Girl.

The blood trickling down the left side of her lip had dripped onto the floor and was now slowly collecting in a small pool beneath her face. The bruise on her cheek was beginning to spread and others now began to blemish to blemish her frail body. A mild scrape from the tree branch she was currently laying on took up the left side of her temple. She had been lying there, unconcious, for almost twenty minutes.

  She made no movement.

  The book she had clutched so tightly in her hands had slipped from her grasp upon her crumpling body making contact with the ground. It was a Dr. Seuss book--"One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." There was dirt layering the cover, the spine was bent and pages ripped. It was well loved, despite its battered appearance.

  A faint scuffling could be heard. Leaves rustling in the wind, perhaps. Whatever the case, the pages were fluttered and the book, once open, was slapped shut and suddenly--a subtle whimper, imperceptible, escaped the girl's parched and bleeding lips.Her ribcage heaved slightly, struggling to rise.

  So she wasn't dead after all.

  Her delicate chest shuddering with the effort, up and down, but with no steady rhythym; spasmic gasps for oxygen--the endeavor was starting to get to her. The physical and emotional strain was overwhelming. Her head spinning, she tried to comprehend the actions that had just taken place. The violence she--this seven-year-old-girl--had just been forced to endure could have been avoided. It was all due to narrow-mindedness: racism.

      She'd been reading to a small boy of about four. His name was Raphael, and he was black. He sat watching her intently as she turned the pages. She didn't real need the book anymore--she knew it all by heart, every line memorized, every rhyme spoken verbatim--but the pictures were nice, and she the illustrations to entertain him. She hadn't heard her father walking up behind her. A sudden shout, almost indiscernable among Raphael's screaming and then--the blood.

  It came without warning, flowing freely from his small face. Overcome with shock, the young girl could only look on in revulsion as she saw her friend, struggling to escape the mighty arms of his oppressor, drowned in the stream that coursed through her back yard. She watched as the body, free of the oxygen she was trying so deperately to grasp for now, floated slowly down the water's body. She remembered the small bubbles that had abandoned his lips at the last moment, the way his arms--so tense when the resistance began--had simply drifted away from his body as he was tenderly embraced by the water.

  She couldn't recall much after that. The beating she was subjected to, her father's departure, the pain, even, was diminishing. Escaping like water through her cupped palm. She couldn't. Didn't want to. A small sigh was followed by a groan as she pushed herself up and sat, leaning against the tree that had previously been her pillow.

  She was tired. She looked down at the remnants of the book and picked it up. She tenderly brushed some of the leaves and debris off her scratched hands, leaned back, and proceeded to finish her story.