious records. And don't think we haven't noticed how that uniform is a little too big on you. Those aren't really your clothes, are they?"
The police officers move to surround me. I do not resist as they wrench my arms behind my back and clamp cold metal handcuffs around my wrists.
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