The next few days were a blur. Cassie stayed home from school, too embarrassed to face the rumors. The principal didn't help, sending out a message to the parents, addressing the "incident" but never once acknowledging that Cassie had done nothing wrong.
I visited her that weekend. She was quieter than usual, keeping her head down as if trying to disappear.
"It's not fair," I said, my voice trembling with anger. "You didn't do anything."
Cassie just sighed. "This is how it always is, Maya. People like me don't get the benefit of the doubt."
Her words shattered me. I had seen the injustice, but now I felt it - her exhaustion, the weariness of having to prove herself over and over again just to be seen as innocent. I realized then that our town wasn't as progressive as I had once believed. It was stuck in the same old cycles of prejudice, hiding under the guise of politeness.
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Breaking the Silence: A Journey of Unity
Non-FictionBreaking the Silence: A Journey of Unity is a poignant and emotionally charged story of two teenage girls confronting the hidden racial divides in their seemingly perfect small town. Maya, a mixed-race girl, has always felt the quiet tension, but it...
