The Girl in Red

by Christina Henry

Red had never hidden from anything in her life. When life punched her in the face she stuck her chin out. She didn’t fall down. But it was easy to stick your chin out when you had a team in your corner waiting for you when the bell rang at the end of the round.

“Cordelia,” Mama said for the third time, and three times for anything makes it a spell, a curse, a whisper of magic that can’t be undone.

“Do you think I don’t know what kind of men this world has wrought?” Red said. “Every woman knows. And those men existed before everything fell apart.”