When they’re done, they stand there smirking at us. What are we supposed to say to that? L. looks up and claps. S. asks if they want to take a bow now so Jesus can see them. W. probably says something reasonable. I don’t say anything because I define detestable in a whole different way.
A few weeks later, it’s the first day of basketball practice. I’m excited because I live for basketball and I’ve been waiting for the season to start. In last period social studies, the classroom phone rings and the teacher answers it and tells me to go down to the office.
When I get there, the 1960s crew-cut principal opens his office door and invites me in with a look of stern disappointment. There is a teacher sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the desk, and she gives me a look like she hates me down to my spine.
“Look,” the principal says. “I’ve heard you’re a lesbian and I don’t have any feelings about that one way or the other. But Mrs. X. and I have a problem and I think you know what it is.”
My face goes red and the white noise starts in my ears. I shake my head to indicate that I have no idea what they’re talking about. So they tell me.
One of the Bible readers’ mothers has called and complained that not only does her daughter have to go to school with lesbians but she also heard that Mrs. X. is a lesbian who once dated my sister.
Crew cut says, “This is a serious problem for Mrs. X. and you need to tell us if you started this horrible rumor.”
I swear adults are the dumbest people alive. I get lied about, groped, and read to from the Bible and nobody blinks a stupid little eyelid. But somebody makes up a story about my long-graduated sister in a fit of hysterical homophobia and now it’s my problem. I have no idea what to say. They’re just sitting here looking at me and I am deaf from the pounding explosions in my head. Too many things wrong with this to compute. Too many things. I wish I could disappear. Run away. Start over. My emotion center goes completely cold so I don’t cry—and once I’m safe inside my bomb shelter, I finally speak.
I tell them yes, it’s common knowledge my sister is a lesbian. I tell them I’m not a lesbian, but even if I was, why would I spread a rumor about my own sister? I tell them the only people who pass rumors like this one are cowardly lying jerks. Like the boy. The boy who won’t leave me alone.
I don’t tell them about him, though.
Why would I?
break my heart
by Megan Kelley Hall
Middle school. Watching as the other girls picked on those they felt were different. The ones they thought didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to be me. I was quiet. I didn’t draw attention. I looked but didn’t speak.
I watched, safe and high up from the library windows, as they pushed, they taunted, they mocked one another at recess. Every day they’d pick someone new. It wasn’t going to be me. My heart beating so fast I could feel it trying to explode inside. “You have a big heart,” my mother said to me. “That’s why you feel so much when others are mean.”
High school. My heart found a new purpose. To love, to be open, to have crushes. I guarded mine. Boys were reckless with my friends’ hearts. Girls, the ones who are supposed to be your friends, your defenders against these evil boys—the ones we all secretly loved and wanted to love us back—could cut you down so fast that you didn’t even see it coming. Again, I watched as girls fought over these boys. Fought so that they could be loved back. Tricked one another, rolled their eyes, mocked, belittled, bullied their own friends. All because of their love for the boys—the ones who promised them the world for a night alone by the beach. The girls just wanted to be loved. The boys wanted something else. Jealous girls found a way to use this as ammunition in the high school battlefield. Rumors swirled. She’s a slut. She’s desperate. She’s a lesbian. She had an abortion. He’s using her. She was with two guys last night. That wasn’t going to be me. I was quiet. I watched. I was silent. If I could have disappeared into the walls of the high school, I would have. Every day, someone’s heart would be ripped out and put on display, mocked, tormented, destroyed. I guarded mine. I learned that while boys could break hearts, girls could cut them open.
College. Finally my guard was down. Everyone here wanted to be part of the same group. No cliques. No hierarchy. No wishing you’d get invited to the party, but your heart silently breaks because no one invited you. Every day was a party. We lived together, ate together, became one giant family. All the pettiness, the drama, the meanness of high school put behind us all. I started to open up and let people in. I knew what had transpired before: the cruelty, the lies, the backstabbing among friends. But we were older now. Eighteen . . . nineteen . . . pretty much grown up. People stop bullying when they are that old, right?
Best friend. Roommate. Each day I’d tell her my crush. Each day she’d end up in his room. “You didn’t really like him that much, did you?” I did, and each time my emotions were a little more raw. Not because of that boy, but because a friend could chip away at my trust.
Finally, the one boy we both secretly “loved,” even though we didn’t know what real love was, wanted to kiss me. Not anything serious, not as a girlfriend. Just one night. To kiss and that’s all. That’s all I ever did, no matter what anyone else said. I knew that nothing happened. So did he. We weren’t going to let my friend know. But it felt like a betrayal not to tell her. But I was naive and she was dating someone else. She wouldn’t care, right? She was my friend.
Wrong.
