Backlash

by Sarah Littman

  “I’ll bet,” I say. I can’t find it in my heart to forgive Bree yet, either. I mean, I feel bad about the death threats and stuff, but I’m glad she had to change schools. Glad for Lara’s sake and, if I have to admit it, glad that she has to suffer in some way because of what she did.

  “Mom’s business has crashed to a grinding halt,” Liam says. “So much for being the real estate queen of Lake Hills. No one wants to list property with Monster Mom. Dad’s business is suffering, too. And it’s not like he had anything to do with it.”

  No wonder Liam has a hard time forgiving his sister.

  “I keep wondering if it makes me a bad person,” Liam says. “Dad says she’s my sister, and family is so important, and we have to support each other, especially because she’s getting so much grief from the outside.”

  I feel all his muscles tense with anger.

  “But so am I,” he says. “And it’s not like I did anything wrong. And that’s not all. We have to cut to basic cable because we can’t afford the movie channels anymore, and Dad’s talking about all these other ‘sacrifices’ we have to make. All because of Bree.”

  As bad as things have been for our family, at least we’re slowly starting to heal. Lara’s back at school and Mom got reelected. And maybe I didn’t get to audition for the fall musical, but I’m going to be first in line to audition for the spring talent showcase.

  “You’re not a bad person, Liam. I’d be mad, too.”

  I kiss his cheek. It’s soft and chilly from the autumn cold. “It’ll get better eventually,” I tell him. “Remember when the press people were here? At least they’re gone.”

  They were camped outside our houses for almost a week until some politician sent an “inappropriate” photo of himself to a woman who wasn’t his wife, knocking “Monster Mom” and “Mother-Daughter Bullying Team” off the front page.

  “I hope you’re right,” he says. “And I just hope eventually comes soon.”

  THE KITCHEN timer goes off, and I step into the shower to rinse my hair, turning the water as hot as I can stand it. I watch the water swirl into the drain, dark and muddy, as it washes the excess color from my hair. When the water finally runs clear, I comb through the conditioner and wait for two minutes like it said on the instructions, wondering as I wait how I am going to look, what my parents are going to say, whether this is going to make a difference.

  After I blow-dry and look in the mirror, I look like me, but different. My hair is inky black, not light brown like Mom’s or chestnut like Dad’s and Liam’s. My skin looks pale in comparison: white and almost translucent under the mirror lights. I like it. It feels more like the me I am now instead of the Bree I’m trying to escape.

  If I can ever escape her. That’s the million-dollar question. Transferring schools only helped a little because everyone at my new school knows what happened. When you’ve been a national news story, it’s hard to get a fresh start short of getting into the Witness Protection Program and getting a whole new identity. Important crime witnesses qualify for that, but high school cyberbullies don’t.

  So every day I face the whispers, the looks, the cold shoulders when I try to make new friends.

  The only light on my horizon is dance team, which makes me feel a part of something. My teammates still don’t invite me to sleepovers or to go shopping with them at the mall, or anything out of school — real friend stuff. But at least they say hi to me in the hall and let me sit with them at lunch, and when we won a competition I was part of the group hug just like everyone else. At least they don’t shun me. It’s a start.

  When I transferred to the new school, Mom tried to get me to try out for cheerleading.

  “No. I’m done with cheerleading,” I said. “I’m trying out for dance team. I already talked to the coach and she said she’d let me, even though it’s midyear.”

  “What do you mean you’re done with cheerleading?” Mom said. “You love cheerleading!”

  “No, Mom. I don’t. You love cheerleading,” I said. “I am sick to death of cheerleading. I’m glad I didn’t make the team at Lake Hills. And I’m not going to try out at West Lake.”

  My mom opened her mouth to say something, but Dad put his hand on her arm to stop her.

  “Mary Jo, it’s okay. Maybe exploring a new activity is just what Bree needs right now,” he said.

  Mom closed her mouth and ate the rest of her dinner in stony silence, while Dad tried to keep up the conversation to lighten the atmosphere.

