Chapter One
Staring at Amina
Some Year 10 boys were fighting at the end of the corridor but, for once, no-one was looking at them.
Everyone was looking at Amina.
âWhy didnât you
tell
me?â Ellie whispered. âIâm your best friend!â
Amina shook her head. âI didnât want you to talk me out of it.â
Mr MacIver opened the door to the Art Room. âCome in quietly,â he said, but no one moved. Everyone was still looking at Aminaâs scarf.
It wasnât a striped school scarf. It wasnât a woolly scarf like your gran might have knitted. It wasnât a trendy glittery scarf from the shopping centre.
Amina was wearing a tight black headscarf. It was pinned around her head, covering her hair, her ears and her neck.
Of course, everyone had seen women wearing headscarves before. But they had never seen Amina in a headscarf. Yesterday, Amina had had a ponytail swinging at the back of her head, just like every other girl in the class.
Amina walked into the Art Room. Ellie and the rest of the pupils came in after her.
Mr MacIver had put the tables and chairs in three rows around an empty stool in the middle. Everyone sat down.
âToday weâre going to draw a portrait,â said Mr MacIver. âWho would like to be our model?â
Three or four people put their hands up. Amina was one of them.
âAmina?â said Mr McIver. âDo you want to be the model today?â
âI may as well,â said Amina. âEveryone is staring at me anyway!â She went to sit on the empty stool.
After fifteen minutes, Ellie had drawn Aminaâs body, but she couldnât draw her face.
Ellie knew Aminaâs face almost as well as her own. Amina had a slim nose, dark eyes and a wide mouth. Ellie had drawn Aminaâs face loads of times. But she had always drawn it with lots of long hair. Now she was trying to draw Aminaâs face in a frame of black scarf, with straight lines on each side.
Ellie gave up on her first drawing. She turned the paper over and started again. This time she drew Amina from memory.
Mr McIver stood behind her. He said, âThatâs a good drawing. But are you looking at your model?â
âThis is what she looks like!â Ellie said.
Mr McIver laughed. âLook again.â
Ellie looked up at her friend, then down at her picture. She had drawn Amina without the headscarf.
Chapter Two
Do Best Friends Share Everything?
Ellie turned to Carlie, who was sitting beside her, and asked if she could borrow her rubber.
âSure,â said Carlie. âWhy is Amina wearing that headscarf?â
Ellie looked hard at the drawing. Maybe she could turn some of the hair into scarf. She just had to rub out the wavy bits.
âI said,â Carlie whispered, âwhy is Amina wearing that scarf?â
âHow should I know?â Ellie said.
âDidnât she tell you?â asked Carlie. âI thought you were best friends now. I thought best friends shared
everything
! Remember, in the last year in primary school, you and I used to text each other about what
socks
we were going to wear, to make sure we always dressed the same.â
Ellie blushed at the memory.
âDonât you know why sheâs wearing it?â asked Carlie.
âOf course I know,â said Ellie. Really, she had no idea. âItâs⦠em ⦠itâs to hide her hair from God. From Allah. Itâs her religion. Like not eating bacon. Itâs no big deal.â
âNo big deal?â snorted Carlie. âItâs like sheâs wearing a big sign saying, âLook at me, Iâm different!ââ
Ellie looked at her picture. There was Amina with a scarf on her head and a grey halo around it, where Ellie had rubbed out the hair.
âYeah. Well,â Ellie said. âShe is different. Weâre all different. And itâs her choice, isnât it?â
The door opened, and Megan and her
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