Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey, Ellen R. Sasahara, Felicity Don

that their tribe was once called the Kosampson. More important, they knew the hour that the video channel played hip-hop videos, and they could lie in front of the TV and hope for a view of the bragging and ruthless American men. Once the principal at Shoreline asked Margie and Chantal to give a talk on Multicultural Day about the potlatch or the sweat lodge. They laughed in her face. They didn’t even know what she was talking about. Multicultural Day at Shoreline, and the principal asked them to come in and tell everyone about their “native heritage.”
    Chantal was over at Margie’s on a Wednesday after school. Usually the friends would hang around and talk about guys and make some phone calls. Have dinner. Around 8:30 or so, while they were watching a half-naked American girl shimmy and “shake her booty” on Rap City, Josephine and Kelly called and asked Margie if she would help them beat up somebody.
    â€œYeah, sure, why not?” Margie said.
    The plan itself was quite vague. The invitation to the beating had no date or place or time. “They said they were supposed to beat up some girl,” Margie later told the police. “They didn’t say when. They didn’t say where. They didn’t say what they were going to do.”
    Yeah, sure, why not.
    Margie didn’t really think Josephine was serious. “I thought she was just kinda kidding around. ’Cause usually when we say that we’re going to beat someone up, it never really happens.”

The Return of the Dangerous Lady
    T HE STAFF AT S EVEN O AKS are required to keep notes of the comings and goings of their troubled residents. Josephine, and later Dusty, would find this surveillance an unbearable pain in the ass. And yet as events unfolded, they would be forever grateful for these records, which would provide a kind of redemption and, in more pragmatic terms, an alibi.
    â€œFriday. November 14th. 1997. Dusty Noble arrived at Seven Oaks Receiving and Assessment at 3:30 P.M.
    â€œStaff observed that ‘Dusty knows Josephine, and they buddy up immediately.’
    â€œBetween 3:30 and 7:20 P.M. staff overheard a resident relay a message to Dusty that Reena had called her and left a message. Josephine and Dusty left at 7:21 PM. They told staff they were ‘going to a park to party.’”

An Invitation
    W HEN THE TELEPHONE RANG, Reena had not yet begun to write in her journal or play cards with Aman. She was still eating soup. (“I’m on a diet,” she’d told her mom.)
    Josephine sounded excited and asked Reena to go to a party.
    Reena was uncertain. “I think I’m going to stay home tonight,” she said.
    Hearing Reena hesitate, Josephine handed the phone to Dusty, who was more persuasive and a better liar, though both girls were well practiced, perhaps even gifted, when it came to dishonesty.
    â€œCome on, Reena, come and party. We’re not mad at you anymore. Just come on.”
    â€œI heard you want to rock my ass,” Reena said.
    Perhaps she thought the two girls had both tried to shun her, and she had showed them that she wasn’t so bad after all. She thought Dusty must have forgiven her for her dalliance with Jack Batley. She’d showed them. She’d proved. She could be just like them. She could kiss the same boys. She could be a troublemaker. She’d won their respect, it seemed, for they were
begging
her to go to this party.
    â€œYes, I’ll meet you at the Wal-Mart and we’ll go to the party.”
    Aman looked so sad, his little pout, holding the pack of cards. “We’ll play tomorrow,” she promised.
    â€œI’ll be home by 10:00,” Reena promised, grabbing her knapsack, which still held her pajamas and some perfume and her new diary, emblazoned with the tree of life.
    Suman thought of warning her, but warnings, there’d been so many, and her daughter was strong-willed, and hopeful too. There was so much