If you were to ask me about my biggest dream, and we were close enough for me to answer honestly, I’d tell you that all I really want from this life is to grow long and strong. Legend has it that my ancestors were allowed to reach full maturity, since people recognized and understood the importance of their purpose, but I have trouble believing it.
I never had parents to teach me the ways of the world. The closest I’ve ever had to a father is what I call a skin crater, but that’s really just a follicle. Everything I know comes from reading signs on the walls that surround me as I strive to reach the outside every couple of days. I’m not completely sure where they come from, but my guess is that they’re memories of the past—a visual proof of the achievements that were possible before me and those that can still be.
It would be a lie to say that I don’t know how freedom feels. In fact, for a few years, Claire, my host, didn’t seem to mind my friends and I. She’s a sweet teenager, don’t get me wrong, but she often cares about others’ opinions more than her own, especially when it comes to social norms and beauty standards. How I long to be hugged by the sun and brushed by the warm summer winds…
The world is beautiful from down here, you know? When someone walks through a field, they see the flowers and the weeds, the dogs and the deer, but they rarely stop more than a few minutes, and that’s not enough to notice the minuscule—the delightful details hidden right under their nose. As much as I try to tell them, they can’t hear a sound, and sometimes, it seems like the whole world and I don’t exist at all.
Having to yell from the bottom of my lonely skin crater doesn’t help my case, and I’m aware that
humans don’t have the best hearing in the animal kingdom, so I try not to take it hairilly—that’s what we leg hairs say when we feel offended.
There is one single time I thought I’d finally made it. I was lying low with the hope that Claire wouldn’t realize she’d forgotten me, when a drop of water created a reflection that rendered me invisible. She put away the razor, turned off the shower, and I lived to see another day.
Being the last one standing wasn’t what I’d hoped for though. How could anything or anyone survive long enough to grow strong without support from their peers? That’s like asking a plant to photosynthesize in constant complete darkness.
A hundred and twenty hours is the most time I’ve ever had as a free hair, but I spent it shriveled and uncapable of keeping my end from pointing to the ground. Meanwhile, Claire got bitten and burned and blamed it on bad luck. I wish she knew that her body tries to help her. I don’t know why she hasn’t learned it from her parents or her teachers. What’s the point in sending a child to such a bright and noisy place as school, if they don’t get any real-life skills from their experience? Certainly, that’s why she keeps shaving us. I thought my next step was to plan a revolution, but now, I’m realizing what we need is a reform.