-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.