I stared at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.
“Because you’d make it worse!”
The accusation struck harder than I expected.
“What do you mean?”
“You’d go straight to the principal. You’d demand meetings. You’d make the teachers call their parents. Then everyone would know I told on them, and they’d hate me even more.”
“Emily, I would never—”
“You would!” she interrupted. “You always want to fix everything immediately. You’d tell me to stand up for myself, or ignore them, or stop caring what people think. But I HAVE to see them every day, Mom. You don’t!”
Her voice rose until it broke.
“I have to sit beside them in class. I have to walk past them in the hallway. I have to hear them laughing when I go into the bathroom. And then I have to come home and pretend everything is fine because I don’t want you looking at me like I’m some broken little girl!”
