Megan Hall - Dear Bully

Summer was supposed to be my time to shine at the theater camp open to students from both of my town’s junior highs. Since the Liza/Brooke/Dani beast wasn’t there, I actually tried out and got a role in Grease instead of hiding behind the scenes on stage crew.

I hadn’t known that the beast from Emerson, the other junior high, would be worse.

I arrive at camp with the angry “Surprise! You’re Dead!” blaring in my ears. The drums rat-tat-tat-tat like machine-gun fire and Mike Patton screams about torturing someone who wronged him. For a moment I feel strong enough to stand up to anyone, but then I meet the blue eyes of Rachel, the Barbie doll who leads the Emerson girl beast. I scurry inside and try to enjoy the day, rehearsing my beloved Grease songs and forcing smiles at the few cast mates who don’t hate me.

I eat lunch with my stage crew friends and go home with one of them after camp. Mia has Rollerblades, too. I warn her that last week Rachel and up to six other girls chased me home every day. Mia believes that since there are two of us, they’ll leave us alone, but I’m prepared.

My Rollerblades are already laced and I have a tape in my Walkman: the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, side A. I saw an old live video of them on MTV’s 120 Minutes . Johnny Rotten is not pretty like Mike Patton, but his snarl makes up for that. When I was in second grade and intimidated by the teacher of my gifted class, my mother told me to “keep a stiff upper lip.”

Stiff upper lip , I always thought while suffering at the hands of the Liza/Brooke/Dani beast. Now that I’ve discovered Johnny Rotten, I think, Snarled upper lip .

Rachel leads a pack of four cackling girls after Mia and me. They all have shampoo commercial hair and curves like high school cheerleaders. I look like a third grader by comparison, but at least I’m fast and so is the music that keeps me moving. Instead of worrying about what will happen if they yank me to a stop with their manicured claws, I picture the kids in the Sex Pistols video slam dancing in big, black boots and the safety pins shoved through Johnny Rotten’s ear. I can barely understand his lyrics because his rage is even thicker than his British accent, but regardless, I think Johnny might understand me even better than Mike Patton does.

“Wow, Steph,” Mia says breathlessly as we clomp through her front door on our skates. “Those girls really hate you. You should have just done stage crew.”

I’ve already explained that my intrusion into the pretty, popular girl territory of acting isn’t the only reason Rachel hates me. She thinks she’s sticking up for a friend of hers who I had a disagreement with last year. She has no interest in my side of the story. The petty argument is grounds for making my summer a living hell.

Rachel and her cohorts twirl in delicate circles on the sidewalk in front of Mia’s house. They catch sight of my pale, sweaty face in the window and laugh before skating off.

I carefully wind the cord of my headphones around my Walkman, still thinking about Johnny Rotten.

I’ve decided that I will get big, black boots and wear safety pins as earrings.

I will learn how to snarl.

If Mean Froze

by Carrie Jones

It is recess and all my friends rush out to play

Freeze tag. I am always brilliant at standing still

As Scott Quinn, Jackie Shriver rush past me—one,

Two, three—until a hand reaches out to tag me into motion

Again, but this day I have to talk to Mr. Q,

My English teacher. A too-good girl, I never get

In trouble, but Mr. Q doesn’t like me, never picks

My stories to read, never picks me to talk

If my hand is raised. He cringes when I speak. Every time

My mouth opens, he cringes. Everyone whispers

About it. Whatever he wants, I know it can’t be good.

Not me alone with him and his porn star mustache and talk radio voice.

My dad has just died. My step-uncle has just touched me.

I am not prepared for even the smallest of blows, but there

He is—an earthquake of a man, always rumbling, always ready

To tremor my life into something that’s just rubble.

“You are here because of your s ’s,” he says.

My s ’s . . . My s ’s . . . My . . . I pick at a hangnail, shift

My weight, look out the window at Jackie running

From Paul Freitzel, laughing . . . laughing . . . happy . . .

Back in first grade, I refused to talk because everyone laughed at my voice, at those s ’s that slurred around in my mouth and refused to be still, those hopeless, moving things. Jayed Jamison imitated me to giggles, calling me Carrie Barnyard, St. Bernard, pulling my hair, chasing me at recess, knocking me down so my tongue tasted dirt and pine needles invaded my mouth and then he’d start it all over again, hissing s words in my ear, sss-sausage, sssss-snake, shshshs-shiver, all those sloshy s ’s. Everybody just watched. Everybody took tag turns mocking my voice so

I stopped talking. I stopped

Moving my tongue. I gave

Away my lunch, my snacks

Until people loved me too much

To be mean. And slowly

—what an s word—

I started moving again, whispering

Words and thought forward

While Jayed stayed stuck in first grade.

We moved on to second and cursive writing,

Haikus, and Mrs. Snearson who wore fatigues.

I thought it was over.

This seventh-grade recess, Mr. Q ends all that.

He says, “If you don’t fix your ridiculous voice,

You will never make anything of yourself. You will be a loser

Forever, Carrie. No one wants to love a girl that sounds like you.

No one wants to hire a girl like you. Don’t you want

A life?” He perches on his desk and I stare at too-tight chinos

And a porn mustache and manage to say, “But . . .”

He cringes, lifts a finger, stops my words.

“You will never be anything with a voice like yours,” he says.

“Think about it.” I have thought about it for six years of speech

Therapy, one year of teasing, bullying, and I do not need to think

Anymore, but I do as he lets me go. I run down the linoleum hall

Thinking about it, wondering what happened to being safe, what happened

To being able to protect my sloppy tongue with friends. And I wonder

What if mean was frozen in a game of tag and nobody ever touched

Its fingers to let it go run free and it just had to stay there alone forever.

Abuse

by Lucienne Diver

I write humor because I’m not comfortable with emotion. When this anthology was proposed, I was sure I wouldn’t have anything to contribute. But as my stomach proceeded to eat itself alive and my heart to break for those kids who were bullied to the point where they felt the only way out was death, I realized I was wrong. I did have a story to tell. Sadly, there’s nothing at all funny about it.

I was molested as a child. Wait for it, I promise there’s relevance or there’s no way I would put this out there to the world. The man was a neighbor and someone who worked with my father. I was about seven. I was/still am asthmatic. The first time it happened, I was out for a bike ride through the woods with friends and had to stop because my asthma had kicked up, and they left me behind. Prey.