Still furious, still humiliated, Bridgette fumed as she stared into the mirror. She wasn’t so bad, no matter what Ash said. She saw her hair, long and wavy… so what if it didn’t flow like soft mist on her shoulders like Karen’s blonde tresses, or Ashley’s black curls? So what if it fell down her shoulders in long, tangled shards, resembling barbed wire around a prison yard?
Furious, she pulled her hair back and tied it behind her head in a rough ponytail. Stupid girls! Stupid, wretched, backstabbing, false friends! Her hair tied back, she could see her face, and every imperfection stabbed her eyes. A small patch of acne on her left cheek that had stayed there for weeks. The brown spot below her right ear which gave her nightmares that it would sprout hair like a boy’s chin. Not like Karen’s alabaster face, so flawless that one could picture it carved out of marble. Not like Ashley’s scintillating green eyes that sparkled like emeralds. No, Bridgette Mittison was rough, wiry, speckled, and if she stepped back she would see that she was--
Her eyes teared at the memory. She would not step back. No, there was no need to hurt herself further by looking at the rest of her contours. She pulled the black band off her ponytail and threw her hair forward like a whiplash, covering her face and teary eyes as her mind replayed the scene from Mrs. White’s English class again, for the twenty-fifth time that day.
What a rotten teacher Mrs. White was! She had loved Freshmen English, where Mrs. Prior could make each story come to life like magic. But for Mrs. White, it was grammar, spelling and worksheets as dry and boring as sand. She wouldn’t explain how anything worked: she’d read the definition of a direct object in a monotone voice, give the assignment, and slouch behind her desk, staring into space.
It was no better when she had a substitute.
“Mr. Dunbar” he called himself. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and sneezed with such force that Bridgette swore she could feel droplets from his nose landing on her arm, the little piece of cloth he held notwithstanding. “Please… AH-CHOO! Please answer when I call your… HAH-CHOO! Name. Dear Lord, this season does a number on me.”
“This is farm country,” snarked Ashley. “Don’t you know that?”
“Believe me I do,” said the sub. As he felt another sneeze build up, he turned his head to the wall, and lost his grip on his handkerchief. The students hid their faces behind their arms as the air erupted. “AH-CHOO! I need some more tissue. Your teacher left a note to finish your Grammar sheets.”
“Which one?” asked Bernard.
“Don’t you already know?” Dunbar said. He yanked a piece of lined yellow paper from his pocket and read it through his watery eyes. “Ah. 6-E. The green sheet,” he said.
Most of them had finished the green sheet the day before. Nobody bothered to tell him. “Get to it,” he said. He sat at the teacher’s desk, and rifled through her drawers in search of tissue paper.
Bernard was the only one who would work while there was a sub. Every other kid with an ounce of pride would socialize instead. Not all at once, but gradually whispers became hushed voices, and as more joined, the volume increased. Mr. Dunbar was too busy fighting his allergies to worry about controlling a class that was only his for one period. Rick talked to Mark about their upcoming football game, Nate opened his sketchbook for one of his amazing doodles, and Bridgette turned to Ashley and Karen, her two best friends in the whole world…
Resting her forehead against the mirror, Bridgette’s fingers clenched as she remembered, with a sick feeling in her chest, what happened next...
“I’m going to wait until lunch,” Ashley said. “And ask Nate.”
“Wasn’t he interested in Cynthia?” Karen asked.
“Cynthia?” Ashley wrinkled her nose. “That’s a joke. Her glasses take up half her face. Nate’s an artist, he wouldn’t be seen in public with a four-eyes like her.”
Glancing over, Bridgette stole a peek at Nate. His dark hair, long and curly, billowed on his shoulders as he played with his sketch. Even from three seats over, she could see him illustrating a portrait of the substitute, sneezing into a giant handkerchief in a field of ragweed.
Bridgette nibbled her lip, an old habit when she got nervous. The Winter Formal was easier in a way. All she had to do was hang out and wait for the right boy to ask her out. But the Sadie Hawkins Dance threw all that out the window: it was expected that the Girls would ask out the Boys.
“Who are you going to ask, Bridgette?” whispered Karen.
Glancing at him from the corner of her eye, Bridgette sneaked a peek at Rick. One of the better looking guys on the football team, he had it all. Over six feet in height, Rick towered over the teachers. He was Quarterback for Plainview High’s Football team, and he was only a sophomore. And unlike Trent Rooke, everyone knew Rick to be a nice guy. Trent hogged the credit after the team won a game, and blamed everyone else in the world when he lost. Rick always praised someone else for their wins, and accepted blame for losses. Nobody missed Trent after he graduated. And no boy in Plainview High was as perfect as Rick.
