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Show closed she said I was a pervert. Uncle Boss made a speech in my defense about how it was only natural for a teenaged boy to touch his stuff, and that's what made it sinful, the natural man being an enemy to God, but all the same there was nothing suspicious about it. He was only trying to help but embarrassed me more, and then Sharlee started spreading vicious lies about me at the high school. Her scheme to get all the decent kids to shun me succeeded, but what she didn't anticipate was all the scarlet girls took interest. This made me miserable with a devil's potency I was barely penitent enough to withstand. I had to rub hot peppers on my hands before going to bed for discouragement and sometimes I forgot to wash it off before urinating in the morning. Those times were awful for me and my only comfort was that Sharlee was too ugly not to be chaste. I spent all my leisure pondering books. Some were spiritual like the scriptures and The Miracle of Forgiveness, but some were secular, too, like Of Mice and Men and A House Made of Dawn assigned from school. Alls I did was mind my own business but Sharlee couldn't be satisfied; she caught me pondering and called me a dork. I told her that made no sense, since dork means a whale's penis, in case she didn't know. She got all offended and tattled to Aunt Davina that I was vulgar and talking dirty to her. I pointed out it was Sharlee who said it; I only told her what it meant. I called her a strifemonger, self-righteous, spiteful, a bearer of false witness, and accused her sly-like with Shakespeare, saying, "Thou be as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shan 't not escape calumny! " Sharlee ran red with shock probably because until now I'd always spoken to her with the utmost respect, as if she deserved to be addressed like a lady. Sharlee was |