Authors: Megan Kelley Hall
The bell silences the din. For a second, I feel everyone’s stares tunneling into my skin. Then they stand up. They get their coats and books. Suddenly I’m holding my jean jacket and books, too. I must have picked them up but I don’t even register doing so. Everything is a blur of sound and movement as I drift into the hall and out the door. The vultures follow. They circle ravenously. I can hear them talking; their voices spill over with excitement. “Are you going through with it?” “Is it true?” I don’t answer them. I can’t lose focus. My throat is chalk dry. I try to swallow, but it hurts.
Outside, tornadoes of litter and leaves twist about. I’m jealous of the chocolate bar wrapper that is snatched up and carried away. I want the wind to carry me away, too, away from all of this, but I’m cast-iron heavy. Dead weight.
Then the crowd parts as if perfectly choreographed and I see them. They stand high on the cement steps. They look confident together. I stand in the middle of a crowd and yet I’m all alone. They make no move toward me so I take a step closer to them. My heart feels like it’s going to explode. I clench my fists to keep my fingers from trembling.
I walk until I’m face-to-face with her. She refuses to look at me. Her eyes shift between the faces of her friends. She is smiling, chatting, laughing. I stare right at her, forcing my eyes cold, lifeless.
The vultures begin to squawk. They want action. They thirst for it. But this isn’t what drives me forward. I just want this to be over. I’ve had enough. It all ends today.
Finally, she shifts her focus. She looks me in the eye, and for a split second, I see something I’ve never seen before. It surprises me. So much so that I take a step back. In her sparkling green eyes, her laughing and mocking green eyes, do I see correctly? Do I detect a trace of fear? This amuses me. It almost derails me. I almost turn to leave, but then she speaks.
“Well,” she says. “I’m not going to start this.”
Sparks of anger ignite my insides. Her words thunder in the air around me.
You don’t want to start this?
I want to scream. I want to explode. Tears burn at the backs of my eyes.
You don’t want to start this?
All these years, and now you say you don’t want to start this?
My mind goes blank. The crowd melts away. I see nothing but her green eyes filled with contempt and fear. My hand rests at my side. My fist unclenches. My arm slices through the crisp air. I make contact.
2011
Dear Kristie,
I’m very sorry I slapped you in the yard after school. I wish I could say I didn’t mean to, but that would be a lie. We both know it was no accident. I hit you. I admit it. And now I’m apologizing because I know I was wrong.
Thing is, I was so tired of you and Brenda and the rest of your gang calling me names. Mostly “Dog.” Every single time I passed you in class, in the yard, or in the hall. What kind of a dog did you think I was, anyway? A poodle? A Doberman? Just curious. Particularly hurtful was when you’d just shorten your insults to “ruff, ruff,” barking in my direction, looking at one another and laughing. You were relentless. I don’t even know what I ever did to you to deserve this treatment. Was it because I wasn’t a follower? Was it because I spoke my mind? Were you so threatened by me? Were you so afraid your control over others would diminish if just one person challenged your beliefs? I guess you had to figure out a way to silence me. Demeaning. Discrediting. Excluding. These are all just forms of silencing, aren’t they?
I have no excuse for my terrible actions that day, but I realize now, I struck you because I simply didn’t have the words—the words to express all the pain, the frustration, the feelings of self-doubt, of shame, of embarrassment you caused me. I didn’t have the words then—but I have them now, so I say to you and all others like you:
My self-worth is not linked to your cruel words and actions.
My self-esteem is not affected by your deliberate attempts to destroy my character.
You have no power over me.
You will not silence me.
These words are not constructed of ink and paper. They are not formed of movement and sound. They are echoes of my soul. May they ripple outward and give strength to those who hear them.
Sincerely,
Marina
Dear Samantha,
I’m writing you this letter because there’s something I’ve been dying to ask. How did you do it? How did you manage to have so much control over so many of us? Even more intriguing . . . how did you
know
you
could
do it? What gave you the confidence to roll into middle school that first day of fifth grade and take over? Did you sense we were all weaker than you? That we weren’t as smart? How did you decide who to pick off first? Who was least worthy of your “friendship”?
