by Marnie Lamb
“Yes! You have no idea how difficult you’ve made things for me. Chanel is going to hate me!”
“Not if you tell her you’re not friends with Kallie.”
I chewed my lower lip. “It’s too late. I already told them we’re friends.”
“Well, that was stupid, Hil. I told you, you should’ve dumped Kallie at the end of the summer. I knew she’d be trouble, but did you listen? No. So I don’t know what you want me to do about it. It’s not my fault.”
I hung up, irritated. According to her, nothing was her fault, and she wasn’t involved. But she was involved, everyone was. Why couldn’t she see that?
As I got on the bus to go to school the next morning, my legs were shaking so much that I tripped climbing the stairs. How would Chanel react now that she knew Kallie and I were friends? My only hope was that Amber and Tiffany hadn’t told her yet, and that I could explain things to her in private before anyone else got to her. I had a plan. Chanel usually hung around her locker until the bell rang for homeroom, so I was going to approach her and ask for her help in fixing my hair. (I’d pulled it into a messy, complicated updo that morning.) I’d then lure her to the washroom, where I’d plead my case.
But I was too late. Chanel was already sitting in homeroom when I arrived, and she was surrounded by so many people I couldn’t get close to her. The shaking returned, more violently this time, but luckily no one noticed. People were focused on Burgundy, who was talking about some website named Fashion Kritic.
“Everyone has to check this out,” she said. “There’s a new posting on it that’s hilarious.” She wrote the internet address on the board, and several people copied it down. She erased it before Mr. Benson came in. I didn’t understand what the big deal was. I vaguely remembered Lynn mentioning this website to me, but I couldn’t recall what it was about. I didn’t have much experience on the internet. My mom had installed so many parental controls on our home computer that surfing the net was hardly worth bothering with.
At lunch, I headed to the caf to find our usual table empty. A ropeful of knots wound its way through my stomach. I didn’t like the look of this. Sometimes we went to the pizza place across the street for lunch, but no one had told me we were going there today. I wondered if I should I go anyway. No, I thought, I’ll just wait. Maybe they’re coming. But no one came, and I ate alone.
Then I went to my locker. A girl from my homeroom came up to me and said, “I loved your photo on Fashion Kritic.” She and her friend burst into a fit of giggles.
My heart began to beat in my stomach. What was she talking about? I hadn’t posted a photo of myself anywhere.
I couldn’t concentrate on any of my classes that afternoon. I couldn’t even worry about Chanel and how I was going to get her alone. All I could think about was this photo. As soon as school was done, I went to the computer lab, logged in, and googled the website. When the fuchsia dress icons began dancing across the screen and the pop music began playing, I remembered that I’d seen this website before. Lynn and I looked at it on her computer at home. It was a website where you could post photos of people and comment on their clothes. Kind of like a teenage fashion police. With a sinking feeling, I clicked on the What’s New link.
Sure enough, one of the most recent postings was “Mackenzie High School Dance, Toronto, Ontario.” It had been submitted at 8:34 p.m. the day before by B. Townsend. Burgundy. I clicked the link.
At first the photos and comments were innocent. Chanel and Burgundy. Chanel and Brett. Chanel and Lynn. Then there was one of Chanel and me, both of us grinning at the camera. There was nothing interesting about the photo, except the comment: “Even black can’t help you when you’re this fat.” Underneath the photo was a caption: “Beauty and the pig.”
I think I must’ve stared at the screen for a full five minutes, listening to the ticking of the clock in the almost-empty room. My jaw trembled wildly, and the backs of my eyes were like a dam trying to hold back a torrent. Three girls on the other side of the room looked at me, smirked, and began whispering. I managed to close the website, log off, pick up my bag, and walk out.
The washroom was only twenty feet away. As I locked the stall door and sunk down to the filthy floor littered with scraps of toilet paper, the weakening logs of the dam gave way. I curled up with my head between my knees and cried.
