by Nancy Rue
When I got to the library conference room at lunchtime, Lydia had the little table set with two plates and cups and napkins and, in the middle, her weird but wonderful hummus and grapes and snap peas and pita bread and olives and whole almonds.
“A little Greek feast for us,” she said, smiling her orange-slice smile. “I’m hungry, and I didn’t feel like eating alone.”
I almost couldn’t save the tears.
We talked about all kinds of other stuff while we ate, like my project in fifth period and what we liked about The Lord of the Rings movies and why things tasted better when you ate them with your fingers instead of a fork. I forgot I had a stomachache.
We were done in about ten minutes, and Lydia pulled a pad of yellow sticky notes and a green marker out of her red canvas bag that was almost bigger than she was.
“Do you mind if I put some of these on your clothes?” she said.
I giggled. “No! But why would you do that?”
“Bear with me. Will you stand up?”
I did.
“Now, tell me the names people call you. Think of them as the labels they put on you.”
I didn’t remind her we only had fifteen minutes left.
“Annoying,” I said right away.
She wrote Annoying on one of the notes and stuck it on the front of my T-shirt.
“What else?”
“Loser,” I said.
That went on a note and then on my shirt.
We continued with Smelly, Not Girly, Loud, Obnoxious, Klutz, Weirdo, Fat, Freak, Bullhorn, Stupid, and Ugly.
When I started repeating myself, Lydia stopped and had me look at my reflection in the window. The entire front of my shirt, plus my sleeves, was covered in yellow squares with green writing on them.
I felt my face crumple.
“Before you go there,” Lydia said, “I want you to notice something: none of these labels is part of you. Not like your cute freckles or your pretty blue eyes or your great smile.”
Cute? Pretty? Great? Was she serious?
“These are all labels other people have stuck on you. Do you see that?”
I sort of did. My nod was slow.
“Why the hesitation?” Lydia said.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe some of them are true.”
“All right. Let’s take them one by one. If you believe the label, I’ll leave it there. If you don’t—you truly don’t—you rip it off.”
I started with Stupid. “I’m really not,” I said. “Maybe I look it, but—”
“That one’s out of here,” Lydia said. “Rip it off.”
I did. She crumpled it into a ball and tossed it in the trash can.
“Smelly can go,” I said. “I take a shower and wash my hair every day now. I didn’t use to, but it’s like people’s noses have a memory or something.”
“So . . .”
I ripped it off. I also decided Weirdo and Freak could go because Mr. Devon didn’t seem to think I was either of those things for liking the things I liked.
I hadn’t been Loud or Obnoxious for two days because, well, basically I hadn’t said much at all. So I peeled those off, although I couldn’t quite manage ripping.
“Let’s see what we have left,” Lydia said. “Fat?” She tugged at my T-shirt. “Looks like there’s plenty of room in there to me.”
“I don’t think I’m fat,” I said. “But they do.”
“Who?”
“Those Girls.”
“Are you willing to let them tell you what you are if you don’t believe it yourself?”
“You could take it off, I guess.”
Lydia shook her curls. “You’re the one who has to decide it doesn’t fit. Nobody else can do that for you.”
I left it there. Same with Not Girly, although I didn’t mind that one so much. And Klutz, because, let’s face it. Maybe the same with Bullhorn. Maybe not.
And then there was Ugly.
“Take another look at that girl in the window,” Lydia said. Her voice was all soft and kind, like she was talking to a kitten.
Just as I turned to face my reflection again, somebody knocked on the door. Loud.
While Lydia was crossing to answer it, I felt like I was naked. I tried to cover my five labels with my hands and got all twisted like a pretzel.
“Are you Lydia?” a voice said from the doorway.
“I am. And you are?”
“Pete Hollingberry. Ginger’s father.”
“Of course! Come in. We were just finishing up.”
I turned away from the window just in time to see my dad looking down—way down—at Lydia. I guess I’d never mentioned to him that she was a dwarf.
But he didn’t seem weirded out at all. Not like he did when he looked at me right then. The words What the Sam Hill? were written across his wrinkled-up forehead.
“We were just doing a little exercise,” Lydia said. “Do you want to have a seat?”
Dad sat down, probably because standing up staring down at a Little Person was kind of hard on a tall person’s neck.
“We’re working on being who we are, rather than who people tell us we are.” Lydia grinned. “I’m sure you’re wondering about the sticky notes. Ginger, do you want to tell your dad?”
“This is about bullying?” Dad said.
I felt Blotch Number One form on my neck.
“It’s about anti-bullying,” Lydia said. She didn’t act like somebody had just been rude to her, which, in my opinion, he had.
“You going to teach her how to fight back?” Dad said. “She’s never been able to do that. Lets people walk all over her.”
Blotch Number Two. Left cheekbone.
Lydia cocked her big head of hair. “We think of it as taking back the power to be ourselves so other people don’t have power over us.”
Dad nodded, but not like he was agreeing with her. “Ignore it and let it pass. I can support that.”
Blotches Three and Four. Both at once on my forehead and chin.
“Kids grow out of it,” Dad said. “I got called Carrot Head ’til I was fifteen. I survived.”
