The classroom hummed with paper and glue. Bilal pressed a square of blue construction paper onto the group collage. Two girls near the table leaned together and whispered, their voices low and quick. Samira had left her seat. A strand of red yarn slipped from Bilal's glue and draped across Samira's name.
Bilal's lips pressed into a thin line. He looked down at the crumpled piece of paper on the floor near his shoes. The girls kept whispering. He thought about how Samira always shared her glitter glue without being asked.
One girl turned and caught him watching. She patted the empty space on the floor beside her. Come here, she whispered. We can tell you something. Bilal held the crumpled paper in his fist. The clock above the whiteboard ticked. Should he stay seated?
Bilal uncurled his fingers. The crumpled paper fell into the recycling bin with a soft rustle. Samira is our friend, he said. Friends help each other when mistakes happen. The girls went quiet. A marker on the table rolled once toward the edge and stopped.
Bilal picked up his scissors and kept cutting. Snip. Snip. The classroom sounds rushed back in — chairs scraping, papers shuffling. He did not look up right away.
Snip. Then a small voice behind him said, sorry. Bilal turned. Samira stood there, holding a half-cut star and looking down at her shoes. Her shoulders were hunched slightly.
Bilal held out a piece of yellow paper. Want to finish the collage together? Samira glanced up. She nodded once and took the paper from his hand.
Samira took the yellow paper and stood shoulder to shoulder with him. The red yarn still looped across the collage like a smile. One girl carefully pinned a corner while they pressed their star into place.
The classroom hummed with the soft sounds of paper and glue. Bilal and Samira stepped back to look at their star. It sat bright and whole among all the other shapes.
Bilal smiled. Samira smiled too. The red yarn caught the light and seemed to glow. No one said anything more about the mistake. The collage was done.
One of the girls who had been whispering stepped forward and adjusted the edge of the yellow star. Then she went back to her own piece of the collage. Nobody looked away from the board.
The bell rang. Books closed and chairs scraped. Bilal and Samira walked to the door together, still looking back at the collage one last time. The red yarn held everything together.