The Discovery by Alessi Teubler
(Year 7, Haileybury College).

She was always one of the smartest and funniest students at school.  She would light up the room whenever she entered but I was surprised and confused by her new friendship group.  I called them the “mean girls”.  None of us dared speak to them.  It was as if they were poisonous.  They were loud and didn’t give us a chance to speak.  They tried to act cool and would often spread rumours about us, sometimes using the Internet to spread their venom.  They were simply mean.  It was the only word to describe them.  Their numbers were few, only three of them, but large enough for us to feel anxious and self-conscious.

Her laughter and smile slowly disappeared when she started hanging around with them.  It wasn’t apparent at first, but as time went on, it became very noticeable.  Her face was always expressionless and sad.  Instead of shining in lessons, she would fade into the back of the class like a shadow.  Her marks dropped rapidly.  School had once been a safe environment for her but now was place where silence was the norm.  Her body language conveyed her anxiety; she walked hunched over, her arms crossed in front of her chest.  Her eyes had dark circles around them as if she didn’t sleep and were red as if she had been crying.  I didn’t know her well, but I knew her well enough to tell that she was suffering.

It was as if her lips had been sealed shut.  She wouldn’t speak to any of us and whenever she was asked a question, she looked down, covered her face and doodled on the page in front of her.

Soon she stopped turning up at school.  What was happening?  I needed to find out what was going on.  I had stayed back at school one afternoon, and as I finished packing my back, I noticed her locker door was slightly ajar.  I looked around and noticed the area around our classroom was completely deserted.  I slowly opened the locker and what I discovered shocked me.  There were numerous threatening notes hidden at the back of her locker.  I felt the tears welling up as I read each of the hateful notes.  Notes saying that she was a “loser”, “gay”, “fat”, “ugly”.

I suddenly realized how stupid I had been.  She didn’t choose to hang around with the group she was in. They chose to hang out with her to blanket and smother her light so they could snuff it out all together.  They enjoyed embarrassing and hurting her just to feel powerful and better about themselves.

I decided to go tell our homeroom teacher, but when I brought up her name the next day, I was told that she was no longer at our school.  She had transferred.  I didn’t blame her for changing schools. Maybe she was an easy target, easy to scare.  Maybe she was too sensitive.  Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Deep down I hoped that she was happy at her new school and that her unhappy memories of my school were fading.  No one deserved to be made miserable by other people.  I felt guilty for not getting involved earlier.  Now it was too late.  I wish I had asked her what was wrong.  I wished I could have helped her find her smile again.