Free Dear Bully by Megan Kelley Hall Page B

when others are mean.”
    High school. My heart found a new purpose. To love, to be open, to have crushes. I guarded mine. Boys were reckless with my friends’ hearts. Girls, the ones who are supposed to be your friends, your defenders against these evil boys—the ones we all secretly loved and wanted to love us back—could cut you down so fast that you didn’t even see it coming. Again, I watched as girls fought over these boys. Fought so that they could be loved back. Tricked one another, rolled their eyes, mocked, belittled, bullied their own friends. All because of their love for the boys—the ones who promised them the world for a night alone by the beach. The girls just wanted to be loved. The boys wanted something else. Jealous girls found a way to use this as ammunition in the high school battlefield. Rumors swirled. She’s a slut . She’s desperate. She’s a lesbian. She had an abortion. He’s using her. She was with two guys last night. That wasn’t going to be me. I was quiet. I watched. I was silent. If I could have disappeared into the walls of the high school, I would have. Every day, someone’s heart would be ripped out and put on display, mocked, tormented, destroyed. I guarded mine. I learned that while boys could break hearts, girls could cut them open.
    College. Finally my guard was down. Everyone here wanted to be part of the same group. No cliques. No hierarchy. No wishing you’d get invited to the party, but your heart silently breaks because no one invited you. Every day was a party. We lived together, ate together, became one giant family. All the pettiness, the drama, the meanness of high school put behind us all. I started to open up and let people in. I knew what had transpired before: the cruelty, the lies, the backstabbing among friends. But we were older now. Eighteen . . . nineteen . . . pretty much grown up. People stop bullying when they are that old, right?
    Best friend. Roommate. Each day I’d tell her my crush. Each day she’d end up in his room. “You didn’t really like him that much, did you?” I did, and each time my emotions were a little more raw. Not because of that boy, but because a friend could chip away at my trust.
    Finally, the one boy we both secretly “loved,” even though we didn’t know what real love was, wanted to kiss me. Not anything serious, not as a girlfriend. Just one night. To kiss and that’s all. That’s all I ever did, no matter what anyone else said. I knew that nothing happened. So did he. We weren’t going to let my friend know. But it felt like a betrayal not to tell her. But I was naive and she was dating someone else. She wouldn’t care, right? She was my friend.
    Wrong.
    Isolation. People talking about me. I could not control what they said. Lies, rumors, God knows what else. Never wanted to be that girl. The one people whispered about. The one who got people’s attention for all the wrong reasons. Just because I didn’t look like an innocent blond-haired, blue-eyed baby-faced girl didn’t mean that I had done anything wrong.
    I yearned for the day that my heart would stop hurting. I cursed the churning, the angst, the pain in my chest that never went away. My world seemed to spin off its axis. Drowning in painful torrents of emotion. How could I make this pain stop? Destructive thoughts. I smoked cigarettes, I drank, I stayed out nights at bars with friends until morning. I would toughen myself up so that I could never be hurt. Never again. I felt alone. Did I want to die? No. Did I want the pain inside of me to stop? Yes.
    My former roommate discovered my weak spot. She saw me at my lowest; she knew right where to cut that made it hurt the most. The girl who I was supposed to live with the following year in a house full of other girls—mutual friends—saw me at my moment of weakness and it was all over. Still angry about the boy we both liked. The one we both kissed. This was her ammunition. This was payback.
    Rumors spread