Mal,

Hi! How's your day? Mine is fine. Just found out that we've got gym every day- yeah! Assembly is right before gym today and the whole school has it together so we can sit next to each other.

Gottta go now, bye.

Love Jessi

"Ooh-la-la!"

"It's darkie!"

Those were the words I heard as I entered homeroom. The comments were made by Nan White and a girl called Janet, neither of which I have ever liked.

Why? Why did people say these things to me? Because I'm black. Yes. Really. When me and my family first came to Stoneybrook, people gave us a hard time about that. Then I met Mallory. We instantly became best friends. I joined the BSC with Mal. I adore my friends in the BSC and I know that they couldn't care less whether I'm black, white, purple, green, pink or who knows what. Unfortunately, not everybody in the world feels that way. It's pure prejudice, and it's stale, narrow-minded, racist, intolerant, and just plain stupid.

I turned to face the girls.

"For your information," I said coolly. "my name is Jessi, not dark-"
Janet blinked.

"What?" Janet asked, blinking.

"We were talking to-"

"Me?" a voice from behind me supplied. Slowly, I spun around to see Megan Armstrong. Megan is Korean, but not black like me, so no one could tease her about her color. She was wearing jeans and t-shirt that said 'The Darkness' on it. Oh, well. It must be a new band or something. (I wouldn't know- my passion is ballet rather than keeping up with the rich and famous.)

"The Darkness totally rawk." Megan said, grinning. She stepped into the room and put her backpack down beside me. "Justin it totally cute. Hey, Jessi, I here Mallory is back in SMS?"

Oh. So it was a band.

"Yep. She didn't like boarding school as much as she thought she would." I said.

"Boarding school?" gasped Nan. "Oh my- but I didn't think her parents could afford that."

"Mallory," I informed her icily. "got into the school on scholarship."

"Mallory? You mean Spaz Girl?"

I gave Nan a Look. She quickly hung her head and held up a hand.

A few more minutes passed. Janet and Nan stopped teasing me. More kids came in. Finally, our teacher entered the room. She was young and had long blond hair, blue eyes and pale white skin. (I had never seen her before, so I predicted that she was new to the school.)

"Hello, class!" she said brightly. "Welcome to seventh grade. My name is Ms. Gellar. I moved here from Long Island." (so she was new.) "Stoneybrook is such a beautiful, wonderful town and I'm excited to be teaching for the great kids in this school. I will be teaching English and History. Most of you will be in one of my classes." (I looked at my schedule- yup, I was in her class for English.) "I am going to call a register now."

She began calling some names. Finally, she got on the Rs.

"Katrina Racker?"

"Here. Please call me Katie."

"Sure. Matthew Ralphson?"

"Yes."

"Jessica Ramsey?"

"Present. Um, please can you call me Jessi?"

I could have sworn I saw Ms. Gellar's eyes flash as she looked at me.

"Oh of course. Jessi it is."

Why did I see her pale white skin turn an ever paler shade of white?

The register continued. Ms. Gellar made a few more speeches and she said that we would be having a back-to-school assembly at seventh period. Then she let us go to our classes. I had English right in her class so I stayed there. Mrs. Gellar told us about what we'd be studying this semester. Our current topic would be novels- yea! I love novels especially if they're about horses. Then Ms. Gellar asked us to write quick two-sentence introductions to ourselves to read out to the class. She chose me to read mine first.

"Hi, my name is Jessi." I read. "I am twelve years old and I live with my mother, father, little sister, baby brother and aunt. I like baby-sitting, ballet and horses. I belong to a successful baby-sitting business with my friends called the Baby-sitters Club. I am also a very talented ballerina. I've danced many lead roles. I also happen to be African-American. Before, people like me, with cocoa-colored skin and chocolate brown eyes would not dare to join a ballet. But now, I am one of the few black dancers."

The class was split between applause and snickers. But Ms. Gellar was stone-faced.

"Erm, very nice, Jessi." said Ms. Gellar. "But-"

"We know, you're a ballet dancer, Ramsey." concluded Benny Ott.

I shot him a Look. "For your information, Benny, I am a ballerina, not a ballet dancer. Ballerinas are female. Ballet dancers are male."

"But you are male." said Benny.

"Now, now, Benny." said Ms. Gellar. She asked a few more kids to read out their introductions. Then she told us that she would be giving us a big project- we would be writing book reports on two novels. They would be due at the end of this semester. Ms. Gellar passed two books to each of us. I looked at mine- both of them were horse books! I was ecstatic, but then I looked at the two books. One of them was Black Beauty. The other one had a cover illustration of an African-American girl beside an apple tree. She was feeding a three-legged horse an apple from the tree. I looked up at Ms. Gellar and narrowed my eyes at her. She looked at me helplessly. And that's when I discovered the awful truth.

Ms. Gellar was prejudiced.