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Halifax, June 9
3:20 p.m.
After school, Daphne left through the side exit on Robie Street. Most of the other kids used the front, and she wanted to avoid as many of them as possible. She couldn’t wait to get home and put the day behind her. She never wanted to show her face here again. The stares. The whispers. The snickers. Not to mention the note stuffed into her locker and the bar of soap left on the floor.
It burned in her, that hurt, that humiliation.
What next?
Daphne walked through the fractured shade cast by the maple trees edging the sidewalk. A steady stream of traffic passed along Robie. Off to her left, some boys played baseball at the school’s diamond. The pitcher began his windup and threw a fastball straight down the middle of the plate. With a graceful swing, the batter cracked a ground ball right into the first baseman’s mitt.
Beyond the outfield sprawled the green sweep of Gorsebrook Field. Clusters of students walked there, their voices gone weak and hollow in the open expanse.
Up ahead, two figures lingered behind the thick trunk of a tree. Then one of them stepped out to the sidewalk and became Margi Tanner, a willowy girl with straight, dark hair and bangs. She was one of those ninth graders who had started all this trouble and the one who had turned physically aggressive last week. Tripping Daphne. Shoving her into the lockers.
Daphne flinched and stopped. Fear spread through her stomach, reaching out to every muscle fiber in her body and squeezing every ounce of strength from them.
The second figure appeared—another one from that group—and Daphne thought her legs were going to crumble beneath her.
Margi stepped into her face. “Where you been, dork?”
Her friend said, “I heard she was making out with Gavan Menke.”
The two girls started laughing and making kissing noises. Daphne swallowed. Poor Gavan Menke, a boy from ninth grade who came from poverty. Kids laughed at him because he seemed to wear the same clothes every day, came to school with holes in his sneakers. Some boys spread around rumors his mother worked as a hooker down on Hollis Street every night and his father was a drunk. Of course, none of it was true.
Daphne held her tongue. She lowered her head and tried to slink past, but Margi stepped in front of her and shoved her back.
“Little bitch,” she snarled.
Her hand shot out of nowhere, and she smacked Daphne across the face with a palm, hard enough to knock her to the sidewalk and send a spatter of dots across her field of vision.
Automatically, Daphne lifted a hand to her cheek. It felt numb, then sensation came back in painful throbs. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she tried to blink them away.
“She’s crying,” the other girl said.
“Little baby,” Margi shrieked. “You’re pathetic. Loser.”
She bent in close and contorted her face into an exaggerated parody of someone blubbering. Then she lifted her fist as if to strike. Heart racing, Daphne cringed and tossed up her hands to protect her face. Nothing came.
When she looked around her hands, she saw Margi and the other girl walking away, laughing. Daphne felt embarrassed, sick to her stomach. She picked herself off the sidewalk and wiped her eyes.
Other kids were looking over at her from the field. Some were pointing. Daphne wanted to find a dark hole somewhere so she could crawl inside it and hide from the reach of the outside world. Maybe even die in there.
She couldn’t understand the contempt and disgust those girls had for her. Their hatred made her feel tiny and useless, unwanted garbage tossed to the curb.
Daphne half walked, half ran all the way home. She stormed through the back door and tossed her book bag on the kitchen floor. Overcome with emotion, tears welled in her eyes again. She sank to her knees as sudden, uncontrollable sobs racked her body.
