Invisible

I will be skinny. Next year when I come back to school, I will not be fat, and these people will not torture me, Derrick thought as he sat on the bus the last day of school.

Every school day for the past year I was bullied from the moment I climbed on the bus. Kids made endless taunts and cruel comments. Most of the time they were just verbal abuse, but as I think about it, some were physical, like the time my shirt got ripped just because it was new. It was as if the bullies knew I was proud of it, and they wanted to take it from me. Or the time I had a hair style I really liked and they messed it up before school just to take away any confidence that I tried to muster. The spitting was bad too. The verbal taunts went on and on and were targeted at my weight. I've taken it for too long. Now I've had enough

As I walked home from the bus stop one day, I thought of ways to lose weight over the summer. There has to be a way for me to be skinny when I go back to school. It would be my first year of high school and I knew I had the chance to make a new start. Middle school had been miserable and even though I liked the academics, I hated the other kids and the way they treated me.

High school will be better, and I had the summer to make it work. I know I will have to starve, but it will be worth the effort. Not that I really want to be popular, I just don't want to be picked on anymore. When people say kids can be cruel, they do not truly know the extent that kids will go to when the victim is an outcast. They make it their life's work to make the outcast miserable. I had a few friends who tried to help me when they saw it happen, but they could not always be around, and I had to fend for myself. There was not a lot that they could do to fix the problem because it had gone on too long. I was now the target of multiple bullies, and it was not going to stop just because my friends defended me. It would take more than that to make them go away. My nephew and a few other people on the bus stood up for me, but they did not catch all the bullying. I hated to involve them; I did not want them to be a target as well, so I told them it was fine.

When I walked in that day after school, my mom asked me about my day and I said that it was fine. I did not want to tell her what had really happened. She would only worry and call the school. Most of the teachers took the side of the bullies because those kids were athletic and popular. So calling the school was a waste of time and made it worse. Besides, school was over for the summer, and next year was going to be different.

* * *

I will not have to come in feeling this way ever again. I am going to be the one thing that I want the most next year. It is not skinny or popular; all I really want is to be invisible.