𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒍𝒇 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 ➪ «𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑦𝑙 𝑑𝑖𝑥𝑜𝑛»

ch. XXXVI - 《dying now would be counterproductive》

oOo

Diana couldn't feel the tips of her fingers. Really, she couldn't, they were so numb, and her fingers were cramping up. She'd been at it for about one and a half hour and was still only halfway done. Prepping the hair had taken half that time, honestly.

Alice yelped when Diana tugged on the girl's roots with too much force.

Diana looked at her in the mirror and muttered an apology while admiring her hard work.

Alice had come to her while she'd been in her room, writing stuff in the margins of her book, and had asked her to braid her hair. Now, she was still sat on a stool in front of the bathroom counter, the right half of her hair braided into tight rows, while Diana focused on her task, tongue poking out to touch the corner of her lip.

"How much longer is this gonna freaking take?" Alice breathed out, wincing at the pain. "Ugh, you're worse than Frau Spreyermann."

Diana gasped, stopping to raise a hand to her chest. "How dare you?"

"Yeah, I said it."

They had lived in a small place in Switzerland, and Frau Spreyermann had been the only hairdresser in the vicinity that claimed to be able to work with black hair. Worst mistake ever.

She'd almost chemically burnt Alice's scalp somehow and braided her hair so tightly that she had headaches for over a week. Mom had to undo the braids and had to take her to the hospital at one point because her scalp was so sensitive that the skin tore. She still had the scar from the stitches, hidden away by her kinky curls.

Alice was still convinced it had been a hate crime.

Her dad and older sister had taken over styling her hair ever since. Sam had had many older sisters, who had made use of his nimble fingers when he was young to make him help them do their hair, and he had passed his knowledge down to his children.

A weight barreled against her chest at the memories. Diana ignored the ache and the sting rising up her sinuses and prickling the backs of her eyes.

She cleared her throat and said, "Just wait a lil bit, alright?"

With about a third to go, Diana stopped to stretch her fingers and rest her hands.

Both Carol and Jacqui had come by to use the restroom by then. The former had smiled warmly at them and told them she'd baked some sort of cookies with the ingredients available in the cafeteria; she'd had to replace a lot of them with vegan equivalents, but her daughter had approved. That was a sweet something to look forward to. If she was grieving her husband's death, it went unnoticed. If anything, it was likely something to be celebrated, however morbid and utterly wrong it sounded.

Jacqui had been crying. Diana took a wild guess what it was about; Jim came first to mind, but she also remembered Stanley, who Jacqui had been very close to back at the Quarry. Diana remembered him by the stab wound on his thigh that he'd suffered while running away from a couple of survivalist neighbors who had gone insane right at the beginning of the rise of the undead. He'd told Diana all about it once while she inspected the wound, which wasn't infected but hadn't completely healed as well.

He hadn't made it that night. Diana had to look at his shotgun-blown-up face and cross his name off her medical records and forced herself not to feel.

Jacqui had come out of one of the stalls puffy-eyed, and everyone kept to themselves. It had perhaps been selfish not to ask her if she needed anything, but her avoidant gaze told them she wanted to be left alone. Alice wasn't one to press on such subjects and Diana took a page out of her book.