Back in fifth, when you made Aura Montrose walk up to me in homeroom and declare loudly that I was clearly anorexic, that I obviously needed help, that I had to stop with my psychotic disease or I was going to kill myself, I was mortified, dumbstruck, destroyed. To this day I remember everyone laughing—Evan Lawrence’s openmouthed cackle, Danielle Jennings’s sympathetic glance, Jenny Marx standing behind Aura with that awful, triumphant smirk. That was the day you decided that I was no longer worthy, and just like that, I was no longer popular, either. After that day, it was just me and Mary, the one person who stayed by my side, my BFF. For the next few weeks I would sit in the cafeteria and watch you, surrounded by all your (formerly my) friends, and wonder what I did wrong. Was it my pink tube socks? Was it because my brother was being picked on by the “cool” kids in his grade? Was my house not big enough or my backpack too large or my hair too straight? Why did all those girls get to remain in the inner circle while I was kicked out? I felt so uncool. So unlucky. And I didn’t know why.
But as time went on, I realized that I was actually one of the lucky ones. Because as you got older, you got crueler. Coercing people into signing that anti–Cara Mellon petition; that awful “gift” you sent to Maya Walters that was supposedly from the guy she liked. Even Aura and Jenny, in the end, weren’t immune from your tactics. (Perhaps Jenny’s smirk that day was her gloating over the fact that it wasn’t
her
day. That she would live to see another as part of your in crowd. But it didn’t last long, did it?) You embarrassed and ostracized each and every one of us until my table, the outcast table, was more crowded than yours. Until we were the ones having fun at lunch while you were practically alone. I learned not to blame those who did your bidding, who stood by and smirked, because I knew that if I had been in their position, I would have stood by and said nothing. Let you do your thing. Because standing up to you was just too scary to contemplate. I tried to understand where they were coming from, and I forgave them. In hindsight I realize that if we had all just stood up to you the first time you “pulled a Samantha,” most of us never would have had to suffer. I wonder what you would have done if ten girls had all told you to stop. If ten girls had come to you as one and told you what we really, truly thought of you. What I wouldn’t give for a big, fat rewind button.
By the time you’d whittled your inner circle down to three, I had seen enough. Enough to know that
you
were no longer worthy of
my
attention, not even my curiosity. I knew that if you ever tried to hurt me again, you would find that you were incapable. That if you ever tried to hurt anyone else, I wouldn’t be a part of it. Clearly we didn’t need you or your approval. We were just fine being us.
So I guess I’m really writing this letter to say thank you. I believe that it was because of the way you treated me that I learned what really mattered. It was because of the way you treated me that I learned to be my own person, have my own opinion, stand my ground. It’s at least partially because I survived you that I’m the person I am today.
And I like me.
Love,
xoxo
Sincerely,
Kieran Scott
His real name was Michael Henry. Which should have been funny enough . . . considering the average level of our fifth-grade wit.
For instance:
Because he was short, we called Bobby D. “Shorty.”
Because he had white-blond hair, we called Timmy G. “Whitey.”
And it won’t take you much brainpower to guess what we called Mike W., who happened to have the biggest, most stuck-out ears in the entire school.
Yes, “Ears.”
So we really should have called Michael Henry something like “Two First Names” or “Mike Hank.” But I guess we didn’t have a nickname for Michael Henry because he was new to school.
He was a big kid. Chubby and dark brown. He even had a hint of black mustache hairs on his upper lip. There were rumors that he had been held back a grade. Or maybe two. And because Michael Henry was older than us, he was also further into adolescence than us, and hadn’t had that deodorant talk with his mom. He smelled.
I, on the other hand, with a September birthday, was one of the youngest and smallest kids in fifth grade. I had avoided getting tagged with an embarrassing nickname mostly by keeping a low profile—cracking the occasional joke, not messing with the bigger guys, and generally not drawing any attention to myself.
