Jade refocuses, sees the reflections of Rica Lawless and Greta Dimmons swishing for the exit, their word balloon practically hanging in the air behind them for Jade to study.
Thirty- two Henderson Hawks?
Counting Jade back into the graduating class… she’s no mathlete, but shouldn’t it be thirty seniors without her? Does she count twice now that she’s back from the dead, or did some salmon of an overachieving junior jump a grade?
More important: does she care? Is she going to let Rica and Greta occupy even one one-hundredth of her precious headspace? The only reason they’re even counting graduates is because they’re both yearbook staff, meaning the class photo is their responsibility—that stupid series of wide snapshots by the trophy case that every group of seniors gets Shining’d into.
It’s one of those cardboard cutout things like for coin collections, except the coins are the graduates’ faces, and each of their faces is set into an actual Henderson Hawk, brown feathers and all, the scroll at the bottom promising they’re all going to soar into the future or take the snake by the tail or have a bird’s-eye view of history, Jade forgets all the stupid embarrassing hawk stuff.
But yeah, “I’m back, bitches,” she says out loud to the door closing behind Rica and Greta.
It’s punctuated by a toilet flushing.
Jade holds the eyeliner a smidge from her lower lid, waiting for a pair of combat boots to step down from a toilet, followed by a dark robe slowly descending over the ankles, but instead — Oh, shit, Jade nearly sputters out.
This is why no one cares that Suicide Girl is stalking the halls again. This is why the count of graduating seniors is off by one.
Jade’s eyeliner pencil goes clattering down into the sink, leaving slashes and dots of black in that porcelain whiteness.
It’s from who’s pulling the stall door in, stepping around it, gliding effortlessly to the sink right by Jade’s. She’s nobody from Jade’s past, nobody Jade recognizes at all except by stature, by type, by bearing. If this girl had an aura, it would be “princess,” but the cut of her eyes is closer to “warrior,” the kind of face that’s just made to come alive when a spatter of blood mists across those perky, flawless, no-acne cheeks.
Jade isn’t sure whether this girl actually reaches forward to turn the water on or if the water, knowing it needs to be on to better kiss these hands, just comes on all on its own. For half an accidental moment, Jade catches herself checking the air around them for cartoon bluebirds carrying a gossamer wrap.
“Oh, hey,” the girl says as easy as anything, of course not offering to shake hands—this is a bathroom—“I’m Letha.
Letha Mondragon?”
The question mark hanging between them now translates out as You’ve heard of me, yes? but not in an off-putting way, not in a way that’s assuming anything.
Jade feels her face flushing warm in response. It’s maybe the first time in her life that’s ever actually happened to her.
She wonders if it shows on her Indian skin or not, and then she’s wondering if this “Letha Mondragon,” being Black, is even accustomed to reading people’s emotional states from the blood rushing to the surface of their skin.
In the same instant she decides this is racist as hell, gulps it down as best she can. All the same, she still hasn’t managed to look away from this Letha Mondragon’s reflection in her own mirror, has she?
It’s not because she’s Black, either. Black isn’t completely unheard of in Idaho, though it is less and less heard of the higher the elevation gets. No, the reason she’s caught in this vortex of staring, it’s… is it Letha Mondragon’s hair?
It’s not just glamorous and perfect, flowing down her back but kind of spiral-curled too, it’s, it’s—oh, Jade knows what it is, yeah, of course: online at four in some bleary morning, lost in the wishing well of her phone, she’d chanced onto a smuggled-out snapshot from the set of a shampoo commercial.
One of those ones where the model’s long luxuriant locks are cascading in slow-motion waves all around her, a silky bronze extension of her dopey smile.
What Jade had always assumed had to be strategically-placed fans blowing and lifting all these models’ too-beautiful hair turned out to be a faceless green humanoid—someone in a skinhugging bright green turtleneck and thin green gloves, with green nylon pulled tight over their head so they can disappear in the camera’s eye. So they can guide the model’s hair up like this, and like that.