Sticks and Stones - Lynn Hall (smarten punctuation)

Read Sticks and Stones - Lynn Hall (smarten punctuation) Storyline:

It all started so quietly. The awkward silences and smothered giggles whenever he entered a class. The cooler messages he got from Karen. The faint but chilling sense of separation he felt from the other kids. Tom knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t put a name to it. It took the principal to do that. “Homosexual” was what Mr. McNamar said. “Homosexual.” The echo of that awful word rang in Tom’s head, churned his stomach. And in the days to come, it shattered his life, forcing him to evaluate himself, his friend Ward, and his own sense of right and wrong.