Like Jesus, I am surrounded by sin. Every morning on my way to school I walk past rough boys with shaved heads and girls with pierced faces. They stand inches off the high school property line and smoke cigarettes. In the snow they stomp their feet to keep warm, and spit tobacco juice. When I appear, they whoop and swear and throw their trash at me. I am their amusement. Their victim.

            I could easily avoid my tormenters by taking a different path from my aunt’s house, but I try to live by one rule: WWJD. What Would Jesus Do? And the answer is clear. Jesus never took the easy way out. He never avoided the sinners, the lost, the hurting. Rather, He went among them.

            Today I carry a black plastic garbage bag\. My antagonists do not see me immediately-two of them are wrestling in the snow. The rest are laughing and egging them on. I tighten my long orange scarf around my neck , and I quietly ease behind them. I begin to pick up their trash.

            “Hey, look! It’s Weird Suzy!”

            The two wrestlers, covered in dirt and snow, sit up to stare.

            “Weird Suzy! Weird Suzy!” they all began to chant.

            Sticks and stones. Their name-calling does not bother me. After all, my real name is Suzanne, as in the Leonard Cohen song by the same name. I am a sixteen-year-old sophomore at River Folks High School in central Wisconsin, and the year is 2001. But I don’t feel like this is my school, Wisconsin my state, or these times my times. I mentioned these things to the school counselor; after all, she asked how things were going for me. “Transfer students often feel a sense of alienation” she said, “and in any case, high school here in Wisconsin must be very different than in California.”

            “Not really,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve felt strange all my life.”

            She made me see a psychiatrist.

            I tried to explain to the doctor that ever since I can remember I’ve felt odd. As if I was not like the other kids. “It might be because of my mother,” I told him. But he was scribbling something on a little pad and I don’t think he heard me. He smiled. “Go on Suzanne,” he said. As I talked, his eyes went briefly to his wristwatch. When I finished, he smiled again and handed me the little sheet of paper. “Tazamix” he said. “Fifteen milligrams, a very light dose. Trust me Suzanne, after a week, you’ll feel way less anxious about things. You’ll feel like you fit right inn here at River Forks.”

            “Okay,” I said. After all, he was the doctor.

            Taking Tazamix was like putting one someone else’s glasses. The world was suddenly large and looming. Everything suddenly had sharper angles, sharper lines. Skin was cardboard; wood was metal. Butter knives felt razor sharp. Everything scared me. I waited up until my aunt finished her graveyard shift at the restaurant, and I told her how I was feeling.

            “Suzy, honey, you flush those pills right down the toilet right now!” she said. “Those shrinks are all crazy. Why do you think they became shrinks in the first place?”

            I stopped taking the pills. In three or four days my world got smaller, with softer edges, just the way I liked it.

            This morning a can of Mountain Dew clatters at my feet. Yellow spray splashes my clothes, spatters my face.

            “Good hit, Eddie!” someone calls. I look up to my main tormenter, eddy Halverson. Eddie is a short, wiry senior boy in a greasy cap and faded camo duck jacket; I heard he used to play soccer all the time and wanted to be in the Olympics but then his knees gave out. Something genetic, they said. Eddie grins at me. Mountain Dew drips across my cheek and to my lips; I had forgotten that Mountain Dew was so sweet.

            “Hey, pick up my can, Weird Suzy,” eddy says. I bend down to get it. I place it carefully in my garbage bag. Everyone cheers.

            “This too, freak,” Eddie says. He steps closer; he has a limp. From between his thumb and middle finger he flips his cigarette directly at me. I’m not quick enough to avoid it, but wouldn’t anyway. The cigarette stings my cheek like a bee. Sparks fly as the butt falls at my feet. I touch my cheek; grey ash comes off on my fingertip.

            “Hey! Halverson!” an adult voice calls sharply. “I saw that.”

I draw my ashy finger slowly across my forehead and bend down to pick up the dead butt.

            The parking lot monitor, an off-duty security guard, trots across the street. He comes to me first.

            “Are you all right, miss?” he says

            “I’m fine,” I say softly.

“You could have put her eye out,” the guard says, catching Eddie by the arm.

Eddie shrugs. “I was just getting rid of my butt. Can’t help it if she got in the way.”

“If this were school property, you’d be gone- for good” the guard says.”

“But it ain’t. It’s public property. I got my rights, now shove off and stop bothering me.”

After speaking into his little radio, the guard crosses the street back to school property. There he stands with his arms crossed and glares at Eddie.

“Way to go, Eddie! Cool, man!” his friends call. Eddie grins. His teeth have gone bad from Mountain Dew and tobacco.

Then the first hour bell rings.

My tormentors look at one another, then swear loudly. They slam the contents of their pop bottles down their throats and take their last draws of their cigarettes. Burping and cursing, they throw down their trash and trudge onto school property. I wait for them to leave. My cheek stings a little but I keep working with my garbage bag.

“Suzanne-come along now” a voice says.

It’s the assistant principal, Ms. Kaufman.

“I’m almost done,” I say

“You ARE done, Suzanne. Come along.” She says firmly.

She takes my garbage bag in one hand and my arm in the other. She reminds me of my real mother, who is in prison. I have not told anyone in River Forks about this. Only my aunt and I know. My aunt thinks it’s best that way. Sometimes I’m not so sure.

            “Remember, Suzanne, you have the counselor this morning, then regular classes after that.”

            I nod.

“Tell me your schedule today?” she says. Her voice is closer now; she has leaned in to stare at my cheek.

“Counselor. Then my regular classes.” I recite my schedule. Often people think I’m not listening to them, but I hear everything.

“That’s right,” she says. “But first you’d better drop by the nurse’s office and get your face looked at. There’s a little blister on your cheek.

“Eddie,”” I say. I touch the burned spot.

“The parking lot monitor told me. Would you like to fill out a harassment report>”

WWJD? “No,” I say.

“I really encourage you to do so. Eddy has been out of control these days. You would be helping him.”

“A change of heart should come from the inside,” I murmur. I turn left toward the nurse’s office. Behind me