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"No, of course not," I said. "How could you think that, Beni?"

"You get along with Mama better than me. Lots of times you talk and I don't know what's said, Rain. You might be making yourself out to be better than me."

"I wouldn't do that, Beni. You should know me enough to know I wouldn't."

"I don't know nothing about nobody," she mumbled as if I had been the one who had kept the secret of my birth hidden all these years.

As soon as we arrived at school, she left me for her friends, even the ones who she knew had betrayed her. Could we ever be sisters again? I wondered.

I couldn't help feeling different about myself. It was like being born again or like I had slipped into another person. I kept gazing at myself in the mirror, thinking about ray features, wondering how much I looked like my real mother and my real father. I felt so changed I was sure others saw it, too.

Even before all these revelations, I thought other students looked at me suspiciously. I knew from what Beni often gleefully told me that many thought I was too stuck on myself as it was.

"Even the white girls complain that you look down on them, Rain," she said with a laugh.

I did have what I thought was a good sense of myself. I confessed to art air of confidence. My teachers praised me when I spoke and complimented me on my schoolwork. I thought it was good to be a little proud. But now, after what I had learned about myself, I couldn't help feeling even more alone. I wasn't white and I wasn't black. I was a mulatto, but to me that sounded like a disease and not an identity.

With whom did I belong, the white girls or the African-American girls? Would either want me? Maybe it was all in my imagination, but as the day continued, it seemed that everyone was even more stand-offish than before. In class I felt as if everyone was staring at me more intently. As it turned out, I had good cause to be paranoid.

For reasons she would later regret, Beni had revealed my secret to Alicia and Nicole. I think she was looking for some sympathy, but she just as well could have gone to the devil himself. It was as if she had given them a gift, shown them the weakest part of my fortress, a way to get in and revel in my downfall. I had stood up to them one too many times. They were the sort who just lay in waiting, hoping for just such an opportunity. And Beni, my sister, had given it to them.

Before the day ended, they and some of their friends cornered me in the girls room between classes. Unbeknownst to me, they had been watching for the opportunity. Moments after I went into a stall, they gathered in the bathroom. At first I didn't realize so many girls had gathered, but the sight of all those feet and the subdued laughter and muttering caught my attention.

"How's it comin' out in there, Rain, white or black?" Alicia shouted. They all laughed.

When I opened the stall door, I confronted half a dozen girls, all looking at me with twisted smiles on their faces.

"Bet you think you're something now, huh?" Nicole threw at me.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Now we know why you act so haughty all the time. You think you don't belong with us lowly black folks," she said imitating some stereotypic black slave from some old movie.

"That's not so, and I wish you'd stop trying to make it seem so," I told her.

"Oh you do, do you? Girls, you hear that? Miss Prissy wants me to stop telling lies about her."

All the girls smiled, their eyes full of excitement and anticipation. My heart began to pound.

"I have to get to class," I said trying to push between Alicia and Nicole. They didn't move. I stepped back.

"I have to get to class?" Alicia mimicked. "Why?" she demanded angrily, "to show off your pretty face and shake your booty in the hall to tease the boys?"

"No," I said. "I don't tease the boys. I leave that all up to you and your friends. Are you going to get out of my way?" I asked, trying to hold up a brave front while inside my stomach was doing flip-flops.

"No, I don't think so," Alicia said. "How about you, Nicole? You going to get out of Miss Prissy's way?"

"No, I don't think so either. I kinda like that blouse you're wearing, Miss Prissy. I think it'd look better on me."

"That's ridiculous," I said. "It wouldn't even fit you." "I can make it fit, can't I, Alicia?"

"Sure you can, Nicole."

"Take it off," Nicole ordered.

"What?"

"You heard her, take it off," Alicia said.