Chapter 1 - The Livestream Was Still There
My five-year-old daughter stood in front of me holding a yellow hat with both hands.
“Show me, Lily.”
She started crying before she lifted it.
When the hat came off, I stopped breathing.
That morning, Lily’s hair had reached halfway down her back.
Now it had been hacked into short, uneven patches.
Some sections were barely two inches long.
Others stuck out around her ears.
Above her left ear was a thin line of dried blood.
“Aunt Vanessa said my hair was too pretty.”
I looked at the clear plastic bag in my hand.
Inside was Lily’s severed braid.
Nearly fourteen inches of dark brown hair.
My sister stood beside the beauty table.
“She got into the scissors herself.”
I turned toward Vanessa.
“My five-year-old would never cut her own hair.”
“She did.”
I slapped her.
Vanessa fell sideways.
Then I grabbed the clippers from the table.
Maybe it was anger.
Maybe I wanted her to feel, for ten seconds, what it was like to have someone decide what happened to her body.
I ran the clippers through several sections of her carefully styled hair before throwing them back down.
Vanessa screamed.
I barely heard her.
Because I had noticed the tablet.
It was propped beside the ring light.
A video window was still open.
RECORDED LIVE.
I pressed play.
Vanessa stopped screaming.
Her face changed immediately.
I heard Lily crying from the speakers.
Then Vanessa’s recorded voice:
“Stop moving. Everybody wants to see the transformation.”
My stomach turned.
This hadn’t happened privately.
My sister had broadcast what she did to my daughter.
Vanessa lunged for the tablet.
I jerked it away.
Then another voice came through the recording.
Male.
Off-camera.
“You’d better get the full braid. The buyers won’t pay if you ruin it.”
I slowly looked at the bag in my hand.
Then at Vanessa.
“Buyers?”
She backed away.
May you like
The livestream continued.
And what I heard next made the haircut seem like the smallest part of what my sister had done.