The next morning, I purposely arrived late for homeroom so that I wouldn’t run into the cool people. Of course that only made them laugh even more when I finally slunk in. At lunch, I sat at the opposite end of the caf. So imagine my surprise when instead of sitting at their usual table, the cool gang sat at the one right next to me.
All I can remember about that lunch is chewing my dry vegetarian pizza into a thick pulp that tasted like wallpaper, while the cool gang sat there and thought up every name they ever called me. The ones specifically designed for me, I mean. Jellyroll. Bowling Ball. Bowl Head. Toilet Bowl. Toilet Face. I’m not counting things like loser, cow, and retard. You can use those on anyone.
I suppose you’re wondering why I didn’t just get up and leave. It would’ve been easier than sitting there listening to them insult me. But I wouldn’t let myself. Leaving would’ve been admitting that they got to me, that I couldn’t take what they dished out. It was like Kallie, when she continued eating her lunch after the spaghetti incident. Now I understood why she’d done that. She didn’t want to give in.
I thought a lot about Kallie that afternoon, mostly about how horrible it must’ve been for her to be picked on all these weeks, with no one on her side except Chu Hua. And I figured she couldn’t be much help, she seemed so scared and confused. All those times I’d told Kallie I was sorry for the cool gang’s behaviour and I understood how she felt … I realized now I hadn’t understood. But I did, finally. Maybe if I apologized to Kallie, we could patch things up and still be friends.
After school, I waited for her, hiding in the library until I was sure the cool gang had left. I could afford to do this because Kallie often stayed after school, practising with the track and field team or using the art room to work on her art fair project.
When Kallie saw me standing at her locker, she looked like she wanted to run away. She needed to get to her locker, though, so she couldn’t escape.
I said hi to her, but she ignored me.
“How’s the art fair thing going?” I asked.
She threw a textbook into her locker. “What do you want, Hilary?”
I took a deep breath to steady myself. “I want to say I’m sorry about what’s been going on. I mean, I’m really sorry for the way those people are treating you. I know it’s really hard, especially when so many other people are joining in.”
“At least I have Chu Hua,” she said shortly. “She’s been a really good friend.” I couldn’t help taking that as an insult, but I figured I deserved it.
“I hate those people,” I said, “the way they tease you and call you names … it’s horrible. They think they’re such big shots, but they’re really jerks. Look Kallie, I know I haven’t been a very good friend these past few weeks, but I still really want to be friends. And don’t worry, I’m not hanging around with those people anymore.”
“Just like that? All of a sudden you’re not friends with them?” she said suspiciously. “Why? Did they call me a barfbag one too many times? Unless …” She looked at me craftily. “Unless they did something to you. That’s it, isn’t it? You got in a fight with them and now you’re coming crying to me.”
I looked away. My mouth was so dry it felt like the insides were cracking.
“Well, forget it. It’s too late.”
“Why?” I knew it was a stupid question.
“You can’t just be my friend whenever it’s convenient!” she shouted. “How long will you stay friends with me this time? Until they decide to take you back? Real friendship means being friends with a person in the bad times, not just the good. Chu Hua is a real friend. You’re not.”
I crunch
ed the insides of my cheeks.
“I should’ve known you’d be like this,” she continued angrily. “Ever since I met you, you’ve been obsessed with being ‘cool.’ Like that time at the mall when you were embarrassed to be seen with me and you shoved me behind the postcard rack.”
I was silent.
“But I really should’ve known after you lied about Marcia.”
I placed my burning hand against the cool metal of a locker and flinched at the chill, like it was an electric shock.
She said more quietly, “You know what the worst part of all this is? I would never have treated you this way. That time at the beach … when you were so worried about your weight … you didn’t get it. It didn’t matter to me whether or not you were fat. You could’ve been 800 pounds for all I cared, and I still would’ve been your friend. Well, not anymore.” She shut her locker door and began striding down the hall.
I tried to run after her, but a pain in my stomach stopped me after a few steps, and soon, she was out of sight.