Isolation. People talking about me. I could not control what they said. Lies, rumors, God knows what else. Never wanted to be that girl. The one people whispered about. The one who got people’s attention for all the wrong reasons. Just because I didn’t look like an innocent blond-haired, blue-eyed baby-faced girl didn’t mean that I had done anything wrong.
I yearned for the day that my heart would stop hurting. I cursed the churning, the angst, the pain in my chest that never went away. My world seemed to spin off its axis. Drowning in painful torrents of emotion. How could I make this pain stop? Destructive thoughts. I smoked cigarettes, I drank, I stayed out nights at bars with friends until morning. I would toughen myself up so that I could never be hurt. Never again. I felt alone. Did I want to die? No. Did I want the pain inside of me to stop? Yes.
My former roommate discovered my weak spot. She saw me at my lowest; she knew right where to cut that made it hurt the most. The girl who I was supposed to live with the following year in a house full of other girls—mutual friends—saw me at my moment of weakness and it was all over. Still angry about the boy we both liked. The one we both kissed. This was her ammunition. This was payback.
Rumors spread like wildfire. What I had so carefully avoided all of my teenage and preteen years was finally happening. I was the one being mocked, ignored, whispered about, bullied. Moving into our junior housing the next year, I was told by my roommate that I was not welcome. Can’t we move past this? We were friends. Friends can overcome anything, right? After driving four hours to school with all of my belongings, I entered the house to see that she had taken my room. The big one. The one we had all drawn straws for. I could have the shoe box room—if I wanted to stay, that is. That was what she thought I deserved. The other girls didn’t want to get involved, they said. But they were involved. Just not on my side. They didn’t even know my side.
I moved into the big room—the one that I got fair and square. She moved into the small one. No one came into my room and piled on my bed like they did in hers. I didn’t know what she told them. That I was crazy? Maybe. That I was a slut? Perhaps. All of them lies? Definitely. Night after night, I heard them whispering in one another’s rooms. Laughing at jokes I was not included in, maybe at my expense. I’d come home to big dinners planned without me. Parties thrown without my knowledge. A crayon-colored heart on the wall penned by my old roommate with the six other people who lived in our house. Guess she forgot to include the seventh girl. Me.
They were winning. I stayed in my room. I rare
ly came out. I listened to the Lemonheads and made new friends. I found excuses to stay away from my house. My breath always sped up when I went home, unsure of what would be missing from my room. What would have accidentally been broken. What conversations would stop the moment I walked inside. One by one, the girls moved out. My old roommate had turned the house against me. I became that girl I had watched so many years ago from the safe heights of the library window of my private school. The one talked about, mocked, teased, bullied. The one I swore I would never be. I stayed in my room. The two girls who stayed behind became my close friends. They didn’t believe the things my old roommate had been saying about me. They gave me a chance. And they realized that the girl she described was not really me. My heart started to mend. Still sore, but healing.
Fifteen years later. My heart really does start to break. My aortic arch and carotid arteries are causing strokes. I’m sliced down the middle so that they can fix the heart—the one that felt like it had been broken so many times really was in need of mending. The scar is huge, red, and angry; one you can see. This is a scar of survival. I have a little girl now. A husband. A home. So much to live for. Now when I feel my heart beating in my chest, it gives me strength. I know that I’m alive and lucky to be here. I think back to those days when I barricaded myself in my college room, fearing the wrath of the mean girls; I think back to high school, junior high, middle school, trying so desperately to fly under the radar so that I wouldn’t be singled out. I wouldn’t be the one made fun of at field hockey practice. I wouldn’t be the one who girls called awful names: slut, loser, bitch, psycho. Thinking back to those days, I feel a different type of pain. One that gnaws beneath the stitches that stretch from my neck to my abdomen, that are deeper than the titanium clips that hold my sternum together. These are pains that no medication can ease. While I appreciate every minute of the beating inside my chest, because I know that I’m alive and I’m here for my family, there is something that still frightens me.
I have a daughter. And I know what girls are capable of. I cannot have my heart broken again—or worse, watch as hers is broken. I fear for my daughter in these days of texting and IM’ing and Facebook and posting pictures and rumors and lies online. She is only eight. But soon she will be the one walking down the halls of the junior high. How will she handle what I could not? Will she fade into the background like I did? Or will she have the strength in her own character to stand up for herself? Only time will tell. Until then, my heart will continue to pump one glorious life-sustaining beat after another. I just hope that if she is the one being taunted, teased, bullied, a girl just like me will emerge from the shadows—one who was too afraid to get involved for fear of having the tides turn on her. That she will stand by my daughter’s side. So that she will never, ever have to go through heartbreak alone.
End of the World
by Jessica Brody
Everybody asks
But no one wonders why.
I laugh as you pretend
To take interest in my life,
Smile when I pass
Then talk behind my back.
You think you’re so creative
With your meager attacks.
