THE OMEN GIRL | Wattys 2020 Winner

𝟖

I have never seen Esp's real hair.

I don't know why, but as I'm running through the echo of the temple, as pillars and windows and corridors blur past me, I remember how I had spent hours holding up her wigs on my fists as she bleached them, dyed them, cut them. When the bubble gum in her mouth turned to stale and stone, she replaced it with a cigarette.

We worked in silence. It stifled like the smoke.

But sometimes, sometimes, she would look at me with a gaze that drowns, and talk about them. The Omenless. The people that have stepped on us and spit on us. Sometimes as she talks, she grips me by my shoulder and squeezes without realizing, and I never pull away. I never cry out, not even when it hurts.

I don't know why I'm remembering this now – except maybe, I do. Me and Esp in the silence. Light muted through dust-filmed windows. Air that stings and her hand that stings.

These are the softest memories I have of her.

#

Rama finds me in our dorm on the rigid bamboo frame of my hammock, where I am pondering my hands. The room is quiet, still, empty, because the acolytes are at the work tents. Here, it is safe for me to be veil-less and maskless, so I am.

"Lumi?"

I say nothing.

Rama comes over to me, sits next to me, and touches the back of my hand.

"You can try again."

I laugh. It is a mean sound. Rama understands nothing.

"You can." But Rama is fidgeting again, the way she always does. "Isn't that what everyone does? If they're rejected, they can try again?"

I can try as many times as I want. I can try every single star that is left on that tower. But that will change nothing. The possibility that I might be like that criminal from before chokes, and smothers.

My hands are trembling. I can't do this.

"You can," Rama says, and I startle. I spoke aloud without meaning to. She continues.

"It's just all these changes happening: new home, new friends, new bed. But once you get used to everything, everything will turn out alright. You'll feel better about trying again. You'll see."

Rama makes lies sound like such pretty things. She smiles like she believes them.

A question, an ugly question, bubbles up my throat.

"Why do you bother with me?"

"What?"

"Why," I repeat, "do you care about this? Why are you here?"

Rama fidgets, like I knew she would. But she does not pull away. Her eyes lower to both our hands, and she says, "You're my new bunkmate, so I want us to be friends."

"Easier that way?"

"No." She frowns. "Well, yes. But. I don't want to be friends because of that."

"Then why?"

"Because I want to." Her eyes, blue eyes, tick back up at me. "I don't really know why."

I say nothing else. There is nothing else to say, really.

"You can talk to me, you know?" Rama squeezes my hand. Her frown is a soft thing. "I know how stressful it is, to suddenly have to be living in a new place with so many strangers, away from your family. So whatever is on your mind. Anything. I'll listen."