Emphasis Preaching Journal

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.