Free Shine by Lauren Myracle Page A

I was, but
he
started it. Now I just wanted it to end, because this whole interaction had taken a strange and very freaky turn.
    “I asked you a question,” he said. “Are you going to answer it?”
    I kept my eyes on the table. My chest rose and fell.
    “Yeah,” he said, as if I’d confirmed something. “I love it when small-minded people can defend their positions. Oh, and I’m sorry you don’t like the words I use, because I have a special one just for you.” He leaned in close and whispered something in my ear that made my blood freeze.
    I stayed immobile as he stomped off, terrified someone had heard. Then, with a
whoosh
, the frozen blood inside me flared to life. I felt hot and cold at the same time.
    That college boy—that piss-dumb, psycho college boy—he called me a
mountain nigger
, a term used in the rare occasions when
hill people
or
white trash
wasn’t good enough. He said it to shame me, and it did. It slammed me down on the rough grit of my shortcomings and held me there.
I was trash
, my heart said, each beat driving me deeper.
I was worthless. No good. I’d been put to the test, and I failed, so I deserved to be called bad names
.
    My eyes welled up, which made things worse, as the jerk had yet to leave the library. He’d just gone over to the periodicalssection, where he was reading a magazine. If he glanced my way, he’d think I was crying because of him. Which I was, but I wished I wasn’t, just like I wished he’d get the heck out of
my
library. Anyway, I knew he wasn’t actually reading that stupid magazine. I knew he was pretending, because he was flipping the pages way too fast to glean any meaning from them.
    Fury slid in beside my shame, and I opened myself wide to it. I told myself that College Boy had no idea how good he had it. He probably owned his own computer, or had one at the college he could use. So for real, why
was
he here? He belonged here less than I did. And just because he didn’t drive a pickup and shoot deer out of season, did that make him better than me? Just because he had a daddy with a job and a mama who was still alive?
    I gripped the edge of the table, very much aware of the transformation taking place inside me. My humiliation had turned to rage, and that was good. But it would take longer still for it to shift into something I could control. Something I could fight back with, not for the sake of my own piddling honor, but for something bigger.
    I’d been put to the test with
those pants
, and I failed. But look: I’d been given a second chance. It didn’t matter if it was just symbolic. It didn’t matter that nobody would know but me. A second chance was a second chance, and I wasn’t about to let it get away.
    I inhaled through my nose, deliberately searching for a spot above my rage. I knew such a spot existed, becauseMama Sweetie had taught Patrick and me about handling bad emotions. If you breathed deep and set your mind to it, you could rise
above
your anger.
    One time, Mama Sweetie drove me and Patrick into Toomsboro for root beer floats, a treat she splurged on maybe once a summer. On Main Street, a man in a Lexus made a left turn without looking, and he would have taken us out if Mama Sweetie hadn’t slammed on the brakes.
    “Sweet Jesus,” she said, breathing hard. “You kids all right?”
    We were fine, but the driver who cut us off was fit to be tied. He was the one who screwed up, and yet he laid on his horn, leaned out his window, and yelled, “Learn to drive, you fat bitch!”
    To
Mama Sweetie
, he said this!
    Patrick and I were only ten, but it made us fume. “Honk back!” we said. “Go call
him
a name, or tell the police on him!”
    She didn’t. She pulled into a parking space on the side of the road, put her hand to her chest, and sat for a bit. Then she said that the man already knew he was the one in the wrong, and being wrong had embarrassed him. Since he didn’t like feeling that way, he unloaded his bad feelings onto