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I’d always been the indisputable outcast. Other kids were very comfortable uniting against me.
Flu going around? Trashcan girl.
Lice outbreak? Trashcan girl.
Even though neither of those had been pinned on me for sure.
Lucy Hargrove, who had four brothers and two sisters and lived in a dump of a house no better than mine had started at least one of them.
Still, Lucy was sweet. Lucy had friends. Lucy didn’t make a good target because other kids liked her.
So Scarlett it was.
And today it was: Does something smell bad? Trashcan girl.
That one was maybe true in the past, but since Gram had taken me under her wing, I’d learned how important it was to bathe and how to do it properly. I didn’t smell bad now, I was sure of it, but it didn’t matter. I’d never live down the stink of the dumpster I’d been left in.
And even though the dynamic had changed and things had shifted a bit in my favor, I was still the butt of many jokes, and I still took strong exception to it. It was just that usually now kids had the sense to make the jokes behind my back.
Not today, apparently.
I’d been minding my own business, which was actually what I usually tried to do, when Tommy Mann had started in on me.
The teacher was out of the room and we were supposed to be working on an assignment.
I was not a good student by any stretch of the imagination but I had been trying to stay on task.
And here came asshole Tommy with his, “Does something smell bad?” right into my ear.
I gritted my teeth and still tried to ignore him. It hadn’t been a big enough insult to be worth dealing with my grandma if I made her angry again.
“Does anyone else in here smell something bad?” Tommy asked loudly. “Something that reminds them of garbage?”
There were some loud snickers around the room, but no one outright answered him.
Like a coward I wished, for at least the thousandth time, that Dante and I had been placed in the same class. We never were. He was across the hallway, but at moments like these, it may as well have been a world away.
“Shut up,” I muttered at him darkly.
I didn’t even see it coming. He was behind me, and though I heard some rustling, some movement, I had no idea what he was doing until the classroom’s full trashcan was being dumped over my head.
It didn’t have much other than paper in it, but it didn’t matter. It was more than enough to bring my temper out to play.
I threw the trashcan off my head, shook away all of the papers, and went after him.
I only stopped when he was a crying ball on the floor.
And of course that was when the teacher walked back into the room.
And now there I was, waiting for the vice principal to call me in.
Tommy was still in class. He hadn’t even been reprimanded.
I hated this part. It wasn’t even that I cared what they punished me with. Getting kicked out of school was a gleeful fantasy of mine on days like this.
I just didn’t want to deal with how my grandma would react.
Also, I hated verbal confrontations. I fought exclusively with my fists for one very important reason.