And he was sitting only two rows away.
Leaning forward, Bridgette whispered to her friends. “Rick Huber,” she said. “I’m going to ask him.”
“RICK?” said Ashley, in her full voice, drawing the eyes of everyone in the classroom. “What makes you think Rick would go out with a fat cow like you?”
The room erupted in laughter. Janet, Justin, Natalie, Mark, laughing full force. Even Rick overheard, guffawed in his loud voice. Even the substitute snickered! And Bridgette saw her two “best friends,” Karen and Ashley, laughing themselves into stitches.
“Moo moo!” said Karen, and they launched into a second round of hysterics.
The only ones who didn’t laugh was slow-witted Bernard, who sat there with a confused look on his face, and Nate, whose dark eyes perked up, and then back down to his sketch. Fuming, Bridgette got up and pushed herself out of the room, fighting back the tears until she cleared the door.
“Oh look!” yelled Justin. “She’s going to cry!” And a third round of laughter erupted behind her. Bridgette rushed to the bathroom, tears flinging from her eyes. She spent the rest of the class period on her knees in the stall, sick to her stomach, feeling like she would throw up.
Her eyes watered at the memory. She stared at the mirror with eyes of hate. Hate for her classmates. Hate for what she saw.
She avoided eye contact with everyone for the rest of the day. Every lesson the teachers gave sounded like distant voices, far away, making sounds that did not concern her. She didn’t hear a word Mr. Jenkins said in Science. In Art, she stared at the blank white canvas. The scene from English replayed itself over and over in her head.
Stepping back from the mirror, Bridgette stepped sideways. Lifting her shirt, she forced herself to examine the contours of flesh. It hung there, like a middle-aged man’s love handles. Reaching around, she squeezed it between her fingers. It was there, it was real, it was gross, it made her sick. It was her.
Letting her shirt drop, she pounded her fists into the wall, still in the wraps of fury. It’s not like she ate a lot. Her diet was not much worse than anyone else’s. Exercise didn’t come naturally to her. She had latent asthma, and sports made her sick. Her lungs would fill with cobwebs, her breath became labored, she wheezed like Darth Vader and she would cough up chunks of phlegm. Why would you exercise when it made you sick? So she didn’t, and she had the body of a fat cow-
“No I don’t,” she muttered. “I’m not fat. Diane is fat. Vic is fat. And Lori is a tub of lard.” She was only fat compared to one of those perfect cheerleader waifs, or the models that graced the billboards.
And even if I was as fat as Lori, she thought, I wouldn’t call her a cow in front of the class. I wouldn’t call her a cow at all.
She heard the front door open and close. Grabbing the towel, she blotted the tears out of her eyes. They ruined the eyeliner she had put on that morning, making it a thick blotch of black. But it was old anyway. She washed it off with soap, forced a brave smile on her face, and went downstairs to say hello to her father.
“What’s the matter, honey?” her father said the moment he saw her. He had the tired lines on his face that he always had when he got home. He rested his briefcase on the counter, and couldn’t wait to take off his sports jacket. As usual, he threw off his tie and unbuttoned his top collar the moment he left his office for the car. The look in his eye told her that more than anything else he wanted to sink into the sofa with a cold drink, but he would never relax if he suspected his daughter had a problem.
“I want to sue somebody,” she said.
“Again?” he sighed. Suing conversations were long; he grabbed a glass bottle of apple cider from the refrigerator, popped the cap, and sank into the sofa. “Who?” he asked.
“Ashley Jacob and Karen Mena,” said Bridgette.
“Aren’t those friends of yours?” asked her father, as he sipped his cider.
“Ashley called me a fat cow in front of the whole class,” said Bridgette, feeling the bitterness surge as she told the story. “Everyone laughed: Karen, the teacher, even Rick!” She put her hands up to the side of her face. I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I won’t cry…
Her father leaned forward. “So you want to sue Ashley for calling you a… er… a uh-“
“Fat cow,” she said, the words bitter on her tongue.
Her father nodded. He hated repeating hurtful words. “And Karen. Why sue her?”
“She was there,” said Bridgette. “She could have said something, told off Ashley, but she laughed. Louder than anyone, and she’s supposed to be my friend.”
“Well if she was laughing along with the class,” her father pointed out, “then to sue her, you’d have to sue everyone else who was laughing too. And laughing isn’t against the law.”
“Then just Ashley,” she said. “Let’s sue her.”
