“Okay,” Victoria said. She paused. “What happened between then and now, with your parents? Can I ask?”

“A lot happened,” Kenzie said. “Can I show you? It’s a lot extra.”

“You can show me.”

Kenzie fidgeted with the remote, before switching the diary diorama to the next scene over.

School.

⊙

The boys kept talking to each other, looking her way and laughing.

Twice now, they’d sent someone over to talk to her and ask her questions. The first time, she’d ignored it. The second, she’d given a fake answer, but the fake answer only seemed to egg them on.

Lunch was almost over, and she wasn’t sure what to do. So many other kids acted like school sucked, oh, school was awful. Even the television shows acted that way. But it wasn’t. School was nice.

Except when the boys were bothering her.

Oh, no. Janesha was talking to the boys now, and where Janesha went, other girls followed.

It sucked because Janesha was super stylish with new clothes every week, and Emily was really, really pretty with super black skin—not just brown, but so black it looked unreal. She mixed it up with electric blue braces, and her mom let her wear makeup, and she always looked freaking amazing, even though her clothes weren’t all that.

Kanzi would have liked to be their friends, but instead they were hanging over there with the boys, looking over at her every once in a while and laughing.

She was really tired, her face still hurt when she touched it, her arm hurt where her dad had grabbed her, and she was hungry because neither her mom or her dad had made her breakfast before sending her to school. They were still mad at her.

She wanted it all to be over with and she didn’t want it to be over, because once the school day was over she had to go back home.

It was Emily’s little sister that the group sent over.

“Kenzie, right?” the little girl asked. She was barely out of kindergarten, and she had beads in bright primary colors worked into her hair at regular intervals.

Kenzie nodded. “And you’re Lizzie?”

“Liz. Um. What happened to your face?”

Kanzi forced a smile onto her face. “A bear.”

The little girl looked skeptical. “A bear?”

“My mom and dad told me to go put the garbage out, and I did, and there was a bear on the street, going through trash cans. Bam, slash, it got me. I ran and went inside.”

“You told Leon it was an axe murderer.”

“Because I didn’t think he’d believe me about the bear.”

“There aren’t any bears in the city, though.”

“Exactly,” Kenzie said.

The little girl looked confused. She turned to go report to the others.

“Liz,” Kanzi said. “I really like your hair.”

Liz gave her a weird look.