And so began the worst period of my life. The cool group — well, I really don’t want to describe it all again. You can look at what I wrote a few pages earlier and fill in the blanks. Let’s just say they found a new target they could use all that ammunition on. Someone more fun to pick on than Kallie. Someone who responded to their name-calling and dirty looks by looking at the ground or blinking back tears. Someone who let herself be slammed against lockers and walls and doors and who calmly picked up her books from where they’d scattered. Someone who answered their rude questions by saying, in a small voice, “I don’t know.”
Once Miss Stephanopoulos asked me whether I was O.K. I smiled weakly and told her I was fine, I just had a headache.
And the fear. You know that hot anxiety that begins in the pit of your stomach and feels like worms swimming in a sea of boiling water? And how the worms slither up into your chest, up your throat, and slink out onto your face so that your skin breaks out in red patches?
Yeah … well … that happened every time they looked at me or said something to me. Every time I got on the bus to go to school. Even when I was lying in bed on a Friday night, it happened.
Because, see, that kind of fear and anxiety … it isn’t limited to school. It overflows like spilled acid and eats away at every other part of your life.
And the worst thing was I was completely alone. Kallie never spoke to me, not even when we sat together in art. Once, when someone shoved me against a locker, she helped me pick up my books. I tried to thank her, but she walked away. And I was too afraid to phone her. Whenever I thought of her, I remembered the way I’d treated her, and I told myself that a bitch like me deserved to be alone.
I did call Lynn at first. I told her how Kallie was mad at me for hanging around with the cool gang, and I asked her what she thought I could do to make them stop teasing me. She advised me to write a note to Chanel, apologizing. Apologizing for what, I never understood. But I did write a note and left it in Chanel’s desk. She never responded, and I wondered if Burgundy or Tiffany had stolen the note before Chanel could see it.
I phoned Lynn again. “What should I do now?” I asked anxiously.
She sighed. “I don’t know. Look, I have to go. I’ve got a lot of homework.” I listened in shock as she hung up on me.
After that, whenever I’d call, Lynn wasn’t available, and she never returned my calls. It dawned on me that Lynn wasn’t going to help me, that she didn’t care about what was happening to me, and my insides turned cold like the air from space.
One evening, after one of these calls, I was standing in the hallway, biting the tips of my fingers. Mom noticed and asked what was wrong. I babbled something about stress.
“Why are you under so much stress?”
“We have a lot of homework,” I said.
She paused. “How’s your new friend? What’s her name, Chanel?”
I froze. I hadn’t even hinted about my problems with Chanel to my mom, and I would rather have endured twice as much teasing than have my parents find out. If it was hard to pretend that everything was peachy, it would be even worse not having to pretend. The thought of my parents feeling sorry for me, or worse, not feeling sorry for me and telling me to snap out of it… It would be like someone using a carving knife to peel off my bruised skin, strip by bloody strip. I didn’t think I could take it.
I took a deep breath before responding. “Oh, she’s fine,” I said nonchalantly. “I don’t really see her that much anymore.”
“Why not?” Her voice had a sharp brightness to it, like the sparks of light that glint off a knife as it’s being sharpened.
“Well, she’s really busy with school. We’re all busy with school.” I looked her innocently in the eye.
“How’s Kallie?”
“She’s fine. Look, Mom, I don’t have time to talk. I have a lot of work to do.” I turned and headed to my room.
“Hilary, is something wrong?”
I paused for a nanosecond. Maybe, just maybe, if I talked to my mom … but what good would it do? It’s not like she could make Chanel and her friends stop teasing me. “No, I’m fine, really.”
“Because if you ever want to talk about anything, anything at all, you can come to me.”
“Of course. But right now I have nothing to talk about, that’s all.” I walked away.
When I didn’t have any friends left, there was only one thing that stood between me and a dark abyss: homework. But I could barely concentrate on any of my projects and assignments. They just reminded me of school and of what was waiting for me every time I went there. Forcing myself to study was like forcing myself to tear out my nails with my teeth. Even the subjects I liked were horrendous. Every time I tried to work on the art fair, I remembered Kallie, and it was too painful to continue. And all the creative writing assignments I did during this time were dismal. I had another short story due soon, and I was dreading it.
