Free Dear Bully by Megan Kelley Hall Page A

told, I’m still surprised every time. I think that’s why I’ve let it go on so long. I guess I hope one day he’ll just get bored and stop, because I don’t want to have to tell anyone. It’s embarrassing. It’s stupid. It would just cause more rumors. And seriously, I know what they’d say. I’ve heard it all before. Boys being boys. Small towns and small minds. Maybe if you weren’t so confident, boys wouldn’t want to cut you down a peg. Sure, it’s the eighties and girls can complain about these things. Doesn’t mean anyone will listen.
    At lunch, I sit with my friends. Some of them are gay—who cares? Two girls approach us while we’re eating and one of them pulls out a Bible and reads. “Leviticus chapter twenty, verse thirteen. If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
    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