Cornered
CORNERED
Other Running Press Teens anthologies include
WILLFUL IMPROPRIETY
13 Tales of Society, Scandal, and Romance
Edited by Ekaterina Sedia
Foreword by Scott Westerfeld
BRAVE NEW LOVE
15 Dystopian Tales of Desire
Edited by Paula Guran
TRUTH & DARE
20 Tales of Heartbreak and Happiness
Edited by Liz Miles
CORSETS & CLOCKWORK
13 Steampunk Romances
Edited by Trisha Telep
KISS ME DEADLY
13 Tales of Paranormal Love
Edited by Trisha Telep
THE ETERNAL KISS
13 Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire
Edited by Trisha Telep
CORNERED
14 STORIES of
BULLYING and DEFIANCE
• • •
Edited by Rhoda Belleza
Foreword by Chris Crutcher
Copyright © 2012 by Rhoda Belleza (unless otherwise noted)
“Introduction” copyright © 2012 by Rhoda Belleza. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Foreword” copyright © 2012 by Chris Crutcher. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“NEMESIS” copyright © 2012 by Kirsten Miller. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“On Your Own Level” copyright © 2012 by Sheba Karim. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Shift Sticks” copyright © 2012 by Josh Berk. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Everyone’s Nice” copyright © 2012 by David Yoo. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Defense Mechanisms” copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Miles. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Sweet Sixteen” copyright © 2012 by Zetta Elliott. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Like Kicking a Fence” copyright © 2012 by Kate Ellison. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“How Auto-Tune Saved My Life” copyright © 2012 by Brendan Halpin. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Ambush” copyright © 2012 by Matthue Roth. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Inside the Inside” copyright © 2012 by Mayra Lazara Dole. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“But Not Forgotten” copyright © 2012 by Jennifer Brown. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Truest Story There Is” copyright © 2012 by Jaime Adoff. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Still Not Dead” copyright © 2012 by James Lecesne. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“We Should Get Jerseys ’Cause We Make a Good Team” copyright © 2012 by Lish McBride. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
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ISBN 978-0-7624-4428-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943133
E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-4515-8
987654321
Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing
Designed by Frances J. Soo Ping Chow
Edited by Rhoda Belleza
Typography: Perpetua, Trixie, and Univers
Published by Running Press Teens
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Contents
FOREWORD by Chris Crutcher
INTRODUCTION by Rhoda Belleza
NEMESIS by Kirsten Miller
ON YOUR OWN LEVEL by Sheba Karim
THE SHIFT STICKS by Josh Berk
EVERYONE’S NICE by David Yoo
DEFENSE MECHANISMS by Elizabeth Miles
SWEET SIXTEEN by Zetta Elliott
LIKE KICKING A FENCE by Kate Ellison
HOW AUTO - TUNE SAVED MY LIFE by Brendan Halpin
THE AMBUSH by Matthue Roth
INSIDE THE INSIDE by Mayra Lazara Dole
BUT NOT FORGOTTEN by Jennifer Brown
THE TRUEST STORY THERE IS by Jaime Adoff
STILL NOT DEAD by James Lecesne
WE SHOULD GET JERSEYS ’CAUSE WE MAKE A GOOD TEAM by Lish McBride
Author Biographies
Dedications
Foreword
BY CHRIS CRUTCHER
H. L. MENKEN ONCE FAMOUSLY SAID, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” We would do well to remember that quote when dealing with the issue of bullying.
Bullying is as old as big animals and little animals, so it’s not as if we’re taking on a new problem, but since the Columbine shootings in 1999 we have forced ourselves to take a closer look at the nature of bullying, particularly in schools. (Never mind that later studies of the incident, particularly David Cullen’s masterful book, titled simply, Columbine revealed that bullying per se wasn’t at the heart of the shootings at all.) We wanted simple answers.
The stories in this anthology give us reason to open up a dialogue and search for the complex answers. Bullying may or may not lead to school shootings, but it certainly leads to misery.
In looking for those simple answers we may have set our sights far too low. Schools have developed anti-bullying campaigns that include zero tolerance, programs to help students identify bullying and step in to help the bullied, anti-bullying 4k runs, anti-bullying bake sales; all of which play to a greater or lesser degree of success. But most of the programs focus on the students themselves.
But bullying starts with adults. It starts with controlling parents who will do almost anything to maintain that control, and teachers who don’t tolerate kids finding their ways through natural developmental stages.
