Dear Bully Read Free

one can take your place. From you, I realized that life is harsh and not always fair. I learned that not everyone is well-intentioned. I realized that not everyone will like you or respect you, no matter what you do or how much you try to please everyone. I learned to rely on myself, to believe in myself, to do for myself, and to fight for myself. Having family and friends to provide a shoulder to cry on is a wonderful thing, and I’ve taken advantage of their love and kindness more times than I can count, but it is your adversaries that strengthen you, that toughen you, that sharpen you, that force you to be the best you can be, to keep trying no matter how difficult the task or unachievable the goal, to prove them wrong.
    Because you victimized me, I no longer allow myself to be victimized. You broke my bully cherry and I’ve never been the same.
    Love,
    Tonya

Dear Audrey
by Courtney Sheinmel
    Dear Audrey * ,
    I’m counting on the fact that you’ll never pick up this book. After twenty years, there’s an enormous part of me that feels choked up by the thought of you, afraid to open my mouth because what I say might make it worse. At least when I finish this, the things I bottled up will be there, in writing.
    Except now I don’t even know how to start.
    We were friends in seventh grade; for a few months, we hung out together after school nearly every single day. Then, I remember, you started spending a little bit less time with me and little bit more with Jessica Searle. At lunch, you stopped caring whether I saved the seat next to me. My mother noticed you didn’t call so much anymore, and when I told her I thought maybe you wanted to be Jessica’s best friend instead, she assured me that you’d come around. Maybe the problem was that I kept inviting you to things; maybe I should have just left you alone. One day you pulled a Bloomingdale’s catalog out of your locker. It must have been during study hall, because in my head I see a few of us sprawled out in the hallway, uniform skirts rolled up and boxer shorts worn underneath, our attempt at modesty. You flipped the book open and pointed to different items, a pair of leggings, a sweater with patches on the elbows, and asked whether I liked them.
    The phone rang that night and my mother came into my room. “Audrey for you,” she said with a smile—a smile that meant, You see, I told you so .
    When I picked up, you said, “I can’t believe you actually liked those overalls—they’re so immature. And that pink baby-doll dress was hideous.”
    There was a muffled sound and I asked you what it was. You pretended that you hadn’t heard a thing. Then you said maybe your sister had picked up the extension. But I knew you were calling me on three-way, probably with Jessica Searle, and when I hung up the two of you would stay on the line and talk about how awful I was, how babyish and inferior. I’d done the same thing with you a couple months before. You called Beth Fogel and asked what she was planning to wear to Lorelai Martin’s birthday party, even though you knew full well she hadn’t been invited.
    It occurred to me just how mean we’d been to Beth, and I was sorry for that; but even more, I worried about turning into someone exactly like her.
    As time went by, you picked on the things that most embarrassed me and found flaws I didn’t even know I had. You laughed at my fear of elevators, at my tendency to refer to my childhood babysitter as a big sister. You told Señora Baldwin that I cheated off your Spanish quiz, just because I dared to sit in the seat next to yours. You said I should meet you at our old pizza place, and then you never showed up. I thought it was my fault: I was too short, I wasn’t pretty enough, I didn’t like the right music, my parents didn’t have enough money. I didn’t stand up for myself, ever, and now I wonder if part of the problem was that I never confronted you; instead I retreated and cried in private. But I