Ever Bound

by Odessa Gillespie Black

  As if I were the nasty brown stuff dripping from a rusty hole in a dumpster, a clump of gaudy, over-dressed girls close to my age glared at me. As if I were the kind of girl they’d just left with a twenty-dollar bill behind a dumpster, the other guys sneered.

  I shuddered.

  “What happened exactly?” Thomas asked, his face white now.

  “Um, I fell?” Was there a right answer?

  “Well, come along, then. Let’s not give them anything else to whisper about.” Thomas tugged me past the crowd. The yard guy sank into the multitude and out of sight.