Free Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey, Ellen R. Sasahara, Felicity Don Page B

tilted ever so slightly. Other boys had tried to copy this insouciant and original style. Other boys failed. The yearbook photographer came by, and Erik Cash posed for the photo. He threw up the Westside gang sign. He looked not yet twelve.
    Dimitri and Marissa walked together, hand in hand. The tallest boy in the school and the “little munchkin”—the tiniest girl at Shoreline School. The yearbook photographer asked if they would pose for a photo. Dimitri made a W with his fingers just like Erik and the rap starsdid when they were photographed. Marissa giggled as she was wont to do. Later, in the spring, certain photographs would not appear in the pages of laughing youth. After the murder, Mrs. Olsen, Shoreline principal, decreed that no photos of the accused killers should be included in the 1997/98 Shoreline yearbook.
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    At Shoreline, there were no cheerleaders. With the recent cutbacks, the school could no longer afford the extravagance of uniforms. Shoreline could not even afford to provide uniforms for band members or athletes. This year, there had been some embarrassment, even shame, when the Shoreline students arrived for games or concerts at Oak Bay or Lambrick Park High School. Mrs. Olsen would explain to the other principals that her students were wearing regular clothes not out of disrespect or disobedience, but because the school simply did not have the finances for uniforms.
    Despite the lack of uniforms, the basketball team would triumph. In the yearbook, the coach states, “Our team was small, but mighty. Their good enthusiasm and good sportsman-like skills carried them through a tough season. All boys demonstrated good skill and smart aggressive play throughout the year. Well done guys!”
    Perhaps the lack of uniforms contributed to the attitude of a girl named Madeline, class valedictorian at a school in a wealthier district. “I just knew, pretty well for my whole life, that I would never be friends with anyone from Shoreline. I don’t know why that was. I remember once Shoreline was playing against our school, and my friends scratched the S off the side of their bus so it said Horeline. I said, ‘Hey, you idiots,
Whore
is spelled with a W,’ but the guys just got mad at me, and said, ‘Who cares. It’s funny.’ We always called the school Horeline after that, but not really to their faces or anything.”
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    In art class, Desiree drew two elephants under palm trees. Brittoni drew the moon above the sea, with the shadows of evergreens in the corner. She used chalk for the shadows of trees and gold crayon for the shimmer on the sea. Ashley folded her knees to her chest and wrote a poem, privately. “In my dreams,” she wrote, “I see a clear running stream, a sign of tranquillity.” Ashley looked up, as though she might be discovered,but all her friends were busy with their own work. She wrote, “Wherever I may be, peace will be by my side. The tears I so often cried / Will all have dried / Bringing me rays of sunshine and happiness / To fill my life with warmth / And serenity / No longer scorned by the evil of others / A road of my own that I will travel / No hills, no curves, and no gravel. Giving a clear, open way to where I belong / Showing me love and how to be strong.”
    Shawna was the only one that day to draw not a landscape, but an abstract of her own design. Against the backdrop of a globe, an eagle rose out of a long, narrow eye, drawn up like the eye of Tutankhamen, and beside the observant eye, the sheaf of a knife jutted up, slicing through the globe, emblazoned with adornment of a perfectly drawn butterfly.
    Megan drew another scene from nature, this time a sparse and elegant tree, with thin branches, rendered in a delicate line. Yet out of place were the dark birds she added almost as an afterthought. One dark bird was nestled in the