All the blotches grew together. My whole head was steaming.
“Are you a Jesus kind of guy, Mr. Hollingberry?” Lydia said.
What? What kind of question was that?
But Dad sat up straighter, and his eyes lit up like little birthday candle flames.
“I am,” he said.
“I thought so.” Lydia folded her hands and looked all relaxed in her chair. “I don’t recall Jesus ever saying, ‘Fight back,’ or ‘Ignore bullying and it’ll go away.’ ”
Did Jesus talk about bullying at all? What Bible was she reading? I never heard that in church.
“Ginger,” Lydia said, “would you mind waiting outside for a few minutes while I chat with your dad?” She looked at him. “That all right with you?”
“Good idea,” he said.
I thought it was the worst idea ever. But at least this way my head wouldn’t burn right off my shoulders.
Still, when the door shut behind me, I sat in the chair right next to it. Okay, I wasn’t supposed to hear what they were saying or Lydia wouldn’t have asked me to leave. But y’know, I was feeling shut out, left out, and pushed out, and my stomach was starting to hurt again. So I listened. I could only hear snippets.
LYDIA: Have you ever had a difficult boss?
DAD: (with a laugh that sounded like a hard “huh”) Got one right now . . . everything that’s conflict isn’t bullying.
LYDIA: . . . Right. Bullying is consistent degradation of a person. On purpose . . . put-downs . . . over and over . . . had my share when I was younger.
DAD: Can see how you would’ve.
LYDIA: Ginger shouldn’t have to. Nobody should.
DAD: . . . build character?
LYDIA: Or resentment. Anger. Fear. Self-hatred.
DAD: (silence)
LYDIA: . . . all in this together . . . teachers and parents and kids
. . . won’t just go away by itself.
“Ginger!” someone whispered.
I almost put my hands up to surrender. Busted. Why was I the one who always got caught?
But the person who whispered my name again poked her head out of an aisle of books and I saw that it was Shelby. Tall Shelby who moved like the branches of a willow tree.
“Come here,” she said. Her plumpy lips hardly moved, so I wasn’t sure I really heard it.
She crooked her finger at me, and I hurried over, looking behind me the whole time. Just habit.
“Can you meet me in here after school?” she said.
She wasn’t one of Those Girls anymore. Her pale blue eyes hadn’t squinted in weeks, as far as I knew, and she invited me to sit with her and Evelyn at lunch without acting like it was some duty she had to perform. But that could all change in one hour with Kylie around.
“Why?” I said.
“I just need to talk to you.” Shelby lowered her voice even more and brought her head down too so she had to talk through a veil of reddish-blond hair. “Kylie and Riannon and all of them are trying out for seventh-grade cheerleading after school. They won’t be around, so you don’t have to worry.”
“I have to ask my dad,” I said.
“Ask me what?”
I must have bullhorned even when I was trying to whisper.
Dad stood at the end of the book aisle, freckly arms folded and mouth in a straight line. I knew he wasn’t mad. That was just how he looked. Shelby might not know that, though.
“Um—this is Shelby,” I said, sort of waving my arm in her direction. “She wants to know if we can talk after school, so I might get home later than you say to.”
I stopped because I wasn’t sure I was making any sense. Where was that sticky note that said Weirdo?
I looked down at my shirt. Klutz, Not Girly, Fat, Ugly, and Bullhorn were still in place. Aw, man. I folded my freckly arms over them, but Shelby’s eyes were on Dad.
“Can she, please?” she said. “I really need to talk to her.”
Dad almost smiled, and if I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought his eyes were wet. But I knew better.
“’Course she can,” he said, and looked at me like I was a new puppy. “You and your friend talk. Just be home by four.”
He left and Shelby left, and through the open door, I saw Lydia packing up the food. I pulled the labels off my shirt and pushed them into my pocket.
We had an assembly fifth period so Colin and I didn’t get to work together, which I would rather have been doing than listening to somebody talk about drinking and drugs, which we’d all been hearing about since we were in second grade. I’d gotten it twice a year because of all the moving around.
In Spanish, Mrs. Bernstein was absent so we had study hall. I tried to do my social studies multiple choice assignment, but the As and Bs and Cs and Ds kept getting mixed up with what Shelby could possibly want to talk about. I gave up on that and made a new list to put in my private binder: Things Other People Think About Me. All the things Lydia had written on the labels went on the list. I even thought of some more: Gullible. Rug.
The bell finally rang, and I went straight to the library. Mr. Devon waved to me from behind the counter and said, “I missed our time together. Was the assembly enlightening?”
“Don’t drink until you’re twenty-one,” I said, “and then don’t get drunk or drive a car if you do.”
“Duly noted,” Mr. Devon said.
“Hi.”
Before I could turn around, Shelby had her warm hand in mine. She pulled me past the rows of bookshelves to a table back in a corner. In spite of her telling me Kylie and her friends were off at tryouts, she looked over her shoulder through her hair about twelve times. It was like being in a spy movie. Did I look like that, all paranoid and nervous?
When Shelby finally sat down, she pulled her cell phone out of her backpack, and it was my turn to look around for spies.
