nodded.
It felt as though the walls of the room were collapsing around me.
My mother began to cry.
That day, Jessica and her friends had locked me inside the locker room. They took my bag, drew pictures on my face, and laughed at me.
I tried to escape.
Jessica shoved me, and my face struck the open door of a metal locker.
My nose broke.
And Michael had stood in the corner, recording everything on his phone.
“You recorded me?” I asked.
“I was a stupid fifteen-year-old kid.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Yes,” he said. “I recorded it.”
The video spread through the school the following day. That was when the names “beak,” “witch,” and all the others had begun.
Michael’s father was an influential businessman. He had come to the hospital and offered my mother money in exchange for her silence.
“How much?” I asked her.
She couldn’t
