Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

Interlude
Melancholy isn’t an adult emotion.
Hamza was in class 5, the Cave Dwellers, which he admittedly liked best. They gave him
a lot of material to work with, mentally.
The children were splitting a piece of chalk between themselves, playing a game. Rain
belted down against the glass, slanted. Hamza felt that if he peered outside he would see the
cloud that was pouring down on them and it would look back at him, bawling while making eye
contact.
The class continued on with their murmuring and secretive glances in the background
until a sharp whinny cut through the storm.
“No, it’s me!” a voice cried shortly after.
Hamza shifted his head to see. “Huh? Who is it?” he asked. The voice had come from
Talia, the girl that sat on the side and always looked out of the window. He was always about to
call her Daliah, what kind of name was Talia? Talia Daliah had dusty blue chalk on her hands
that she was now wiping against her cheek. He half-expected hooves to sprout out of her wrists
which made him laugh. “How did you make that sound?”
“I won,” she told him.
The objective of the game was that whoever could get the littlest piece was the winner,
because they weren’t selfish. Although, the children had never said the rules aloud before, nor
declared that there was ever a winner. In fact, they barely made a sound until one of them
thought they had won, which is when they began to quarrel and needed to be pulled apart. It had
taken several weeks of rainy lunchtimes for Hamza to even guess what they were doing.
“You can’t win though, right?” Hamza asked.
The children were not looking at him, not even the girl anymore. One of them clasped the
first girl’s hands together and rubbed them between his palms. “Now, it’ll be me,” he murmured,
eyes fixated on the task at hand.
“Hello?”
The door creaked open, paused, swung back then latched back onto the frame. Fat drops
beat against the glass and Hamza shifted his weight off the window frame. He had done this
once before, taken them out of their trance, but he wasn’t sure he could do it again.
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