Years ago I worked in a child abuse project in which my employer, Spokane Mental Health, coupled with a local Head Start program in order to work with abused kids at a young age, rather than waiting until they were out-of-control adolescents. A five-year-old I’ll call Kevin taught me something about bullies I’ve never forgotten. He was the biggest kid in the room and by far the toughest—little Popeye forearms and thunder thighs—he had teachers who were wary of him. He could have taken any kid in the class. Yet on his bad days he’d walk in, drop his coat on the floor, take in the room like a gunslinger and if you didn’t intercept him, go after the weakest kid in the room; a little girl I’ll call Jessica
, who had been blinded in one eye by her mother’s abusive boyfriend when he couldn’t potty train her way before it would have been developmentally possible. My job in the project was to work with the parents, and I was painfully unaware of preschoolers’ motivations and behaviors.
On one of those early days when Kevin got away, he surveyed the room to make sure no one was watching then stormed across, cocking his fist as he ran and brought it down right in the middle of Jessica’s back. The play therapist saw him go and sprinted to intercept him, arriving a split second too late. She slid across the floor on her knees, scooped him up, and then wrapped his arms. Several staff members scurried to comfort the wailing Jessica and I expected the play therapist to do the same, or lay a blistering scolding on Kevin. Instead, I heard her say, “You must be really scared.”
Kevin burst into tears.
It felt right to me, but I didn’t understand why, so later during debriefing I asked her about it, and about why Kevin always went for the scared kid when he could have whipped the school janitor.
“He hates weakness,” she said. “When he sees it, he wipes it out.”
Wow.
“In Kevin’s house,” she went on, “you do not show weakness or there is hell to pay. If he’s scared or worried or anxious, he has to hide it because it is not tolerated. It is met by punishment and disappointment.”
Kevin had been taught to hate weakness. When he saw it, he rubbed it out.
If you want to find the bullies, a good place to look is among the bullied. Most of what we learn as little ones comes through our pores. Back before language we absorb through all our senses. If we grow up experiencing domestic violence, even if it isn’t aimed at us, we learn the ways of violence. Nothing exists without its opposite; if it feels awful to get bullied, it feels great to bully. Once we’re hardwired that way, it does very little good to try to send us the way of the peaceful warrior.
So maybe we should expand the terminology. It’s too easy to look for bullying kids and try to stop them from being bullies. That usually results in making them more devious. Let’s call it meanness. Let’s call it indecency. And let’s understand that it never starts with the kid.
I could make a case that we live in a bullying culture; that we’re more interested in jumping on bad behavior than preventing it. We do it politically, philosophically, and personally. We like to find who’s to blame and mete out the punishment, rather than prevent. We’d rather build prisons than therapy and trauma centers for families.
It’s a systemic change we need.
The stories in this anthology have the power to get us talking about that change; the power to use our imaginations to create possibilities. My hope is that’s how it will be used.
Introduction
BY RHODA BELLEZA
ONCE IN A WHILE, someone will ask what I was like in high school. “The same,” I always say—which is and isn’t true, but that’s the easiest answer to give. Easier, at least, than pouring my heart out right then and there. That would require a scary amount of self-awareness I’ve never been willing to muster.
I’m not exactly sure why that time is so hard to talk about; I suppose for me it would feel disingenuous to describe all that passion and excitement without also discussing the pain and vulnerability I felt as a teenager. I often felt powerless and suffered a chronic inability to speak up for myself—or for anyone really—as I watched certain injustices unfold before me. Say for instance, when I got called a “slut” walking past the senior quad, or that time a pair of slanted eyes—drawn in Sharpie—appeared on the hood of a friend’s car. Even years later, just recalling moments like these make my heart beat faster and my face flush with shame. The feeling is so immediate it’s like it is happening all over again, this endless moment of guilt and embarrassment stretched out be relived with every recollection, which leads me to suppress it. Bury it somewhere deep. And if one memory even dared to poke its head out? To resurface after I’d exiled it to the far corners of my memory? I’d be there with a mallet, ready to pound it back down like it was a gopher in a carnival game.
I value stoicism (as well as my privacy), so to talk candidly about such a charged time is difficult. To even think about it is difficult. It demands I confront a whole lot of experiences and choices—scenarios where I’ve been victimized, and just as many where I’m the bully and I’m the conspirator by virtue of doing nothing. I’m not proud of this. Everyone has their tactics, and this was mine: to barrel straight past shame and embarrassment, onward and upward to more useful emotions, like denial and reticence. Who wants to stew in your own humiliation when you can claim cool indifference?