Keep searching for the beauty on the inside
But don’t forget to paint the beauty on the outside.
We all know
We all know
What sells to the crowd.
She doesn’t like the way I look.
She doesn’t like what I believe.
Well, that’s a damn shame.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I think the world will have to end another day.
You think that I’m a cheater
So call me what I am.
I know it’s hard to label
What you don’t understand.
You think that I’m a whore.
So what else can I say?
You’re the only one I see here
With a price tag on their face.
Keep hiding all the demons on the inside
But don’t forget to paint the angel on the outside.
We all know
Don’t you know
Who’s the fool in this crowd?
She doesn’t like the way I walk.
She doesn’t like the words I choose.
Well, that’s a damn shame
I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I guess the world will have to end another day.
Everybody asks
But no one wants to know.
Take me as I am
Or watch me as I go.
Keep wanting to be welcome on the inside
But won’t forget the ones who loved me on the outside
They don’t like the way I dress.
They won’t give up till the tears fall down my face.
But I’d never have it any other way
I guess the world will have to end another day.
They can’t stand the way I get back on my feet.
They won’t like what I’ve become.
Well, that’s a damn shame
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Looks like the world will have to end another day
Not today . . .
Girl Wars
by Crissa-Jean Chappell
They circle the cafeteria in packs
Solid as prime numbers.
Girls wage war with their laser stares
Designer jeans in identical shades
Of acid wash.
Fake nails and bulletproof bangs
Trapper Keepers, hard plastic folders
Splattered in neon unicorns
Leak out whispers
“Insert Your Name Here.”
Pockets swollen with crime-scene evidence
In Bubblicious letters
The note drifts around like a wheezy cough
You catch it.
Then catch on.
Your initials scraped into college-ruled paper
Furred with doodles
A felt-tipped mug shot
Flow charts of your faults
No telling who started it
Last period during AP Biology
Boxes checked yes/no/maybe
Breaking down your hair
Unpermed, uncut
Since kindergarten.
Your sneakers, Pez-purple high-tops
Your attitude, a vapor trail
Too skinny, too weird, too much.
“Maybe she’d look better
If she actually wore makeup, a padded bra
Or gained twenty pounds.”
At the bottom, a barbed-wire suggestion
“She should just stop eating.”
You can totally relate to the paramecium
Squirming inside that electron microscope
All your secret pieces
Magnified
Spend lunchtime alone in the band room
Drawing
Epic space battles
Under your desk.
Graphic novels that never get past
The first page.
Plotlines about girls with magical powers
Because X-ray vision is so overrated.
You’d rather be
Invisible.
The Curtain
by Deborah Kerbel
Me and them. A curtain divides us. I hide behind it, peeking out every now and then. Like a rabbit poking a nose out from its safe little hole in the ground; sniffing the air for danger.
A sharp voice shoots across the cafeteria toward my shelter. A second later, unwanted fingers slide up the spine of my still braless back. A deep, lip-curling laugh slices over my head.
I shrivel in my seat. And then comes a wet hiss so close I can feel it on my skin. A four-letter bullet grazes my ears—brands itself onto my brain like a filthy tattoo. Shivers crawl up my neck. Hunching over, I duck my face down until the curtain closes back around me like a cloak. Thin and scraggly, but it does th
e job. I shrink small, smaller, smallest. I shrink until I’m almost gone. Almost, but not quite. Invisibility, you see, is the unattainable dream. How easy it would be if I could glide through these halls without even making a ripple. Slide through the days, months, years of school and emerge safe and unscarred on the other side.
If only.
I wait and pray for the threat to pass. As soon as I hear the squeak of their sneakers fading away, I release the long breath I’d been clutching for comfort. My curtain sways with the force of it. I freeze until the long, dark blond strands settle back into place.
The echo of Mom’s standard before-school lecture scratches at my brain. Her disappointment has become a daily routine in our house that’s as predictable as burned toast.
“Why won’t you cut your hair?”
And give up my shield? Are you crazy? I didn’t ever actually say this.
She reached out a gentle hand. “It’s just so long and shaggy.”
I ducked out of the way, swallowed the lump of guilt rising in my throat.
“Mom, please . . .”
“It’s just that we can barely see your face anymore. Don’t you know how beautiful you are?”
I lowered my head. The compliment didn’t make it through the curtain. It plopped at my feet like a pickled biology frog.
“I like my hair like this” is what I said. I left out the word need. “I’m going to grow it as long as I can and you can’t stop me.” It helps me hide. Believe me, Mom, if I had what it took to grow a beard and a mustache, I probably would.
If only.
But I didn’t say this, either. Shame has bound my truth and stolen away my words. How do you tell your mother you’ve become a target, a loser, a failure, a lunchtime joke?
Dear Bully Page 7