“Okay,” her father said. “We just sue Ashley.” He had his professional voice on, talking to her like she was one of his clients. Bridgette’s mother hated it when he talked to her this way, but Bridgette found it soothing. It would make her forget how upset she was. “So what are we suing Ashley for?”
“For being a mean, nasty, snarky loudmouth-“
“No one can be sued for being. They can only be sued for doing.”
“For calling me a name in front of the class,”
Her father nodded. “But that’s a form of speech,” he pointed out. “And speech is free under the first amendment.”
“Not all speech,” Bridgette said. “Not libel. Not slander, and not fraud.”
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Taking another sip from his bottle, her father nodded. “That’s right. Not libel, not slander, not fraud. So if what Ashley said was libel, slander, or fraud, you might have yourself a case.”
Bridgette nodded. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“Well,” said her father. “Probably not. You see, libel is a written form of defamation. Let’s say Ashley published an article about you in the newspaper, saying you were…. er… a uh….”
“Fat cow,” said Bridgette. The word seemed less traumatic when she spoke it to her father when he was in lawyer-mode.
“Yes,” he said. “So if she printed it, and it wasn’t true, you might have a case. But this was spoken, not written. So libel doesn’t fit.”
“Slander then,” Bridgette said. “She slandered me.”
“Now Slander is the spoken word,” her father said. “But even slander must have been publicized. That means it needs to have been broadcast somehow. If Ashley said it on the evening news, and it was seen across the country, then maybe we would have a case of slander. Did she do that?”
“No,” said Bridgette. “It was just in the classroom. But the other kids saw it, and they might tell others-“
“But that wouldn’t be Ashley,” said her father. “She didn’t publicize it. She said it in a private context; ergo, I don’t think we can successfully prosecute her for slander.”
He leaned back, one leg folded over the other, sipping his cider. He was already half done. Mother always chided him for drinking them like water.
“What about Fraud?” asked Bridgette.
“Ah,” her father said. “Fraud is, well, it’s misrepresenting the truth. Let’s say you had a headache, and Ashley sold you a bottle of aspirin, only it was really sugar pills. That would be fraud: selling you something that you said was one thing only it turned out not to be. Did Ashley do that?”
“No,” said Bridgette. “But can’t I get her on anything? Breach of contract?”
“Did you have a contract?” her father asked. “A pre-existing relationship?”
“She was my best friend!” said Bridgette. “And best friends don’t embarrass each other in front of other people.”
“Did you have a best friend contract?” her father asked.
“It’s assumed,” said Bridgette. “Isn’t it?”
“Ah.” her father said. “But in Law, we can’t assume anything. Everything has to be written down, clear as day. That’s a contract. You might say that the contract between two best friends implies they never embarrass each other. But then she would say that it’s okay to embarrass the other one. But since you didn’t sign a written friendship contract, it can’t be proven in a court of law.”
“Why would she say it’s okay if best friends embarrass each other? That’s ridiculous!”
“Because she doesn’t want to go to jail,” said her father.
“So you’re saying,” she said, feeling her upset start to rise again, “that because we didn’t sign a best-friend contract that you can’t do anything?”
“Not in court,” her father said. “Children are mean to each other, and there’s not much we can do about that.” Putting down his cider, he leaned forward. “Look honey. In a few years you’ll graduate, go to college, and all of this will be just a distant memory. I know it seems important now, but in time you’ll see-“
She threw a pillow at him. He caught it in his free hand. “Hey, what-?”
“You don’t understand!” Bridgette said. She stomped back up the stairs, went into her room and slammed the door. Of course he didn’t understand. He didn’t see Rick laughing at her with his mouth wide open and his nose pointed at the ceiling. He didn’t see the snot-nosed substitute laughing with everyone else. He didn’t see…
She heard her mother come home. The front door slammed shut. Mom was always in a hurry. She could hear Mom and Dad exchange greetings, but she couldn’t make out the words. Carefully, she pressed her ear to the door.
“Her friends embarrassed her. She’s still upset.”
“Still? How long ago was it?”
“One of her classes."
"Which one?"
"I’m not sure. I don’t think she said.”
“She probably said and you just forgot.”
“That’s not true. Does it matter? An English class, a Math class, a History class, what difference would it make?”
“And how many of those ciders did you drink?”
“This is just the second.”
“Don’t lie to me, Will. That’s three.”
“One is from last night. This is just the second bottle I opened.”
“So you didn’t clean up from last night?”
“Janice, will you let me relax a little? Please. Go talk to her.”
“Don’t tell me to- fine. And quit leaving bottles on the side table. It’s disgusting.”
Footsteps padded up the stairs, and Bridgette took three steps back. Within a heartbeat, her mother was there. She seldom took the trouble to knock.
