Be the Girl(87)

That’s right. Mom and Mick were looking at something for the bathrooms. Vanities or something.

Mr. Keen left five minutes ago to meet with Holly and her parents, a notepad listing the chain of events that led to this morning under his arm and a deep scowl of disapproval on his face. It first appeared when I played them the video of Holly in the bathroom and deepened as each plot point of the rest of the story was revealed—the ensuing threat, the “accidental tripping,” the cookie fiasco, the SWF Eats Instagram account, and the final straw: the prom joke.

I left nothing out.

“I told you that I like to know about my students.” Ms. Moretti settles into her chair again and clasps her hands in front of her. “I was curious about you, about why you quit cross-country after ninth grade, that sort of thing … so I spoke to your old guidance counselor, Ms. Forester.”

The stomach-clenching reaction I’d expect to feel hearing that doesn’t come. Probably because I’ve already confessed to everything. “When?”

“About two weeks ago.”

I was right that day she started asking questions. “What’d she say?”

Ms. Moretti pauses for a long moment. “Boy, that woman needs to retire, am I right?”

The answer is so unexpected—and so on point—I burst out laughing, the simple act lifting some of the weight from my shoulders. “She had these printed one-page calendars on the wall in her office, for each year until retirement—2022, I think? There had to be, like, six years on there and she X’d off each day with a red Sharpie.”

“Probably not the best person to have in that role, then.” Ms. Moretti sighs. “She told me all about Julia Morrow. The video that started it. The joke that ended it.”

I nod, focusing intently on the ice pack against my knuckles. I’d much rather have a bag of frozen peas. “There were a bunch of us in on the prom joke. Not that that makes it okay.” My best friend, Denise, and three other friends who didn’t like Julia either. We’d all gone to the same small elementary school together, so naturally we clung to each other as we navigated this new, daunting world of high school—of unfamiliar faces and pecking orders. I can’t even say if the dislike for Julia Morrow was already there before the dubbed video she made of me. All I do remember is my friends’ fierce loyalty and desire to avenge me afterward.

The prom joke was actually Denise’s idea but I readily jumped. At the time, I thought I was so lucky to have such good friends. Only after did I see us for what we really were—a pack of rabid wolves, feeding off each other’s innate ugliness.

“We didn’t know her.” We didn’t know that she had a learning disability—not a serious one, but one that had fed the chip she wore on her shoulder and a steady cloud of depression. We didn’t know that there was a thick folder from Children’s Services attached to her address, thanks to years of alcoholism and verbal abuse from her family. We didn’t know—but we suspected—that Julia didn’t have a single person she could call a friend, that she could talk to.

Julia was just the sour-faced girl who lived in a ramshackle house by the train tracks in town, who came to school in cheap clothes and greasy hair. She was the one who went after me for talking to the guy she was crushing hard on, and in our eyes, she deserved all the rumors spinning, all the laughter, the rejection.

And then she killed herself.

“And she didn’t know you, either.” Ms. Moretti’s face fills with sympathy. “Ms. Forester sent me the video that Julia made and let float around, of you talking to that boy.”

I shouldn’t be surprised that they’d kept a record of that. “It came out about a month after I found out that my dad had this secret family.” I went from a semi-obscure ninth grader to a punch line overnight, while my family was falling apart.

“I’ll bet those daddy-issue jokes she made hit you pretty hard.”

“I assumed she somehow knew what was going on. It felt like an attack.”

And so I struck back, again and again, with the help of my loyal friends. My home had splintered and I had no control over it. But making Julia pay for using it against me made me feel better.

Ironically, everything she dubbed into that video likely stemmed from her own family issues.

Things changed swiftly after Julia Morrow killed herself. Students who freely joined in on the ostracizing, on the “Julia Morrow has scabies, pass it on” type rumors—many that my friends and I hadn’t even started—were suddenly weeping for this girl who had been bullied and killed herself. We were suspended for two days, for the prom-proposal joke, but that’s as far as our official punishment went.

That’s when the unofficial punishment began. It started with a private message in my filtered IG folder, telling me I’m a bitch. It quickly escalated to dozens of messages a day, calling me everything from ugly to skank to whore. Anonymous notes were stuffed into my locker, one of them giving me instructions on the best ways to kill myself. All little acts of retribution, from people who felt justified.

The final straw was the day someone gave me a shove as I was climbing the stairs. I tumbled. Fortunately, all I ended up with was a broken ankle.

Unfortunately, my scattered things—along with the note on how to kill myself—were picked up by a teacher, who then showed it to the principal, who then called my mother.