Dear Bully (12 page)

Bigfoot crying in the field.

And you resist running the rest of the way to your best friend’s house because you don’t want him to know how afraid you are. Not just of him, but of her. How even at this moment you don’t know if she’s going to be happy to see you or if she’s with one of your other friends, talking behind your back. The thought churns in your stomach and you wonder what’s wrong with you. . . . You’ve just been manhandled and all you’re worried about is whether your best friend still likes you or not.

And you wish with all your heart you lived anywhere but here, in Alfalfa, a tiny community so far away from your high school that it takes the bus forty-five minutes to get to and from school. A lot can happen in forty-five minutes. Just ask Matt. Or Michelle. Or Dina. Or Stewart. Or Bigfoot. Yeah, Bigfoot. You’re pretty sure you knew his real name at one time, and it’s ironic that all you remember is the name that your BFF gave him.

Bigfoot crying in the field.

When you and your BFF are friends, life is magic. Everything is more fun when she’s there; long trail rides in the woods, midnight movies, and sneaking out to swim in the canals late at night.

Then it all ends.

You’ll wake up one morning and for no reason you can discern, you’ll be on the outside looking in. You’re the one afraid to get on the bus. Afraid of the walk home. Afraid of going out riding. Afraid to answer the phone. Afraid, afraid, afraid. But avoiding them doesn’t help. She and the others ride up to your house on their horses and call you out. Taunting you, threatening you.

The first time she turned on you was because you suggested having a club like in Judy Blume’s
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
. Suddenly, you’re the girl who wanted a club about periods (as she announced to the whole bus, boys and all). Humiliation was her weapon of choice, and if that didn’t work, she would have someone dump perfume on the unlucky victim on her way to school. She rarely did her own dirty work.

During the BFF times, you’re by her side as she intimidates others. You just go along. So does everyone else. You keep your mouth shut; you close your eyes and you pretend it’s not happening. Maybe if you pretend hard enough it won’t be true. But it always is and their pain and humiliation only illustrates how you do
not
want to be in their shoes again. Ever.

So you take the coward’s way out. Live in fear. And wait for your turn at the whipping post.

Bigfoot crying in the field.

Now, as an adult, you wish you could go back and change it all. You see yourself strong, as strong as you are now. You see yourself standing up for Matt and Dina and Michelle and Stewart. And Bigfoot. Especially Bigfoot. You want to wipe away the tears and the confusion and the hurt of that sixteen-year-old boy. And you want to tell him you’re sorry. Sorry that you left him there, crying in the field.

But you can’t change anything and the memory of leaving that man/child broken by the tractor will hurt you forever. But you survived. And all you can do is share your strength with others, with teens who have been bullied or who are afraid to do anything about those who bully. And you try and you try and you hope that you’re helping, but behind it all you can still see him.

Bigfoot crying in the field.

When I Was a Bully, Too
by Melissa Walker

When I was in seventh grade, I was nervous all the time. Every day that I went into school to meet my friends in the hallway, I wondered if this was a day that they’d turn on me, a day when I’d get teased and made fun of. Or if it was someone else’s day to take the hit.

There was one girl in our tight-knit group of four, Eliza
*
, who led the charge—always. It would start with a little comment: “Nice shirt, Mel.” And then Leigh and Ariel would join in—“Yeah, nice shirt. Did you get that at the thrift shop?” It didn’t matter if I’d spent an hour trying to figure out what to wear that wouldn’t attract attention, that would fit in, that would keep them from singling me out.

I have to admit that I was relieved when it wasn’t me who got picked on. Leigh and Ariel took the brunt of Eliza’s seemingly random insults, too. There was no way to deflect them—we all ganged up on whoever was chosen for sacrifice that day.

Until one night, when Eliza was home sick and Leigh, Ariel, and I went to a junior high dance together. We gathered in the corner of the gym, and Leigh said, “Eliza’s kind of pissing me off lately.” She said it tentatively, like she wasn’t sure if we’d agree. But both Ariel and I nodded and smiled. That night, the three of us formulated a plan.

