Truth about Truman School Read Free Page B

as you’re making them out to be.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that, because things were actually quite a bit worse than I was making them out to be. And unless you’re the kind of person who avoids going to the bathroom at school and/or has to hang out in the media center after school till everyone else leaves, you have no idea what it’s like. So let me tell you: NOBODY LIKES TO ADMIT THEY’RE GETTING POUNDED EVERY SECOND THE TEACHER’S BACK IS TURNED!
    So I just said, “Yeah, I guess not,” and then I started to get up. At least I’d already missed the first ten minutes of P.E. The other guys would already be in the gym, so the locker room would be safe.
    But Mrs. H. pointed to my chair. “Sit back down, Trevor,” she said. She seemed surprised that I was ready to leave.
    â€œLet’s talk about this some more,” she said, acting all concerned. “You’re clearly having some sort of issue with your peers.”
    Clearly .
    â€œDoes it have something to do with your mother?”
    â€œNo!” I said right away. Because not everything was about my mother.
    â€œWell, then why do you suppose you’re having so much trouble with the other kids, Trevor?” she asked, like this was some big mystery she just couldn’t figure out.
    Well, gee, Mrs. H. , I thought. Could it be that this school is full of— never mind. I won’t say it. What would be the point?I bet Mrs. H. was popular when she was in school. That was why she said such stupid things sometimes. She just couldn’t relate to what kids like me go through sometimes.
    Finally, Mrs. H. leaned across her desk like she was about to tell me something that was going to change my life. “You know, Trevor,” she said. “Sometimes we do things without even realizing it that sort of … set us apart from the other kids. If you could just try a little harder to get along … try a little harder to be more like the other kids … maybe you’d be happier?”
    See what I mean about Mrs. H.?
    Basically, she was telling me to just do what everyone else was doing. Be like everyone else, then everything will be fine. Right.
    Fat lot of good all that did Lilly Clarke.
    Anonymous:
    Write two versions of what happened. That’s what Zebby Bower wanted people to do. Write the nice school version for language arts and then write the truth for the website.
    Well, guess what? I did that. I wrote two versions. But I have to tell you, the version I turned in to Zebby still isn’t the whole truth. I couldn’t write the whole truth. Not even for her, because even though she’s going to change everyone’s name, people from Truman will still be able to figure out who I am, just by what I wrote.
    So I decided to write a third version. This version.
    You won’t be able to tell who I am by the things I write in this version. This version is going to be totally anonymous. Which means I can tell you things this time around that I couldn’t tell you before. The first thing I want to tell you is: Everyone’s making Lilly Clarke out to be this huge victim. Lilly wasn’t a victim. She deserved what she got. The second thing I want to tell you is: I’ve wanted to bring Lilly Clarke down for a long time. I thought I could bring her down by sending her a few emails now and then and scaring her a little.
    But then the Truth about Truman site came along. The Truth about Truman made it easy to bring her down.
    Lilly:
    My boyfriend Reece and I instant-messaged each other almost every day after school. (I LOVED saying that —“my boyfriend , Reece!”) Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be on the computer after school, but after school was the best time to be on the computer because my mom was at work. So I didn’t have to worry about her standing over my shoulder and watching what my friends and I were saying to each other.
    Almost every