Tell Me Three Things Read Online Free

all those
20/20
specials on school bullying will finally make sense. Somebody Nobody may be a prank, but he/she is right: this place is a war zone. I’m going to need my own personal “It Gets Better” video.
    My face burns. I touch my finger to my head, a sign of weakness, yes, but also a reflex. There’s nothing wrong with my scrunchie. I read on Rookie that they’re back. Scarlett wears one too sometimes, and she won Best Dressed last year. I fight the tears filling my eyes. No, they will not see me cry. Scratch that. They will not
make
me cry.
    Screw them.
    “Shhh, she can hear you,” the other one says, and then looks back at me, at once apologetic and gleeful. She’s high with a vicarious bitch thrill. Then they walk on—sashay, really, as if they think there’s an audience watching and whistling. I glance behind me, just to make sure, but no, I’m the only one here. They are swaying their perfect asses for my benefit.
    I pull out my phone. Text Scarlett. It’s lunchtime for me, but she’s just getting out of school. I hate that we are far apart in both space
and
time.
    Me: I don’t fit in here. Everyone is a size 0. Or 00.
    Scarlett: Oh no, don’t tell me we have to do the whole U R NOT FAT thing. The entire basis of our friendship is that we are not the kind of girls who have to do that for each other.
    We have never been the types who are all, “I hate my left pinky finger! It’s just so…bendy.” Scarlett is right. I have better things to do than compare myself with the unattainable ideals established by magazine art directors who shave off thighs with a finger swipe. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to noticing that I’m on the bigger side of things here. How is that possible? Do they put laxatives in the water?
    Me: And blond. Everyone is. Just. So. California. Blond.
    Scarlett: DON’T LET THEM TURN YOU INTO ONE OF THOSE GIRLS. You promised not to go LA on me.
    Me: Don’t worry. I’d have to actually talk to people to go LA.
    Scarlett: Crap. Really? That bad?
    Me: Worse.
    I quickly snap a selfie of me alone on a bench with my half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I smile instead of pout, though, and label with the hashtag #Day14. Those blondes would pout, turn it into an
I’m so sexy
picture, and then Instagram it.
Look how hot I am not eating my sandwich!
    Scarlett: Lose the scrunchie. A little too farm girl with that shirt.
    I pull my hair loose. This is why I need Scarlett here. Maybe she’s the reason I’ve never been teased before. If we hadn’t met at the age of four, I’d likely be an even bigger dork.
    Me: Thanks. Scrunchie officially lost. Consider it burned.
    Scarlett: Who’s the hot guy photobombing you?
    Me: What?
    I squint at my phone. The Batman was looking out the window just as I took my shot. Not photobombing exactly, but captured for posterity. So it turns out Blond and Blonder did have an audience after all. Of course they did. Girls like that
always
have an audience.
    My face flushes red again. Not only am I a big fat loser who eats lunch alone with an unironic scrunchie in her hair, but I’m stupid enough to get caught taking a selfie of this wonderful moment in my life. By a cute guy, no less.
    I check the little box next to the picture. Hit delete. Wish it were that easy to erase everything else.

CHAPTER 4
    “ T . S. Eliot’s
‘The Waste Land.’
Anyone read it?” asks Mrs. Pollack, my new AP English teacher. Nobody raises their hand, myself included, though I did read it a couple of years ago, in what now feels like a different lifetime. My mom used to leave poetry books strewn around our house, as if they were part of some unspoken scavenger hunt, a scattering of convoluted clues leading to I don’t know what. When I was bored, I’d pick up the books off her nightstand or from the pile next to the bathtub and randomly flip them open. I wanted to read wherever she had highlighted or scribbled illegible margin notes. I often wondered why a