My Side Read Online Free

school. My dad always leaves early, hours before the first customer is out of bed, and it’s my mom’s day to volunteer at the church. So there’s just me.
    I skip breakfast. I’m not hungry.
    I walk to school and almost turn back half a dozen times.
    I think about the video and wonder if everyone has seen it by now.
    When the school comes into sight, my question is answered. A girl spots me. She nudges the girl next to her, who nudges the girl next to her. They all stare at me. One of them says something to the other two. I can’t hear what they say, but I can see them. They’re laughing.
    Someone else hears them and turns to see what’s so funny. There are maybe fifteen or twenty kids hanging around outside the school, and pretty soon they’re all looking at me and laughing.
    My stomach does acrobatics. I’m glad I didn’t have breakfast, because if I had, it would be on the ground right now.
    I slow to a stop. Part of me—okay, all of me—wants to run home and hide under my bed and never come out again. But I’m not stupid. I know hiding doesn’t solve anything, ever. Sooner or later, you have to come out. So I keep walking. My legs are as shaky as a newborn deer’s. My eyes are stinging. My throat is tight and dry. But I keep going. I tell myself I can get through this. I even believe it until I get inside and start what seems like the longest walk of my life— up the stairs to the second floor and down the east hallway, which is crowded with kids, all the way to the end where my locker is.
    You’d think the queen was going by.
    Or a death-row prisoner on the way to his execution.
    With every step I take, another couple of kids fall silent, until finally the crowded hall is like a cemetery filled with mourners, that’s how quiet it is.
    I pretend not to notice. I don’t dare look at any of the faces that are looking at me. I take hold of my lock and start to work the combination.
    I open my locker.
    There, on the inside of the locker door, where my mirror should be, is a poster-sized picture of my face, mouth wide open, eyes wide open, in a silent scream of terror.
    Someone laughs. It’s one of the kids near my locker.
    More kids laugh, because what happened to me is the funniest thing that’s ever happened here. Because it’s hilarious to see someone who’s convinced she’s about to be strangled or hacked to death by some creepy stranger who hangs out in the bush.
    I reach for the poster.
    I rip it from the door.
    I tear it into a thousand pieces.
    I flee to the girls’ bathroom and lock myself in a stall.
    I stay there after the bell has rung.
    I stay there even when I hear the click of heels on the tile floor outside.
    â€œAddie? Addie, are you in there?” It’s Ms. LaPointe. She knocks on the door of the stall. “Addie, I heard what happened. Come out, and we’ll go down to the office and talk about it.”
    By then my eyes are swollen to three times their normal size, and I can barely see out of them. My cheeks are wet with tears, my nose is red from blowing, and my head is aching, probably from dehydration.
    â€œAddie?” She sounds tense, as if she’s afraid what I might be doing in there. “Addie, if you don’t come out, I’ll have to get Mr. Sloane to open the door.”
    Mr. Sloane is head of maintenance. I imagine that getting around— Mr. Sloane went into the girls’ bathroom with his toolbox, and a crying you-know-who comes out with Ms. LaPointe. I open the stall door.
    Ms. LaPointe looks as concerned as any vice-principal would under the circumstances. She also looks relieved as she checks out my wrists and scans me for any other signs of self-damage.
    â€œI heard what happened,” she says again. “Let’s go to the office and talk.”
    I agree because I can’t think of any other place in the school I want to go to or that you could get me to