After the death of her beloved Gramps, Delores Colchester, better known as “Itch,” moves with her grandmother from Florida to Ohio. Starting over is hard, and Itch feels like an outsider in her new school, until she becomes friends with popular baton-twirling Gwendolyn. On the outside, Gwendolyn seems perfect: talented, smart, and beautiful. But she has a dark secret, which Itch begins to suspect and soon discovers is true. “Speaking up takes courage,” Gramps had always told Itch, and she’s about to discover just how much.

Michelle D. Kwasney weaves a compelling story about child abuse, family, and friendship against the backdrop of the late 1960s.

About the Author(s)

Michelle D. Kwasney

MICHELLE D. KWASNEY is the author of the young adult novel Baby Blue. She holds a master’s degree in education, and has worked as an elementary-school art educator in the public schools of Massachusetts and New York for twenty years. Michelle lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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Excerpt

Chapter One

Unjust

Unjust: marked by injustice; unfair.

I have liked that word ever since it appeared on our spelling list in second grade. Right after, I began noticing how often Brother Thompson used it in his Sunday sermons. "The sins of an unjust few imperil the masses!" he would shout, slapping his hand on the podium. And all thirty-seven of us—unless Widow Pickett was ailing, in which case there would be thirty-six—would lift our voices and exclaim, "Amen! " Beaver Creek Baptists were big on hollering amen.

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