Page 37 of Unmasking Love
I offer a placating smile to Tom, the dad, who watches his girls walk off with concern in his features. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Things have been tough for Hannah lately. It’s why we’re moving.”
“Oh, I see.”
“She just hasn’t been herself for a while and we got a call from the school that she’s been getting bullied. She won’t talk to us about it so we decided to move but now she seems pissed we’re moving.”
Wow. Do parents like this really exist? Hannah might be in the throws of teenage crisis but I hope someday she realizes how good she has it.
I blink back at Tom while my eighth grade tormentor comes to mind. Mom didn’t move us until I was a junior in high school and the relocation wasn’t because I’d been an outcast since I was thirteen.
Mom’s speciality was finding men to house the both of us and this new guy was also thirty minutes closer to the ocean.
Win win.
It has only taken her ten more years to finally get the man with the ocean front property. She started out in the middle of the state with an infant and worked her way south and closer to the coast with each relationship.
“Sorry Ms. Daniels, I’m just going to go-” Tom trails off and I step to the side to give him more room to exit the kitchen.
The tour had barely started. We’d gotten through the entryway and I watched Tom and Cheryl as they watched Hannah for her reaction. We moved on to the kitchen and that’s when I said “high school” and the teen stormed off.
I pull out the counter stool and take a seat. I’m not sure what Hannah is experiencing. Cheryl doesn’t seem like the type to sleep with a classmate’s dad and end his marriage. I feel my eyes glaze over as the internal shutters clap closed over my soft spots.
It might not have been so bad except Mom doesn’t know how to be subtle. She got caught bouncing on his lap in the car. By his daughter, my friend, Alena.
The next morning at school, Alena wouldn’t talk to me. I had no idea what I’d done. She didn’t talk to me for two whole weeks. She’d walk the opposite way in the hall. She’d cross the classroom if I tried to approach her during study hall.
I obsessed over what I had done wrong. Was I wearing the wrong clothes? Did I forget her birthday? Did I miss an episode of Supernatural that we were going to watch together?
Then Claudia told Annie who told Sierra who told me that Alena’s parents were getting a divorce and she was telling everyone it was my mom’s fault. That my mom was a homewrecker and that I’m a whore just like she is.
I hadn’t even had my first kiss yet.
How could I be a whore?
But logic doesn’t apply to thirteen year old bullies and I was completely ostracized. No girls wanted to be my friend. They wouldn’t even talk to me. In our grade of sixty kids I’d only speak to someone if it was required in class.
Noone to speak with at my locker during passing periods.
No one to get Starbucks with after school.
No one to trade make up tips with.
No one.
My reputation followed me to Palmdale South High School where the class size and my isolation increased ten fold. I started dating Brandon Giles over the summer and thought my fortune was about to change.
Until he dumped me the week before sophomore year started.
At least I had my first kiss under my belt.
By the time mom found her next man and moved us, Alena had soared to the peak of popularity and she didn’t have to actively bully me anymore. The damage was done. I was a nobody.
In the day and age of the internet, geography isn’t going to do much if the bully is dedicated. Luckily she let me leave without a fuss.
Maybe Hannah thinks moving is a sign of weakness. Bullies take any perceived weakness and exploit it. Like mine, who hounded on the fact I was a whore just like my mother. Something Alena, as my former friend, had talked with me about. I knew the way my mom moved from man to man wasn’t normal. She was the opposite of my friends’ moms.
When we moved away I made a few new friends at school but struggled to make inroads with already established crowds.
“Fine! Whatever, just, ugh!” Hannah yells as she storms back into the house. She stops in front of me at the counter and I sit up straight. “I’m sorry I was rude and left this stupid fucking house while you were just trying to do your job.”
