#please let me know if I'm representing anything in a way that's offensive or innacurate

[willowworkswithwords]

Eddie hates his hair. It never does what his mom tries to get it to do, when she’s out of the stupor of drugs long enough to notice the state it’s in. Either way, it’s always breakin the teeth of the cheap combs his dad buys him when Eddie’d starts to complain of it getting all gross. 

There are only so many times his hair can get wadded into a pile on the top of his head or have a brush torn through it again and again before he starts to shy away, to dread anyone touching his hair at all. 

His dad threatens a razor. Eddie might hate his hair, but he hates the idea of his dad getting close to him with his shaving razor even more. 

Things have been…ok, for a while. Eddie can feel it though. The inevitable is coming soon, and the longer the good sticks around, the harder it becomes to believe in it. What way the bad will come, Eddie can’t tell, can never really tell, but he tries his best to ready himself for it. This school in Indianapolis has been one of the better ones he’s been switching around to since they came to Indy a couple years ago from Kentucky. 

Kentucky feels like a dream.

Kentucky was the best part of his life he can remember. In Kentucky, he’d had a group of friends, all kinda like him, all scrappy trailer park kids, and he’d drifted between all of their trailers. Back then, they’d come to his trailer too, before his mom had sunk down all the way, before his dad had turned out to be an angry drunk. They’d all sleep sprawled out on the floor of each other’s bedrooms, making room for the siblings when they were there. Eddie was only hungry about half the time, and he had never really been scared of much back then.

He knows better now. 

They’re in Indianapolis, in a tiny apartment that Eddie tries not to think about how his dad got. There’s no way they can afford it with his real job, even though it’s a shithole. But Eddie’s twelve now. He’s not stupid. So he keeps his mouth shut around his dad and takes care of his mom when he’s not at school.

His hair sits under a hat more often than not. He tries to run his fingers through it, the comb, anything. One night he sneaks some margarine from the fridge and tries to get the knots to slip and slide out from each other. It only makes him look dirtier. A couple weeks pass and it’s not getting any better. A rainy day comes. Eddie has a purple bruise on his gaunt cheek that his mom smears the thinnest layer of foundation over, just enough to hide it and not enough for his dad to notice the makeup on his son’s face. 

Annie is sitting in the library during lunch, in front of the window they always eat at. It’s a muggy day for April, but she still wears long sleeves. 

Annie’s eleven, a year younger than Eddie but just as smart, probably smarter. All the kids make fun of her hair, which rests in fraying braids across her shoulders. She’d told him once, one of the first times they’d both taken refuge in the library, that her mom didn’t have the time to do her and all her sibling’s hair. As the oldest, Annie helped all the others, but it was hard for her to do her own. It just fell by the wayside. Not all the time, but enough. Eddie and her were the same, she’d said once, no matter that everyone thought they couldn’t be because she was Black and he was trailer trash. 

Her dad hit her too. She always told him it was better her than her little siblings.

“Hey Annie.”

“Hey Eddie.” 

Annie smiles as he sits down, goes back to her book. Eddie sits across from her on the sill, grabbing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for her out of his lunch sack. Wordlessly, he sets it to her right. Nudges her foot with his. She doesn’t pick it up for a minute, and Eddie smirks to himself as he sees her mouthing the words as she finishes her page. 

They’re both left behind, but in these moments, the space between them and what they kn ow they lack is smaller. 

“Hey Annie?”

Eddie can’t look her in the eye, instead picking apart his sandwich. Annie hums, taking a bite of her PB&J. 

“Could you maybe…could you maybe help me? With, with my hair.”

Still not looking up from his sandwich, Eddie pulls off his hat. 

“Jesus H. Christ.”

Eddie can’t help butler out a bark of laughter.

“...Yeah, I know.”

Eddie glances up at her, and she’s just looking at him. Calculating, like she gets with books that her teachers say are too old for her. Thinking of the best way to tackle it. 

“Meet me in the theater dressing rooms tomorrow after dismissal.”

Tomorrow can’t come quick enough. 

Eddie goes home and makes dinner for him and his mom, writes his book report, and sneaks  beside his mom in her bed to read The Two Towers after she’d been asleep for a couple hours already. He’s just finished The Fellowship of the Ring and he can’t put it down. When he gets tired he sets his book down on the nightstand his dad never uses and presses his face into his mom’s back, feeling the rise and fall of each of heI r breaths as he slowly slips into sleep and dreams of his hair long and glossy, falling around his shoulders just like his mom’s.