“Your father says you’re upset,” she said, sharply.
Bridgette hesitated. There was something so striking, something so intimidating, about how her mother said that. It was accusatory, like if she had found Bridgette with her hand in the cookie jar.
“Well?” her mother said. “Why are you hiding in your room?”
“Yes I’m upset!” Bridgette near shouted, somehow feeling that volume was the one defense she had against the accusing tone. “Ashley called me a fat cow in front of everybody!”
“Don’t take that tone with me!” her mother said. “And Ashley was always a stuck up brat. I don’t know why you waste time with her. You’re better off without friends like that.”
“I’m finished with her,” Bridgette said.
“Good,” her mother said. “Now maybe you’ll listen to me. Are you coming to dinner? Or are you going to sulk here for the rest of the night?”
“Just leave me alone! Why don’t you care?”
Removing her glasses, Bridgette’s mother glared at her with bare eyes. Those twin orbs, staring underneath her graying hair, cut as deep as diamond cutters. Her father may be an attorney, but her mother felt like a prosecutor. “You want me to hold your hand while you talk about mean girls at school? I have enough on my plate without teenage drama. Teenagers are rotten! You’re in a pool with a bunch of sharks. So the best thing to do is not care. Those rotten girls will go on with their rotten lives, and you’ll never worry about them after graduation. You’re home, we love you, and that’s it. It’s just High School. Show those girls you don’t care.”
“But I do care!” said Bridgette.
“What for?” said her mother, exasperated.
A hundred words fought to escape from Bridgette’s lips. Because she wanted to belong. Because she didn’t want to sit by herself in the cafeteria when she ate lunch. Because she wanted a boyfriend who would hold her hand and listen to her. Because English grammar was boring, and Math seemed meaningless, and Mr. Phrick taught History by showing boring movies in black and white. Because without friends, she would be outcast, and everyone would laugh at her when they saw her and… what if she really was too fat?
“I don’t know,” she finally said.
Her mother softened just a touch. “I know High School is hard. But it’s only for a few more years and then you’ll be free! You’ll never have to see these people again.”
“But I want to!” said Bridgette.
“Friends come and go!” shouted her mother, her anger bursting forth. “You think I have friends from school? Good riddance to all of them! You have family, and that’s more important!”
Why does she always say that about her own High School days? What happened back then? Bridgette knew it would be useless to ask, so instead she said nothing. She folded her arms and glared back.
Her mother shook with unbridled frustration. “Don’t look at me like that, young lady!”
Bridgette turned her head, facing the wall, but kept her arms folded. That pushed another button, but her mother had had enough. “Fine!” she said, “I give up! Sulk all you want.”
She went downstairs, leaving Bridgette alone. In a flash there was no noise, except her mother’s footfalls thumping downstairs.
Her mother had always been strict. But her long hours at the hospital made it worse. The more stress she picked up, the more she wanted an easy time at home. Chin up, smile, and don’t give mommy anything more to worry about. I’d get more sympathy from the wall.
She sat at her bed, head tightly fixed away from the door, forcing herself not to look in the mirror. Her childhood dolls stared back at her from the shelves. Her favorite doll, the purple haired Poppy, had a forlorn look in her violet eyes, dreaming of a better time when they were younger and she played jump rope with her friends. Bridgette no longer played with dolls, but at the same time she never put Poppy away. She put her head down on her desk and dreamed of a hundred snappy responses she might have said to Ashley, all of them dying on her lips as she remembered the boisterous laughter.
Finally, she could take it no more. She flung open her bedroom door and left, hungry for distraction. She headed down the upstairs landing to the study. Somewhat stuffy, this was where they stored her father’s law books and her mother’s medical journals. Bookcases filled two walls of the study and part of the third. An enormous desk took the rest of the space. Beside it stood filing cabinets and an inkjet printer that doubled as a fax machine. And mounted on top was their desktop computer. Her father never could cope with a laptop - he said the keys were too small - but he liked to keep a top of the line computer on his desk.
Her parents used it for work. She and her little brother Paul used it for class and games. It’s not like her parents couldn’t afford to buy laptops for her and Paul; it’s that they didn’t trust them with unlimited use of the internet. Even her cell phone could only make phone calls, and was incapable of going online. Both her parents had been raised without television, and if they agreed on anything, it was to limit their children’s exposure to electronics. They’re probably the only two people in America who grew up without a TV. And just my luck, they found each other.
Still, they couldn’t be completely without a computer. So, they had the shared desktop in the family study. I guess they figure if I could sneak a tablet into my room, I’d end up abducted by some predator. As if a predator would be interested in a girl like me-
As much as she hoped the computer would be free, Paul was on it now, penetrating through one of his mindless shoot-’em-up games.
