Vanessa had avoided the kids in the projects of Winton Terrace by escaping to her own home, but she couldn't pretend not to see the whispers and pointed fingers and the snickers of kids that she barely knew. It was true that she wasn't receptive to any of her mother's explanations because there were only two things that she cared about; that her friends from school never found out what her mother did with men for money and Scotty.

The more she compared their circumstances, ...