Finding Charlotte

Fallen hair

You have to shine a light on shady people. The future is too bright to sit under the shade. The truth will eventually expose the fake!
-Tony A. Gaskins jr.
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Rolling over in the morning, my face feels cold. It's bare, nothing but my pale skin. With a gasp, I slip my black mask up over my head and onto my face, shoving my dark hair under the back part.
Covering my eyes is two one way black tinted glass lenses that blocks the world from seeing my eyes. With the push of a button, they can be transferred into lenses that block the sun from my eyes.

Walking over to the door, I see that my assigned clothes for the day are orange.
Written on my left pant leg are my numbers, 0628439. My only identity.
I wonder what other color they will have chosen for today.
I guess purple, like I do everyday.
Pulling on my trousers and jacket, I let my eyes wander. Black gloves and an orange neck scarf sit beside my clothing. The only color around.
The plain white of my room is comforting to me.
It's so plain and so perfectly common. 'Comforting', I think, smiling.

Before exiting my room, I swipe my wrist across a pad on the table for my mandatory daily injections. The small pique on my skin barely affects me anymore, I only just notice when the orange of my neck scarf begins to dull a little bit. Stepping outside brings me to a white hallway with a black number '9' painted thickly on the far side of the wall.
Someone jumps on the elevator at the last minute as I begin to descend. They wear a mask that covers their face and hair, just as mine does. And best of all, the person beside me are neck to toe dressed in a deep violet purple color. I almost want to smile. Purple.
We ride in silence, both scanning each other silently.
But as the elevator is almost at the bottom, the person turns their head around, exposing a single strand of silky black hair that could only belong to a female.
In my high voice, I try to whisper softy.
"Your hair has fallen," I say. The mandatory saying when someone's hair has fallen out of their mask.
The girl is flustered as she scrambles with the embarrassment of having her hair showing.

No one should be able to see who you are, no piece of yourself should be showing.
I can barely imagine the horrible embarrassment of waking around without a mask covering me. I almost shudder just thinking of horror, constant stares and the punishment of being different.

The girl shifts her head towards me, "I apologize." She speaks in the perfectly dead tone that I have yet to master with my annoyingly high voice. I give a mandatory nod in answer, symbolizing it's all okay and that I understand.
Truthfully, I feel bad for her.
The elevator doors finally open and others step on as we step off.

The lobby is painted white with a few chair set up in an orderly fashion along the wall. It's blankly anonymous, just like everything else here.