Bridgette sat next to him. “Let me use it,” she said.
“I was here first,” said Paul.
“Let me,” said Bridgette. “I’m in a rotten mood, and I need a break.”
Paul looked at her. “So what?” he said. But he saw something in her face. “What happened?” he asked.
“I had a fight with my friends,” she said.
“Why?”
“They called me a name I didn’t like,” she said. And that was the most she would say to her baby brother.
But Paul just shrugged his shoulders. “Craig called me nincompoop today.”
“What did you do to him?” Bridgette asked.
“I slammed his head into the lockers. He shut up after that.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
Paul looked at her like she was nuts. “No. It was in the locker room. Why would I get in trouble?”
Boys were so direct! Bridgette thought. Though she admitted she kind of liked the idea of slamming Ashley’s head against the wall. Especially if it would just make a bonking sound, with cartoon stars flying around her head.
“Paul, please let me use the computer.”
“Why should I?”
“You can use my bike,” she said.
He glanced over. His bike was busted, but she could tell he wasn’t chomping at the bit to get out of the house. But something in her eye convinced him not to refuse. “All right,” he said, getting up. “I’ll see you later.” A moment later, Bridgette was alone in the study.
Setting herself down on the cushioned chair, Bridgette wheeled herself in front of the giant screen. She opened a web browser, and was on her way.
She frowned as she rested her fingers on the keyboard. She could surf listlessly, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She could open social media websites, but the last thing she wanted to stumble on was gossip about her humiliation. She wanted an escape. Something different. A game perhaps, but not a shoot ‘em up, or a puzzle. She wanted stories that powered her imagination.
She typed “fantasy games” in her search engine. A list appeared on the screen, complete with colorful pictures of princesses and knights. Some were cartoony, others more realistic, but just seeing them made her feel better.
She scrolled through several of the ads, when one caught her eye. It was an image of a shiny, purple treasure chest. Propped open, you could see the glitter of gold coins, a princess’s tiara, and a knight’s sword. The banner across the fortune in gold read “Come to the Dream Chest, where troubles fade away.”
Troubles fade away. That was the problem. Her troubles had spiked. And it didn’t matter if she talked to Mom, Dad, Paul, or her dolls. She was a fat cow, the whole school knew it, and she had to get away. She clicked on the banner.
The screen exploded into a kaleidoscope of color. Stars, moons, rings and gold coins spun across the monitor, hypnotizing her with motion. She could see cracks of her reflection, but each image looked different, like running through a House of Mirrors.
Music played in the background, soothing tones that sounded like dancing fairies. Vocals harmonized, singing words in a language she didn’t know; probably Latin. The shifting artwork consolidated into solid shapes: flowers, trees, impossibly green grass, with growing dandelions and the peaceful rustle of a meadow glade. “Welcome to the Dream Chest,” spoke a voice, in a beautiful, feminine tone of cool serenity.
She gazed at the graphic: a lazy field of moist grass, drifting pollen from flowers, and cotton ball clouds gliding gently across the azure sky. She could almost feel the warm breeze tickling her cheeks. A button faded into view in the bottom of the screen that read: Get Started! She clicked on it with her mouse.
The screen shifted to another view of the beautiful landscape, a sort of flying camera angle. “When you enter the Dream Chest,” continued the voice, “You will not be yourself. You will design an avatar. Your avatar is the vehicle which you will use to see, speak, and feel. You can be who you dream to be: tall, short, strong, beautiful. The choice is yours.”
As the voice faded off, a deep yearning filled Bridgette’s heart. The screen shifted to a menu: design an Avatar it instructed. It offered her a choice of male or female; she did not hesitate to select female. A model image of a woman’s body appeared, as well as a list of options. She could design the bodily contours, hair style, color, and even the smallest details of facial features. It was wide open for her to play with as she wished.
Rotating the model, she designed the most beautiful girl she could. Shiny hair that gleamed like gold. Sparkling blue eyes, the shade of turquoise just like the sky an inch above orange sunset. But most of all- thin. Not an anorexic skinniness like a pencil, but an athletic fitness, with a body that was toned and healthy. The corner of her lips perked up, giving the hint of a smile as Bridgette crafted the most perfect feminine figure, the type that would be envied by every one of her peers and turn the head of every boy she walked past.
Once satisfied, she clicked on “Finished.”
A question appeared: “Are you ready to enter the Dream Chest?” She typed “Yes” and hit return.
[NOTE: Full novel available on kindle via Amazon]