  The weirdest thing about that whole night was Liam. He’d been speaking to me only when necessary, barely making eye contact, like he couldn’t stand to look at me because he hated me so much.

  But that night at the dinner table, after I said I wasn’t going to do cheerleading anymore, he actually looked me in the eye and grinned. I smiled back, but I don’t know why he did it. It’s not like it lasted — he’s still really angry with me most of the time. But it was something.

  Since then, we’ve sat watching TV — basic cable because we had to cut all the movie channels — and have laughed like we did before at stupid stuff, until he remembers he’s mad at me again.

  Everyone is in the kitchen when I go downstairs — Dad’s reading the Sunday paper, Mom is looking at the help-wanted section, and Liam’s eating a bowl of cereal. I slip in quietly and go to get a bowl for my cereal, waiting for someone to notice.

  “Morning, hon,” Dad says, but he barely glances up, so he doesn’t. Liam doesn’t pay any attention to me, as usual.

  But of course my mom notices.

  “Breanna Marie Connors, what on earth have you done to yourself?” she shrieks.

  Knowing that my mother hates my hair just makes me love it all the more.

  Liam stares at me, a mouthful of unchewed cereal in his mouth.

  “Well, that’s a very … different look, Bree,” Dad says, lowering the paper to the table. “What brought this on?”

  I can’t tell from his measured tone if he’s mad at me or not.

  “And how could you do this without asking us?” Mom adds. There’s no doubt from her voice that she is.

  “It’s my hair, so it’s my decision,” I say.

  “However, you are fifteen years old and we’re still your parents,” Dad reminds me.

  I guess he is mad. I don’t care.

  “I needed a change,” I tell them. “I want to be someone different. Someone besides Bullying Bree.”

  “Yeah, like dyeing your hair is going to change things,” Liam says. “Right.”

  Thanks for nothing, Liam.

  I raise my chin defiantly. “It’s something. It makes me feel more like myself when I look in the mirror.”

  “You look like a drug addict,” Mom says. “It washes you out completely.”

  “Wow. Thanks, Mom,” I tell her, swallowing the lump her words bring up in my throat. “I can always count on you to build up my self-confidence.”

  “Would you feel better if I lied to you?” Mom asks. “Okay, fine. You look like Miss America. There, happy?”

  “No, but —”

  “It’s not a parent’s job to sugarcoat things, Bree,” Mom says. “It’s our job to tell you how the real world works.”

  “By making me feel like I’m never good enough?” I throw back at her. “Because if that’s the case, you’re the best mom ever.”

  “Okay, that’s enough, Bree. Upstairs,” Dad orders me.

  “But I haven’t even had breakfast!”

  “Now!” he demands.

  I hate my family. I hate my life. I hate everything and everyone.

  Making as much noise as I can stomping up the stairs, I head up to my room and slam the door hard enough that one of the ornaments on my desk falls over. Luckily, it doesn’t break. I’ve messed up enough things in my life as it is.

  I fling myself on the bed, clenching my fists so tight that my fingernails dig into my palms. I want to explode, but I’m too numb, like my detonator’s gone missing. Only tho
se half-moons in my palms remind me I can feel, that my pain is real.

  There’s a knock on the door. It opens before I decide whether to say “go away” or “come in.”

  It’s my dad. It was only a courtesy knock, telling me sure, it’s my room, but I’m only fifteen years old and he’s still the parent, so he’s coming in no matter what I say.

  I sit up and curl into a ball, holding my knees, as he walks over and sits on the bed next to me. He’s carrying a bowl of cornflakes, which he hands to me.

  “Thought you might be hungry,” he says.

  Shrugging, I take it from him. I’ve kind of lost my appetite, but I take a bite or two to make him happy, then put the bowl on my nightstand.

  Dad’s regarding me sadly.

  “Things are really tough for you,” he says.

  “You think?”

