Dear Nobody Read Free Page B

UP!!!”
    They all burst out laughing, like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. The little ugly, crippled girl was crying. One boy got right into my face and said, between laughs, “What are you gonna do? You can’t even stand up!”
    I felt my face growing hot and my body filling with adrenaline. I gripped the side of my wheelchair with my hands and stood up, screaming, “I’m standing now assholes! I’m standing now!” My legs were in so much pain that I could barely talk, but I didn’t care—I didn’t care that everyone was staring at me and laughing. I didn’t care that it was hard to breathe. I didn’t care that if I fell I could seriously hurt myself. I pushed myself forward and took a few steps. It felt like two metal bars were being pushed into my hips. The pain became too much, and I fell back into the wheelchair, sobbing.
    The boys who had been teasing me looked like they’d seen a ghost.
    Hot tears were running down my cheeks, but I was proud of myself. I felt like I had taken back a little piece of the dignity that the wheelchair, the hospital, and the other kids had stolen from me.
    The boys told everyone what I had done, about getting up like that. And I thought for a minute that everything would be okay. It wasn’t. Then everyone started calling me a faker. They said I was pretending to be unable to walk for sympathy.
    Later that day, I started crying in the middle of biology class—and had to be carried out of class in the teacher’s arms. They took me through the hallway into the nurse’s office. My mom came and got me. I haven’t been back to school since.

Dear Nobody,
    I HATE PEOPLE! At this point, almost everyone can just violently die, and I would sit back and laugh and say, “MAY THEY BURN IN HELL!”
    I should have been born with a dick so the world could suck it.
    I want to grow eight hundred feet tall and scream, “FUCK YOU!” so that the whole damn world hears it. Then I’ll cut off everyone’s middle finger and make ’em shove it up their asses—that way, even deaf people will get my point.

Dear Nobody,
    Today I found a ring I’d lost some place years ago.
    The ring is supposed to look gold, but the paint on it is peeled and tarnished. There’s a small pink diamond on it, and a little, tarnished, golden-ballerina that loosely hangs from the diamond. It used to be worn on my ring finger, but now it only fits on my pinky. My mother bought it for me when I was nine, because I had just started dance lessons. The class was fun and I always looked forward to going to it twice a week. My dance instructor said I was really good. I made some new friends. And I didn’t even mind having to do exercises before we started dancing.
    At home I would dance, almost all the time—sometimes all night, until I had to go to bed. In our old house the basement was set up as my playroom and I brought a tape player down there and would dance. I always got a lot of costumes for Christmas and I loved to dress up and smear-on globs of make-up all over my face and put on performances. I would beg my parents to come downstairs for my shows. Neighbors, friends and visitors—no one was safe. If you came to our house, you would be nagged, begged and tormented to watch one of my performances. And one performance was never enough. If I had already talked you into watching one, you’d end up seeing three. I’d try to get you to stay for the whole entire tape if I could.
    At the beginning of my “performances” everyone would act very impressed; but after a few songs they’d start looking bored and would tell me that this was the last song they were staying for. Sometimes I would dress my friends up in costumes and have them dance with me. But I would get really bossy with them—and we’d usually end up stopping in the middle of a song—either because I was shouting