Truth about Truman School (21 page)

So that's it. It's all over. Lilly's back, but I guess she's not coming back to Truman. I can't say I blame her. The language arts teachers took a break from our regularly scheduled curriculum to talk to us about cyberbullying.

I took notes: Technology has made it possible for kids to harass each other in new ways. What is cyberbullying? It's when you bully someone online. Why is it bad? Because you don't see the person you're bullying and they don't see you. So you say things you might not say otherwise.

Once I realized we weren't going to be tested on this, I stopped taking notes.

Mrs. Michael said someone had been hurt by the Truth about Truman and those other websites. She didn't name names, but we all knew who she was talking about.

And now the whole school was supposed to write about what happened with the Truth about Truman and those other sites, how the whole thing got so out of control, how it affected us, and how we felt about it. She said it wasn't just one person who was responsible; our whole school was responsible.

I got what she was saying, but I couldn't help but feel I was a little more responsible than everyone else. My feelings were all jumbled up inside. I still didn't like Lilly all that much, but we had a history together. And I felt bad about what happened. I didn't write any of that mean stuff about her, but I created a website that made it possible for other people to write stuff about her. It almost made me wish there had never been a Truth about Truman website.

I feel like a little kid who's being made to write one hundred times, “I will not cyberbully anyone.” What good is that going to do? Do the teachers really think that by making us write a paper about it no one's ever going to go online and say something mean about someone else ever again? They're fooling themselves if that's what they think!

Mrs. Michael said, “Because you can be anonymous online, the person you show the world online is usually not the real you.” I think she's dead wrong about that. I think the person you show online is exactly the person you really are. The person you show in real life is the one that's fake. Think about it. Most people are chameleons. They act different around different people. What's real about that?

Mrs. Michael is probably one of those do-gooders who sees all the bad stuff people say or do online and then thinks, “That's not real.” But the truth is, that's the only thing that
is
real. The person you are when no one's looking, or when no one else knows who you are … that's the person you really are!

I got a little annoyed by how the teachers made such a big deal about this
cyber
bullying thing. Like cyber-bullying was somehow worse than any other kind of bullying. Bullying is bullying. Whether it's being done on the computer or anywhere else.

A lot of adults are blaming the whole thing on computers. I have news for them. Kids have been bullying each other a lot longer than computers have been around. So don't blame computers. Blame the kids!

Besides being suspended for five days, my mom and stepdad grounded me for a whole month. Plus they took the computer out of my room. They said I didn't deserve to have a computer in my room since I had shown them I didn't know how to use one responsibly. From now on, when I want to use the computer, I have to use it in the family room, where I get, like, no privacy.

My mom even made me write Lilly a letter of apology, which she
read
to make sure it was good enough. Didn't anyone realize we were just goofing around? It wasn't any big deal.

Okay. We got it. Saying bad things about someone online, whether it's on a website, in an email or an instant message, or a text message is bad, bad, bad. We're bad kids. We go to a bad school. We'll never do it again.

Can we move on now?

I still had some unfinished business before I started at Roosevelt. Call me crazy, but I wanted to meet with milkandhoney in person.

I got an email from Lilly! It said:
Dear milkandhoney, I know who you are.
Obviously she did know who I was since the email came directly to me.
I don't want to get you in trouble. I just want to talk to you. I think I know why you did this. I think we should talk in person rather than in email. Meet me at the monkey bars at our old
school at 4:00. If you show up, I promise I won't tell anyone
about you. But if you DON'T show up, I MIGHT tell.

I didn't get it. Why would Lilly want to talk to me in person? And why wouldn't she want to get me in trouble? Why wouldn't she want me to pay for my role in all this? I certainly wanted her to pay for everything she ever did to me and every other unpopular kid at Truman.

Lilly was perched on top of the monkey bars when I arrived at Hoover that day. She watched me walk across the playground. There were some elementary school kids playing basketball, and a couple more over by the swings. But Lilly and I were the only kids hanging around the monkey bars.

I squinted up at her. “How did you know it was me?”

Her eyes were focused on something just over my head. “I didn't,” she said. “I
thought
it was you, but I didn't know for sure until right this second.”

“Oh,” I said, digging my toe into the sand. “Are you going to tell on me now? Now that you know it's me?”

“I said I wouldn't.” She still wasn't looking directly at me.

“Well, then why did you want me to meet you?”

Now, she looked at me. “I wanted to say I was sorry, Trevor.”

I blinked. “Y-you wanted to say you were sorry?” There was nothing she could have said that would have surprised me more. “For what?”

“For what I said about you. And your mom. You know. Two years ago. Right before she died.”

Oh.

“I assume that's why you did this.”

You're so ugly your mom would probably keel over and die of embarrassment for giving birth to you.
That was what she'd said to me.

“It was a horrible thing to say,” Lilly said in a small voice. “Especially when … you know … your mom … ”

“Died?” I filled in.

Lilly nodded, then looked away.

I leaned back against the bar. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to bring Lilly Clarke down. I wanted to make her feel as bad as she made other people feel. And … it looked like I had. But it didn't bring me as much satisfaction as I thought it would.

Remember when I said I thought the person you show the world online is the person you really are? If that's true, then I'm a bully. I'm no better than Lilly or Reece or Jonathan or any of the other kids who have bullied me all these years.

At first I thought I could just stay Anonymous forever. But in the end, I decided I had to write the whole truth. I also apologized to Lilly. Maybe now I can finally move on.