Everybody at school calls Crystal names behind her back...
Illustration
Everybody at school calls Crystal names behind her back. Bad names. They whisper that she pushes drugs. That she's in a gang. That she had an abortion. Each whisper, each insult, is a cut to Crystal's heart. But when she goes home at night, Crystal rocks her toddler half-sister to sleep and tells her stories to cover the noise of the neighbors fighting upstairs. In the morning, she stops by old Miz Thomas' house to see if the lonely old woman needs anything. And when she does run around with her friends -- friends who most people wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole -- they teasingly call her "Mom," because she's always there to give a friend a hand. Crystal knows she's made some mistakes and she knows she can't hope to make up for them -- at least not enough to be accepted by the "nice kids." So she does what she does. And she doesn't expect any rewards.