The plan wasn’t complicated, it wasn’t nuanced, it had very few steps. The plan was: Let’s stop talking to Eliza. Just ignore her. Do that thing where you say, “Do you hear a fly buzzing around?” whenever she talks.

And we did. We shut her out in the hallway before the morning bell, we turned our backs to her at lunch, we didn’t wait for her between classes. It was brutal.

When she cornered me alone at my locker and demanded to know what was going on, I ignored her, as I’d pledged to Ariel and Leigh that I’d do. I walked down the hallway quickly as Eliza followed me, and I heard her start to cry.

Eliza and I used to talk every day on the phone after school. But when she called that day, sobbing and wanting to know what she’d done, I hung up on her.

After that she left us alone. It took one day to end what felt like a lifetime of tyranny (really, it was about a year). But it left me feeling empty, cold, like I didn’t have a circle of friends anymore.

I stayed friends with Ariel and Leigh, but we all went into our separate groups in high school. Eliza and I said “Hi” in the halls, but we were never close again.

This summer, a mutual friend of mine and Eliza’s commented on a photo Eliza had posted on Facebook, so it showed up in my feed. I clicked through to see a little girl with Eliza’s smile, maybe two years old—her daughter.

I remembered playing Nintendo at Eliza’s house, making up hilarious dances in her living room, filming a movie in sixth grade where we dressed up in her mom’s clothes and delivered soap opera–quality lines. I remembered how she could say and do things that would make me giggle until I’d end up lying on the ground, doubled over in laughter.

And here is what I wished: I wished that Eliza had been kinder, yes, not such a bully. But I also wish that Ariel and Leigh and I had made a different plan that night. One where we told Eliza that she was mean a lot of the time, made it clear to her that we wouldn’t gang up on one another for entertainment. And then, the next time she said something barbed like, “Nice shirt, Mel,” Ariel and Leigh would have said, “It is nice. Where’d you get it?” and the situation would have been diffused.

The problem was that we were all too scared to be the one who stood up for the first time. So we avoided Eliza’s wrath by shutting her out completely.

Bullies have foot soldiers. And those people can turn into bullies themselves, like we did against Eliza. But they don’t have to. They can make better, if harder, choices. And I wish I had.

*
All names have been changed because these girls? They’ll totally recognize themselves.

Carol
by Amy goldman Koss

I held power briefly in sixth grade. I didn’t hold ultimate, unquestionable power, and I didn’t rule alone, but still, my power was nothing to scoff at. One of the perks of being in the ruling class at Greenfield Elementary was that I had a Carol.

Here’s where I’d tell you about Carol if I knew anything, but I didn’t know where she lived or if she had brothers or sisters or any of that. I knew only that if I got right up in her face and accused her of terrible things, and said mean, horrible things about her, every part of her froze—except for her eyes. Her eyes got wide and panicky and darted around as if she was looking for an escape. But she didn’t escape, she just stood there until I was done and released her. I imagine it didn’t make Carol feel so great, but it made me feel terrific!

I can’t tell you why I picked Carol because I don’t know. Maybe I was like a hungry lion chasing the herd of elk, looking for the easiest one to separate and take down. Or maybe it was because she was unprotected. I assume that if she hadn’t been alone I would have chosen someone who was. I was a bully but not quite powerful enough to take on more than one victim. Maybe Carol hadn’t been alone to start with, but whatever friends she’d had abandoned her in fear and self-preservation when they saw that she had been selected as my prey.

I knew that what I was doing was beyond bad. My family would be absolutely horrified if they knew. Horrified and shocked. Actually, I was horrified myself, but that added to the rush. It was thrilling to be so bad. It made my whole body practically vibrate with life and power. And after a few minutes of tormenting Carol, I felt a sort of peace as my heart calmed back down and the sweat on my hands tingled and evaporated.

