Free After Alex Died by Dakota Madison Page B

were talking and messing around as they waited for the class to begin. The other counselors, with the exception of Cameron, were also seated in the audience with the kids. Cameron was standing at the podium with Dr. Jones.
    When Cameron saw me walk in, he winked at me. I didn’t know whether to slap him or hug him. Therein was the problem.
    Dr. Jones waved her arms to get everyone’s attention. “Quiet everyone. We have a special presentation today. Cameron is going to talk to you about bullying and how it impacted his life.”
    “Who would bully him?” one of the kids cracked and the other kids laughed.
    “Enough,” Dr. Jones reprimanded. “I expect you to give Cameron your attention and utmost respect.”
    Cameron took the podium. “Thank you, Dr. Jones. I’m here today to talk about bullying. Not because I was bullied when I was your age but because I was a bully. And it ruined my life.”
    When I looked out over the sea of faces, all eyes were trained on Cameron.
    “I thought I had everything. I was one of the school’s first string basketball players. We were all-state champions. I already had a full basketball scholarship to Penn State. I was popular. I had tons of friends. I could get a date with any girl in the school. And I lost it all.”
    The kids were all enthralled. He had completely captured their attention. He had mine, too.
    “There was a freshman named Alex. He was a small kid, kind of geeky. He thought he was a comedian. He was always doing impressions and telling corny jokes to get people to laugh. Maybe it was his way of trying to get people to laugh with him instead of laughing at him. He made the mistake of talking to two of my teammates in the cafeteria. That put him on their radar. They immediately zeroed in on him as a target. They called him gay boy and it seemed to really bother him, so they did it even more. I joined in because I wanted to be one of the guys and I thought that was the way to fit in. Doesn’t everyone want to belong? Be one of the insiders? Because if you’re not an insider, that means you’re on the outside, too.
    “Before I knew it things had escalated. Other kids actually started looking forward to going to school to see what we were going to do to Alex.
    “The first time I really felt bad about what we were doing to Alex was an incident in the locker rooms. The three of us, Jay and Reggie, and I surrounded Alex by his locker. He looked scared, like he thought we were going to beat him up or something. He actually started shaking. That’s when I realized things had gotten out of hand. We weren’t going to hurt the kid, at least not physically. I thought we were just teasing him. But when I looked into his eyes I could see sheer terror. The guys had planned to pants him but I told them to stop. I said we’d better get to practice, that we were going to be late. We just left him standing there, shaking. When I looked back at him, I could see that he was crying.
    “Alex had a sister who was also a senior. She wasn’t one of the popular crowd but everyone liked her. She was cute and did well in school. A few days after the locker room incident, I passed by her in the hallway and she gave me a look like I was the scum of the Earth. No one had ever looked at me like that before, especially a girl. Everyone loved me, or so I thought. Especially the girls . But the way Alex’s sister looked at me that day stuck with me. If she had slapped me in the face, it probably would have hurt less. By then I knew that what we were doing to Alex was really wrong but we still didn’t stop. It was like rolling a giant snowball down a mountain then realizing you’d made a huge mistake. What do you do? The snowball is already in motion and picking up steam. The thing is just going to keep rolling and growing in size whether you want it to or not.”
    I could already feel teardrops streaming down my face. I tried to quickly wipe them away but like t he snowball rolling down the