  “Believe it or not, honey, we’re on your side. We want to help you. I could do with less attitude.”

  “Mom wants to help me by telling me I look like a drug addict?”

  Dad takes my hand, which is still clenched into a fist, and holds it between his two hands. They are large and warm and comforting, despite everything.

  “Breenut, when you created that fake profile, you acted before you thought,” Dad says. He hesitates. “And sometimes … sometimes Mom speaks before she thinks.”

  The relief of Dad admitting that Mom was wrong to say that makes me unclench my fists. He strokes my hand, turning it over. First he sees the deep marks in my palm where I’d dug my nails into the skin. Then he sees the other marks. The ones I made last night when I dragged a sharp pair of scissors across the skin on my forearm.

  “Honey, what did you do?” he asks, sucking air through his teeth as he touches the marks gently with his finger.

  “Nothing,” I say, turning my face away. I can’t meet his gaze.

  “This isn’t nothing, Breenut.”

  When I don’t respond, he says, “Look at me, Bree.”

  I turn my face toward him and see concern.

  “What’s going on, Bree? The hair … hurting yourself like this …”

  “I don’t know.”

  He shakes his head. “You must know,” he says. He sounds … angry. “People don’t just do things like this out of the blue without knowing why.”

  “I already told you about the hair. You just don’t listen.”

  There’s something inside me that’s so big it scares me. But no one sees it. No one hears it. I don’t have the words for it. All I know is this:

  “I just … I need what hurts to show on the outside as much as I feel it on the inside.”

  I look away, because I don’t expect Dad to understand. I’ve given up on being understood. I blew that right when I pretended to be Christian. One stupid mistake and I’ve messed up my entire life, forever.

  “Bree,” he says, and his voice sounds strange. Strangled.

  I turn to him and there are tears rolling down his cheeks. The only time I’ve ever seen my father cry before is when Grandma died. He holds open his arms and something breaks open in my chest. Suddenly, the numbness is gone and in the comforting warmth of my father’s hug I sob — great, messy, painful sobs so big they feel like they’re going to break my ribs.

  Dad strokes my hair as I cry and tells me it’s okay, that he’s going to arrange for us all to go to a family therapist, that he thinks we need outside help to get through this, that it’s more than we can handle by ourselves.

  “I know some people say asking for help is a sign of weakness, but I don’t hold with that,” Dad says. “The smartest, strongest thing a person can do is to know when to get help.”

  “But d-doesn’t that make me c-crazy, just like L-Lara?” I sniff.

  “Haven’t you learned not to call her crazy?” Dad says.

  “Mom always does.”

  “Well, that’s another thing we need to change around here,” Dad says. “Calling people names.”

  I pull away and ask him the question that plagues me every moment of every day.

  “Did I mess up my life forever? I mean … will people ever forget about this?”

  Dad’s the one who is most likely to tell me the truth.

  His hesitation in answering tells me the most.

  “Things will get better. I can’t tell you how, or when. It might take a very long time. But we’ll get through this.”

  He doesn’t know. None of us do. The future, once so full of possibility, is now a dark and scary place. But hopefully, like Dad says, maybe with help we can get through it, however long it takes.

  TO SAY life is back to normal would be a lie. It’s probably more accurate to say we’re living the “new normal.”

  Mom is still trying to get Lara Laws passed in the state legislature and is using the notoriety of our case to lobby for similar laws across the country. She and Dad are still furious that Mrs. Connors and Bree weren’t prosecuted for what they did, and they want to make sure there’s a law in place to protect people. But after we talked about it in family therapy, she agreed to change the name to BIC Laws — against “Bullying in Cyberspace.” Doing that allows her to heal in her way and me to heal in mine.

  Healing for me is still a work in progress. Before I went back to school, Dad kept nagging me to look at the list of people who’d liked Christian’s mean post on my wall or had made awful comments. I didn’t want to, any more than I had in the hospital. In the end, I compromised by taking the list to therapy and looking at it there — away from the house, away from my parents, in a place where I could just feel whatever I needed to feel about it.

