“The choice is yours,” he says, gently now. “If you want to stay with them, be like them, just do as they expect you to do. Prove that you belong among them.”
Get pregnant. Flunk a class. Punch a teacher. Betray herself.
She hates him. Less than she should, because he is not as much of an enemy as she thought. But she still hates him for making her choice so explicit.
“Or stay yourself,” he says. “If they can’t adapt to you, and you won’t adapt to them, then you’d be welcome among us. Flexibility is part of what we are.”
There’s nothing more to be said. Lemuel waits a moment, to see if she has any questions. She does, actually, plenty of them. But she doesn’t ask those questions, because, really, she already knows the answers.
Lemuel leaves. Zinhle sits there, silent, in the little office. When the principal and office staff crack open the door to see what she’s doing, she gets up, shoulders past them, and walks out.
Zinhle has a test the next day. Since she can’t sleep anyway—too many thoughts in her head and swirling through the air around her; or maybe those are people trying to get in—she stays up all night to study. This is habit. But it’s hard, so very hard, to look at the words. To concentrate, and memorize, and analyze. She’s tired. Graduation is three months off, and it feels like an age of the world.
She understands why people hate her, now. By existing, she reminds them of their smallness. By being different, she forces them to redefine “enemy.” By doing her best for herself, she challenges them to become worthy of their own potential.
There’s no decision, really. Lemuel knew full well that his direct intervention was likely to work. Even if he hadn’t come to her, Rule 3—staying herself—would’ve brought her to this point anyway.
So in the morning, when Zinhle takes the test, she nails it, as usual.
And then she waits to see what happens next.