The New Girl Next Door

Chapter 3

Kaylie’s POV

Becky wasn’t lying when she said she was going to make my life hell. I expected everything from the party to be blown over in a couple weeks since summer barely started and there were going to be a lot more parties before junior year started up in the fall. Even with all the stuff that happened over summer such as Beth and Paige (Becky’s minions) having a threesome with Bryan Jones or the girl ranked number one in our class using acid, me apparently having s*x with Dylan was still the thing everyone talked about.

I swear every other day someone was posting on that stupid page a new story about me. None of them were true. Do people seriously believe that I gave a guy a hand job at church? I couldn’t even keep up with all the stories, but the more that came out the more people were calling me a w***e, slut, or any other derogatory word they could come up with.

I thought I would be fine if I just avoided all the remaining parties over the summer and didn’t bother commenting on any of the posts, since I would just fuel all of their hate. However, people thought I wasn’t getting the message, so they brought the message to me. One night someone took a ladder up to my bedroom window and taped a poster to it. So, when I woke up, I had a lovely message to read. You’re a w***e and no one likes you. See you around Butterface. If that wasn’t bad enough, someone sent my dad a letter in the mail containing that picture of me in a purple bra and boxers with a caption reading, Your little slut of a daughter. Luckily, my parents were out of town when that happened, so I was able to throw the letter away without him ever seeing it.

When school started in the fall it didn’t get any better, actually it got worse. I couldn’t just not open my f*******: app and avoid all the comments and posts about me anymore. I thought people would leave me alone since they didn’t have a computer screen to hide behind, but that didn’t stop anyone. I wasn’t able to walk down the halls without hearing at least one person call me a slut. Or I would find a note in my locker reminding me I was one.

Since I was now the school ‘slut’, guys thought they had the right to slap, grab, or pinch my ass whenever they felt like it. At first, I would tense up, grit my teeth, and tried to walk more quickly anytime I passed a male in the school hallway. After a while I just became numb to the feeling. There was nothing I could do to stop it from happening.

There was one time I tried swatting a guy’s hand away. He grabbed me and pushed me up against the locker. I am only five foot and one inch, so this guy was able to pin me easily. He found a way to get both of my wrists into one hand and press himself as hard as he could against me to trap me between him and the locker. With his free hand, he slowly placed it under my shirt and dragged his disgusting fingers across my stomach, then up my ribs, and eventually to my bra where he squeezed my breast as hard as he wanted. I knew he was trying to get a reaction out of me. I tried my best to bite my tongue to save face, the fear in my eyes gave it away. After that I decided I would keep my head down and let the guys grab my ass anytime I walked by. Fighting back wasn’t worth it.

As much abuse and torment, I experienced at school, I tried to hide it from my parents and teachers. Even when I felt like falling apart in the middle of class or wanted to ditch school to hide away from it all, I never let it happen. I wasn’t going to let them all see me break. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of knowing how much they ruined me.

I found myself shutting out everyone that cared about me. Claire and Emma would try to stick up for me when someone bullied me, but I feared that people would eventually turn some of the abuse onto them. I started pushing them out and began ignoring their calls and texts. I would have hated myself if I brought them down with me, so it was the only way I could have protected them.

How did I cope with all of this? Well, I found two methods to help me deal with all this mistreatment. The first way was my schoolwork. Most would expect that my effort in school would diminish, and my grades would suffer. It is a common reaction when someone is being bullied and feels depressed. But I did the exact opposite. I never wanted my grades to drop. I placed too much value on how I did in school, and if my grades began to drop my teachers and parents would start asking questions. I put my head down and got assignments done even if it was over week before the due date. When I finished my homework, rewriting notes, and rereading chapters for class, I would find myself opening a random book to enter another world and forget all that was happening in my own.

Keeping busy with school was a good distraction for me, but I felt like I had no control over my body. I was groped and grabbed constantly, and my body was picked apart on f*******: especially since Toby wasn’t the only one that posted a photo of me. I found myself taking back some control over my body through my second method of coping.

Depending on how bad I was feeling that day and how much crap I had to endure, I would find myself sitting on my bathroom floor with a razor blade that I took out of an old pencil sharpener. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I would slowly drag the blade across my wrists or upper thighs. I would watch the blood bead up around the new wound and slowly trickle down my body, as I felt some sense of relief. Unfortunately, these two methods only lasted for so long.