  What did I feel when I finally let myself look at the names on that piece of paper?

  Betrayal. Anger. Disgust.

  But that was a positive sign, according to Linda. Because I was starting to feel angry, instead of sad. Because I was getting mad at the people who were behaving badly toward me, instead of directing the feelings toward myself and feeling sad and suicidal. Because gradually, I was learning not to let those people have control over me anymore.

  When I finally did go back to school, I was glad I knew those names. Some of the same kids who’d liked the picture of me on the stretcher, who’d written things like “Corpse Girl” and “Is Lardosaurus dead?” came up to me and acted so genuinely friendly and concerned that if I hadn’t seen Dad’s list I would have believed they really cared. Just like the same trusting idiot I was before this all happened. Like I was with Christian.

  People can be so two-faced.

  Or maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe they really do feel bad about what happened. That’s something Linda brought up when we talked about it. Maybe, after I ended up in the hospital, they thought about what they’d done. Maybe they hadn’t realized that the words they’d typed so casually caused me so much real pain.

  The problem is, I can’t read their minds, and that’s what scares me the most — that I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust anyone ever again. Linda keeps reminding me that it’s a process. Ugh, the dreaded P word again. I keep asking her why someone can’t just give me a pill to cure this — I’d even take an operation. Why does everything have to be a long, drawn-out “process”? People always say, “It gets better.” What I want to know is when?

  And then the person who bullied me got bullied, too. You’d think I’d be happy about the poetic justice of that, but the weird thing is, I wasn’t. I mean, sure I was mad at Bree. I still am. But knowing that people were being so cruel to her didn’t make me feel any happier. As strange as it seems, it only made me feel worse.

  It was as if the whole thing took on a life of its own that had nothing to do with me anymore. People who wanted “vengeance” on my behalf were as mean to her as she was to me. Did it make it better, any less cruel because they didn’t know her, because they hadn’t been her best friend once upon a time?

  Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, everyone ended up hurt. She hurt me and they hurt her. Liam got hurt. Syd got hurt. Our par
ents were hurt. Did any of it help in the end, other than all of us hurting?

  Even though I’m relieved that I don’t have to see Bree every day, I still see her going to and from her house once in a while — it’s hard to completely avoid someone when you live right next door. I have frequent, imaginary conversations with her in my head. They’re always short conversations. I ask her, Why? What did I do to make you hate me so much? Why did you do it?

  The conversations are short because she never answers. Because even when I try to imagine reasons why she would hate me enough to trick me with Christian, to write the things she did, I come up blank. Even a year later, after all this therapy, I still can’t figure it out.

  That, more than anything, is what still makes me crazy and prevents me from moving on.

  “Come on, Lara,” Dad shouts. “We’ve got to leave if we’re going to get to the game on time.”

  It’s the big Lake Hills versus West Lake football game today.

  Liam and Syd are both freshmen at Lake Hills now, although Liam told us the Connorses might have to sell their house and move to a smaller one because Mr. Connors’s plumbing supply business still hasn’t picked up from the hit it took after the bad publicity. Mrs. Connors’s real estate business is dead. She’s working at Walmart for minimum wage. They’re struggling to afford the mortgage.

  I take a last look in the mirror, adjust my purple-and-gold hair ribbons, and head downstairs. Syd and Dad are already in the car.

  “Hurry up!” Mom says, handing me my pom-poms.

  We pull out of the driveway and just as we pass the Connors house we see their car starting to back out of theirs.

  “Is Bree going to the game?” Mom asks.

  “Yeah,” Syd says. “She’s on the dance team. They’re performing at halftime with the West Lake band.”

  My mom glances back at me, her forehead furrowed with the “worried about Lara but don’t want to say anything to upset her” look.

  “Mom, we live next door to each other. I already see her once in a while without totally losing it, so I think I can handle her dancing on the football field without having a relapse,” I say.