Life became a bleak round of going to school, taking the abuse, and trying to focus enough so I’d do decently on my report card. Otherwise my parents would get suspicious.
But then one day, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I’ll never forget it. It was after school, a few weeks after they started teasing me. I was alone at my locker, and I’d just gotten out of detention. It was my first time in detention, and I was there because I’d forgotten to do my math homework three times in a row.
As I reached into my locker to grab a textbook, I noticed how quiet it was, so quiet I could hear the hum of the electric lights overhead. Then it began. The slow, deliberate clicking of heels on the floor. I thought of running away, but I knew they’d just chase me. It was better to swallow my fear and pretend they weren’t even there. Because, as I’m sure you know, they can smell fear and they pounce on it.
I closed my locker and turned around to see Chanel, Burgundy, Tiffany, and Amber. They had formed a circle around me.
“Oh, Hilary, that’s such a beautiful sweater,” said Tiffany, in her I’m-pretending-to-compliment-you-but-I’m-really-insulting-you tone. “You must’ve got it from that welfare bum Marcia.”
“Yeah, ever notice how all losers dress alike?” snickered Amber.
“No,” said Chanel. “You’re wrong, Amber. She could never wear Marcia’s clothes. Marcia was skinny. She’s fat.”
My heart felt like someone had struck it with a hammer. I looked up into Chanel’s eyes, searching for some compassion or regret or even uncertainty. But there was nothing in them except a cold, hard glaze, like a mirror painted black. And that’s when I finally understood. After all these months, after all my hoping and dreaming and planning, I finally got it. Chanel Winters was a bitch.
The photo from Fashion Kritic was taken on her phone. She was the one I talked to about whether my dress made me look thin. It wasn't Burgundy; it was Chanel. She was the one who got Burgundy to post that picture. She was the one who started the teasing.
Their laughter echoed in my
head as I pushed past them and ran down the hall. I can vividly remember seeing the blur of the ethnic shields on the walls, and how their bright colours made me want to puke.
I ran all the way home. I still don’t know how I did it, in the late-November rain, which soaked through my mittens and coat as if they were Kleenex, leaving my skin slick. And it must’ve been at least three or four kilometres. By the time I stumbled across the lawn, my body felt like vicious dogs had been snapping at my flesh.
I saw Kallie’s mother hurrying out their front door. I suddenly remembered our first meeting and how her hand had felt warm. Kallie’s mother will help me, I thought, she won’t turn away from me like everyone else.
I went over and said hello.
“Oh, hello, Hilary,” she said quickly, fumbling with her car keys. “How are you doing?”
“Not that good,” I said. “I’m having a problem with these people at school. I don’t know what to do. I thought … you might be able to help me?”
She frowned and said softly, “I’d really like to, Hilary, but … I think it might be best if you talked to your own mother about this.”
I looked at the sopping ground, and she continued, “I’m really sorry, but I’m late for an appointment. I’m sorry. Please talk to your mother and let me know how it turns out?”
I managed to nod. I watched her get in her car and drive away.
I unlocked our front door to be greeted by my mom’s voice from the kitchen.
“Hilary, is that you?”
“Yes,” I called. My voice sounded weak and irritable.
Mom came down the hall, adjusting the cuff of her sleeve. “I’m just going to see Mrs. Carruthers for a minute. Would you mind putting —” She stopped. “My God, Hilary. Are you all right? What happened?”
I stood there in the hall, water dripping from my drenched coat and mittens, snot draining into the corners of my mouth, my eyes bulging out like a broken doll’s. I stared at her as alarm traced a crazy pattern on her face like an Etch A Sketch. Then suddenly I was overcome with disgust and fury. I threw my school bag at her head, and she ducked, her jaw dropping.