“Mr. Devon doesn’t let people have those in the library.” I hoped my voice was a whisper. It had gotten me busted so many times, I didn’t trust it anymore.
“I have to show you something.” Shelby bunched her pretty lips as she tapped at the little screen with her thumbs and turned it to me. Only my dad had a cell phone at our house, and I never used it, so I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.
Shelby pushed it closer. “See that message?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s what’s going around on Twitter.”
“What’s Twitter?” I started to blotch. Add Totally Out of It to that list. “I’ve heard of it, but—”
“It’s a website where somebody posts something and all the people who follow that person on Twitter get it. You need to read it.”
Drunk driver killed Gingerbread’s mom, it said. Who was it? Post if you know. #TakeDownT.
My stomach tried to come up my throat. “That’s not true,” I said.
“I totally believe you.” Shelby looked at me through her panels of hair. “But her followers believe her.”
“Whose followers?” I knew, of course, but . . . I pointed to #TakeDownT. My finger was shaking.
“That’s so people will know what this is about.”
“Shouldn’t it say Take Down G?”
“I don’t know.” Shelby swished her finger across the screen and dropped the phone back into her pack. Her pale eyes looked long and sad. “The thing is, there are, like, eighty-three followers on this.”
“There aren’t even that many people in the whole sixth grade!”
“Shhh!”
I slapped my hand over my mouth, partly so I could hush myself and partly so I wouldn’t throw up.
“There’s a hundred and twenty,” Shelby said. “The eighty-three is probably everybody who has a Twitter account.”
She put her hand on top of mine on the table. I didn’t know what to do about that, so I just stayed still. I could feel my palm sweat oozing into the wood.
“I’m not going to follow her now,” she said. “I just kept it on there so I could show you and now I’m getting off. I’m not part of their group anymore, and I never want to be again.”
She was starting to get teary-eyed. I pulled my hand away and fished in my jeans pocket, around the sticky notes, and brought out a Kleenex. It was all torn into tissue-lace, but it was clean, so I offered it to her. Shelby balled it up in her hand and let the tears slide down her cheeks.
“At least they leave me alone,” she said. “But that’s only because they can’t get in any more trouble or they’ll be expelled next time.”
“What’s the difference between getting suspended and being expelled?”
“If you’re expelled, you don’t get to come back for the rest of the year. Or maybe ever.”
“For real?”
Shelby put her finger to her lips.
“For real?” I whispered.
She nodded. “After all that stuff happened and they got suspended, my parents came in and talked to Mrs. Yeats and told her they’re monitoring the Kylie situation.”
“How?”
“If Kylie or any of them is mean to me, all I have to do is tell my parents and they go straight to Mrs. Yeats.”
“They totally have your back,” I said. I wondered what that felt like.
“Yeah.” Shelby bunched her lips again. “But they don’t know how sneaky Kylie can be. I do. There’s no way to trace that Twitter thing back to her because it’s just a made-up Twitter name. She might even have her account linked to a fake e-mail address. I just wanted you to know what she can do without anybody ever catching her.”
If this was supposed to be making me feel better, it was doing the exact opposite. My stomach found a new knot to tie itself into. Did my dad follow Twitter? Could he see this . . . lie eighty-three other people were seeing?
Shelby stared at her backpack for a minute—a really long minute—and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do or say. When she finally looked
back at me, her chin was straight and her eyes weren’t teary anymore.
“You know what?” she said. “You and Tori Taylor and all of them, you’re the ones who showed me how to get away from Kylie. Your Code thing was the only reason I told my parents everything. So I think you should do the same thing.” She grabbed my sweaty hands. “Your dad seems really nice. You should tell him about this and have him go to Mrs. Yeats.”
“I ca—”
“And you should sit with me and Evelyn at lunch. I don’t know why you aren’t hanging out with your friends anymore, but I bet it’s because of Kylie, and I just totally think you should at least sit with us. Kylie won’t bother you at our table or I’ll tell my mom.” She shrugged. “Simple, right?”
I wished it was. But as I sat there with my sweaty palms on the table, looking at Shelby doing the Gold Thumb, all I could think were the words she just said herself: I just want you to know what Kylie can do without anybody ever catching her.
If I hung out with Shelby and Evelyn, it would only be a matter of time—like one class period—before they’d be hurt. Everybody I even came close to ended up that way, including my own dad and brother. I couldn’t do it to this girl who was being so nice to me.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll see.”
Shelby’s face drooped. So did my entire heart. We probably both knew I wouldn’t do it.
She picked up her backpack and sort of smiled at me, and took her willowy self out of the library. I stared at my sweaty palm prints on the table until they disappeared.
“Can I be of assistance with something, Ginger?”
I looked up at Mr. Devon with his gray ponytail and his proper way of talking. He was probably a Weirdo in Kylie’s eyes, so how did he do it? How did he just walk around being all real when people were rolling their eyes and thinking, That guy’s a freak?
“Really, can I help?” he said.
“No, sir,” I said, because there was only one person who could.
“Is it okay if I get on my e-mail?” I said.