So it was kind of unusual that I even said anything in the group of fifth-grade boys hanging around the playground after lunch that day. But I did.
Bill M., the captain of our fifth-grade basketball team, was trying out nicknames for Michael Henry, who was standing right there with us. “How about ‘Round Guy’?”
“Bigfoot,” suggested Whitey.
“Big Head!” said Shorty.
“Really Dark Hair Guy!” said Ears.
The fifth-grade boy brain has a terrifying power. In the presence of other fifth-grade boy brains, it is capable of joining together with those brains . . . and somehow generating less thoughtful action than any one of the individual brains. Which is exactly what happened next.
I don’t know why I violated my own survival strategy of laying low. I must have been still drunk on a feeling of word power from my 100 percent on the third-period vocabulary test. I joined in the fifth-grade brain drain and blurted out a single word—“Stench!”
Everybody looked at me.
“It means a really bad smell,” I added.
“Stench,” repeated Bill M., trying it out. “Hey, Stench,” Bill M. said to Michael Henry. And that was that. Michael Henry was Stench for the rest of fifth grade.
I honestly didn’t give it much more thought. If anything, I was pretty pleased that Bill M. had taken my suggestion and that everybody now knew I was a pretty smart word guy. Another terrifying power of the fifth-grade boy brain: the ability to not even think about how your actions might affect others. I had no idea how much misery that one small mean word caused Michael Henry.
But in a fitting turn of the karmic wheel, the next year, in sixth grade, my mom bought me a pair of green corduroy pants. These pants were a shade of green just bright enough to catch the attention of Bill M. He took one look at them and called to me, “Hey. Nice pants, Green Bean.”
And so I was “Green Bean” for the whole first half of sixth grade. No matter what pants I wore.
Sorry about the “Stench” nickname, Michael H.
I hope “Green Bean” evened things up a bit.
And here’s hoping that maybe this story will help a fifth grader out there fight against the mind-sucking power of the no-think group brain.
What I Wanted to Tell You
by Melissa Schorr
E—
Can you even believe it? We made it? Junior high is actually over???
I can. I’ve only been praying for the last 231 nights or so for someone to come and put an end to my misery. All I can say is: What took so long?
There are soooo many memories I have of the two of us. Remember playing pranks on my patio? Doing backflips at your pool? Sex ed with Mr. Mueller? Good times . . .
Until the moment you decided I wasn’t cool enough or fun enough or whatever enough to be your friend anymore. And dropped me, like a stone down a cold, dark shaft.
This year was a total blast, you know?
Well, that’s how it looked, anyway, from my perch in social Siberia. Because with you waltzed every last one of my so-called friends. Karen and Shoshana. Gia and Gaby. Sarah and Sabrina. Pam and Lisa. Even Patricia.
As for the boys? None rushed to my rescue. They were merely witnesses, innocent bystanders, who watched the car crash—the shattered glass, the twisted metal—and shifted delicately to avoid the debris.
And why? I’d done no wrong, committed no crime. I wasn’t some obvious outcast—seven feet tall and gangly and slouchy, like Meg. Or desperate and needy and letting two boys kiss me at once, like Di.
I was left to wonder, with no one to ask.
There are so many moments that stand out. Remember our table for ten in the cafeteria?
Where I was abruptly told there was no longer “room” for me.
That game of Spin the Bottle at Shoshi’s surprise party, where you finally kissed you-know-who?
I wasn’t invited, but even I heard the whispers that Monday morning.
What I remember most? Hiding, shivering, in the locker room stalls, trying to escape another cruel comment. Sitting with “friends,” excluded by their coded conversations, feeling lonelier than when I was simply alone.
Congrats on winning that citizenship award! You totally deserved it.
That day you called me on the phone, when we hadn’t spoken in months? I got all stupidly flustered, like it was a real, live boy calling. For a second, I thought maybe you were going to apologize. Ask to be friends again.