Tormenting Carol was like a gateway drug to the thrill of being bad. The next year I learned to smoke cigarettes and weed. Soon after that I was popping whatever kind of pill anyone offered. But that’s a different story.

A few months deeper into sixth grade, there was a power shift, and I myself was divided from the herd. I was outraged but not surprised. Such was the nature of sixth grade. I remember toying with the idea of teaming up with Carol, forming a little band of outcasts, but when I sidled up to her on the playground, she held her hand up like a stop sign and said, “Don’t even bother to try!”

Never Shut Up
by Kiersten White

It was the middle of Government and Politics class, and though the teacher was lecturing, the boy sitting behind me hadn’t gotten off the previous topic. He shrugged, whispering, “I don’t think that sexism and racism are problems in our country anymore. People just pretend they are.”

My face turned red and I jabbed a single accusatory finger at him. “
White male
, you have no perspective!”

It was loud.

Oh, so loud.

I was always inadvertently entertaining in that class. Everyone knew that if you brought up one of my pet topics, I was good for an impassioned debate. Senior year my class awarded the yearbook spots. Alongside “Most Likely to Succeed” and “Best Smile” was my award: “Always Has Something to Say.” But when they put it under my picture, they changed the title to “Never Shuts Up.” Because I never. Shut. Up.

Problem is, for all my not shutting up, I never managed to
speak
up. In the end, how much did the glass ceiling impact my working two shifts a week at the local sandwich shop? How much did gun control issues factor into my daily life? What good was all of my passion and crusading and adopting of causes doing
any
of the people around me every day?

I liked having causes and caring about things, but only if they were safe. I could talk for days about feminism because it didn’t impact me, didn’t threaten me, didn’t put me in an uncomfortable position. Safe.

But that day I saw those kids teasing a special ed student in the hallway, making him sing louder and louder while they laughed at his innocent enthusiasm? I didn’t say anything. I knew those kids. We weren’t friends, exactly, but we weren’t not friends. And while what they were doing made me sick to my stomach, saying something felt too dangerous. What if I said something and they decided to be cruel to me instead? And what about the boy? He thought they were his friends, couldn’t understand what they were doing. I wasn’t going to explain it to him. It was too complicated, too hard, too involved.

So I did the easy thing. I walked away. And I’ve always regretted it. I wonder now how much of an impact I could have made if I’d really always had something to say. If I’d said the things that mattered, stood up for people who actually needed my help, gotten involved instead of keeping my head down.

In this era of visibility, where everyone can see what anyone says about anything on social networking sites, it’s even more obvious to see kids being hurt, being bullied, being the victims of cruelty. I wonder if I’d had that access as a teen, would I have been the one to call out bullies and tell them to shut up? Would I have stood up for the people too exhausted by ceaseless torment to stand up for themselves?

Would I finally have decided to really have something to say?

I don’t know. I hope so. Because being a bully is easy, and being a victim is all too common. But standing on your safe middle ground and deciding to reach out where you can make a difference? That is a rare and difficult choice.

Make the choice. Do something.
Never
shut up.

I wish I had.

The Day I Followed
by Eric Luper

“Only one last test and you’re in the club,” I said to Sam, who was trotting alongside me like a puppy eager for a treat. I could feel excitement radiate off him as we walked to the far side of Henshaw Park.

Sam fiddled with the zipper of his hoodie. “What do I have to do?” he asked.

“It’s easy,” I said, not quite sure what I had in store for him.

Ricky Parillo had told Sam that there was a series of tests you had to pass in order to get in with the group of kids who hung out at the park, and Sam had been begging all afternoon. The least we could do was give him something to do.

I glanced back at the bench near the swings. The other neighborhood kids—Ricky; Mark; the twins, Glen and Gary; and a few guys I didn’t know—urged me on with grins and fist pumps. It had been only a few days since Ricky had pegged me in the back of the head with a basketball and I figured I’d rather be on the dealing side of things for a change. Anyhow, Sam could take it. He’d been putting up with this sort of stuff long before I moved to town.

At least that’s what I’d heard.