The Waif

There was an old concrete platform in the back corner of the playground where I would hide from them. Perhaps it had once held a statue or a water fountain. Tall weeds collected themselves around the base creating a green bunker for my slender frame. If the other children knew where I was, would they come get me and drag me out by my tattered gray sweater or my stringy hair and spit on me? Would they throw me down on the ground and kick me back and forth like a soccer ball? Or would they stumble upon me accidentally while playing hide and seek and see me as just another one of the weeds, laughing in an octave my voice cannot sing, and move on?