Dear Bully

I’ve already explained that my intrusion into the pretty, popular girl territory of acting isn’t the only reason Rachel hates me. She thinks she’s sticking up for a friend of hers who I had a disagreement with last year. She has no interest in my side of the story. The petty argument is grounds for making my summer a living hell.

Rachel and her cohorts twirl in delicate circles on the sidewalk in front of Mia’s house. They catch sight of my pale, sweaty face in the window and laugh before skating off.

I carefully wind the cord of my headphones around my Walkman, still thinking about Johnny Rotten.

I’ve decided that I will get big, black boots and wear safety pins as earrings.

I will learn how to snarl.

If Mean Froze

by Carrie Jones

It is recess and all my friends rush out to play

Freeze tag. I am always brilliant at standing still

As Scott Quinn, Jackie Shriver rush past me—one,

Two, three—until a hand reaches out to tag me into motion

Again, but this day I have to talk to Mr. Q,

My English teacher. A too-good girl, I never get

In trouble, but Mr. Q doesn’t like me, never picks

My stories to read, never picks me to talk

If my hand is raised. He cringes when I speak. Every time

My mouth opens, he cringes. Everyone whispers

About it. Whatever he wants, I know it can’t be good.

Not me alone with him and his porn star mustache and talk radio voice.

My dad has just died. My step-uncle has just touched me.

I am not prepared for even the smallest of blows, but there

He is—an earthquake of a man, always rumbling, always ready

To tremor my life into something that’s just rubble.

“You are here because of your s’s,” he says.

My s’s . . . My s’s . . . My . . . I pick at a hangnail, shift

My weight, look out the window at Jackie running

From Paul Freitzel, laughing . . . laughing . . . happy . . .

Back in first grade, I refused to talk because everyone laughed at my voice, at those s’s that slurred around in my mouth and refused to be still, those hopeless, moving things. Jayed Jamison imitated me to giggles, calling me Carrie Barnyard, St. Bernard, pulling my hair, chasing me at recess, knocking me down so my tongue tasted dirt and pine needles invaded my mouth and then he’d start it all over again, hissing s words in my ear, sss-sausage, sssss-snake, shshshs-shiver, all those sloshy s’s. Everybody just watched. Everybody took tag turns mocking my voice so

I stopped talking. I stopped

Moving my tongue. I gave

Away my lunch, my snacks

Until people loved me too much

To be mean. And slowly

—what an s word—

I started moving again, whispering

Words and thought forward

While Jayed stayed stuck in first grade.

We moved on to second and cursive writing,

Haikus, and Mrs. Snearson who wore fatigues.

I thought it was over.

This seventh-grade recess, Mr. Q ends all that.

He says, “If you don’t fix your ridiculous voice,

You will never make anything of yourself. You will be a loser

Forever, Carrie. No one wants to love a girl that sounds like you.

No one wants to hire a girl like you. Don’t you want

A life?” He perches on his desk and I stare at too-tight chinos

And a porn mustache and manage to say, “But . . .”

He cringes, lifts a finger, stops my words.