My 13 year old sister started eighth grade this past year. During that summer, whenever we had our sisterly talks, she would always ask me “What was your eighth grade like for you?”. I could never really answer the question truthfully because eighth wasn’t exactly the highlight of my teenage years. “It’s something you’ll have to experience for yourself”, I would always answer. And that was somewhat true. Because if she based her eighth grade year off of mine, well, she’d be in for a hell of a ride.
When I started middle school, it was very exciting for me because I was in an all new county. I had thought I had established myself and my friendships because 6th and 7th grade were easy for me. So when my last year of middle school came around, I just knew it would be my best year ever. I was completely wrong.
I had thought bullies and mean girls only existed in cartoons and Lifetime movies.I never fathomed I would ever be a victim of bullying. Her name was Latabiya Howard and she was anything and everything that the girls wanted to be. She was the bees knees and everyone loved her. Her evil sidekicks took form as Destiny Smith and Tammy Spikes. And of course sidekicks being sidekicks, they followed behind her every move. We had all started out as friends; we were on the cheerleading team together and we always had sleepovers together. On the outside looking in, we were all kind of the “it” girls.
You see the thing with girls is that we can all be friends, but we are always competing with each other, a secret a competition that we’ll never admit too. And My so called friends and I each had VERY different personalities. So we had our differences, usually over a boy or he-say, she-say. I would say that I was the most quiet of the group and the nicest, a pushover if you may, and sometimes that worked to my advantage. But when the day came that my friends turned against me, a pushover was the worst thing I could be.
It was the middle of basketball...