I only recently realized that this was a whole lot of effort for not a lot of payoff. This isn’t a carnival game; it’s my life. I hadn’t beat anything or anyone, I’d only been carrying around the pain and merely reacting when a memory resurfaced. All the composure I’d prided myself on had been just the opposite: a testament to how little control I had over my own emotions and—by extension—my own destiny. Screw that, I thought. I couldn’t be the only one; I wasn’t alone. There are people to talk to and ways in which to work through the hurt, and until we realize that, we are divided.
This is all to say that before bullying was in the national spotlight—covered by various news outlets and compounded by social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter—we all had painful experiences that fundamentally changed us. Everyone has been a victim and everyone has been an oppressor. It’s part of our shared history as social, human beings.
Editing this anthology was a gift of perspective. When first put to the task, I asked my friends about their bullying experiences, and hearing their stories filled me with heartbreak and pride. On one hand I felt wronged on their behalf, and on the other hand impressed as to how they’d grown into such capable, caring individuals despite the adversity they faced. Learning these details seems instrumental to my understanding of who they are now—and it inspired me to turn the mirror on myself. It gave me the opportunity to remember a past transgression and infuse this otherwise dark memory with hope—seeing each experience as a marker from which I could measure not only how far I had come, but how much further I wanted to go.
Naturally, I reached out to my favorite authors who had a stake in the content—those who wrote books about the marginalized, the bullied, the other. Not only did I believe in their voices, but in the themes they wrote about, because each and every one captured that universal feeling of disempowerment so honestly and beautifully.
I envisioned the collection of stories would be a balance of both humor and seriousness, as well as despair and hope. This, I think, was achieved—though along the way I was surprised by a variance even I hadn’t expected. Stories deeply grounded in gritty realism were placed next to supernatural tales of ghosts and afterworlds, yet all the themes seemed to converge harmoniously: vengeance, redemption, shame, and empathy. Essentially, no matter how each story is delivered they all serve as guides to overcoming adversity.
My hope for the reader is that you find a piece of yourself in this collection of stories. Perhaps it will help you take pride in who you are, confront the choices (both good and bad) that you’ve made, and inspire you to continue developing creatively, emotionally, and spiritually. Maybe you’ll reach out to people you love, ask them to listen, and be their support system as you learn how their experiences have shaped them. And if none of these things, then my hope above all else is that you come away having read a damn good story. Or fourteen damn good stories.
NEMESIS
BY KIRSTEN MILLER
STEP ONE IS surveillance. You make a lot of enemies in a job like this, and every week I get an e-mail from some jerk trying to settle a score. The phony requests are pretty easy to weed out, but you can’t be too careful. That’s why I investigate my new clients before I get started—even the ones who’ve sent the most heart-rending pleas.
The fifteen-year-old who’s just exited St. Agnes on the other side of
the street told me her name is Clea. I received an e-mail from her last night around ten. The picture she attached showed a younger Clea in an identical plaid uniform. She greeted the camera with a crooked, gap-tooth grin that made me want to reach through the computer screen and squeeze her. That girl is gone for good. No matter what happens in the next few days, she won’t be coming back. Now Clea watches the ground as she walks. Her shoulders are hunched and her spine bent, as if she’s anticipating an ambush. You can’t fake true terror. This client is the real deal.
She’s rushing away from her school toward the bus stop on the corner. I can tell she wants to run, but I understand why she won’t. Running would draw unwanted attention. The hunted quickly learn that it’s better to blend in whenever possible. For a moment I’m confident that Clea’s going to make her escape, but a pack of girls bursts through the front doors of St. Agnes. They stop on the sidewalk and scan the street. They’re searching for Clea. One of the girls spots their quarry, and the chase begins.
I snap a few photos as they barrel past. Clea’s descriptions have proven remarkably accurate. The girl called Kayla must be the one at the head of the pack. Mariah, Jordan, and Natalie are the kids at Kayla’s heels. In the last two years, my clients have come in all shapes, sizes, and sorts. I’ve rescued geniuses, dunces, beauty queens, ugly ducklings, athletes, and geeks. But the bullies are always the same. They follow a leader—usually a kid with an average brain, above-average looks, sadistic tendencies, and an undeniable charisma. The leaders’ lackeys tend to be depressingly ordinary. They’re the sort who do their homework, mind their parents, and go to church every Sunday. Few adults would ever peg them as the kind of kids who’d torture their classmates for sport.
A bus pulls up to the corner of Ninety-Ninth Street and Lexington Avenue, and I watch Clea scamper on board. I imagine her sigh of relief when the doors close. And I know just how fast her heart sinks when the bus doesn’t move. The driver has spotted the four high school girls sprinting in his direction. Now there’s a fifth. When he opens the doors to let the girls in, I make sure I’m right behind them.