*STORY OF THE DAY. What would you do?

I was mildly horrified when Emeka didn't ask me out the first Semester of school, but I was a happy camper. I saw him every single day.

In the seven minutes between classes I'd head to the bathroom and change my hair style. No matter what I had to change my hair before class. I was never satisfied with it and it often made me late.


In between staring at Emeka from across the room, I found myself surprisingly entertained by my Peace and Conflict lecturer He was eccentric, creepy even. One day I straightened my hair. I walked in and as usual it was just me, Emeka, and the teacher. The lecturer sat down at the desk in front of me leaned in like he was going to kiss me and said, "I love your hair like that. You look OLLLDERRRR."
Blue immediately intervened putting his arm around me and pretending we were together. That was the kind of guy he was, heroic.

It's amazing how you can fall in love with someone's subtleties. He was everything I wanted to be. So social. He could generate an incredible conversation with a stranger. He enjoyed life and so did everyone who spent time with him.

I started to notice that he was spending a lot of time with another girl from my class, we'll call her Vivian. Blonde hair, blue eyes, thin as a rail. She might have been the prettiest girl I've ever seen up close... and oh yeah, she had an equally beautiful twin sister. She was the pillar of popularity at our school as far as I knew.

Around the time I started hearing rumors that Emeka was dating Vivian, and that they broke up, and that they were back together ect... She began to give me terrible looks. At first I thought I might be imagining it... but it got worse. I didn't know why she didn't like me, but if looks could kill, I'd would have been so dead. There were people dropping dead in the crossfire. People in the hallways started coming up to me and asking me about it... but I didn't know why any of it was happening.

I was bullied in middle school by girls. Actually one girl in particular. It was kind of traumatizing. I let her do it, I never said anything and was determined not to let high school go the same way, so one day when Vivian was giving me her daily death stare, I mustered every ounce of confidence I had and yelled, "Bitch what?!"

She stopped and yelled back, "Wow. You're cool!"
I said, "Yeah. I know I'm cool. What?"

And then she disappeared into the hallway.

Was I fighting with her over Emeka? I wasn't sure. For all I knew she hated me for some other reason. I thought that was the end of the battle... until lunch.

I was sitting at my usual table waiting for my friends to join me when the 8 most popular girls in school surrounded me.
"What's your problem?" One of them said.
I took a sip of my milk, "Excuse me?"
She put her hands on her hips, "Why are you picking on poor Vivian?"
Another girl chimed in, "Yeah. She's so nice and small."

I knew I couldn't back down. I didn't care if there were 8 girls.

I looked their leader in the eye, "Actually she's the one who had a problem with me. I just asked her what her problem was."

"Oh... well... whatever. Stay away from her."

And off they went... along with my chances of popularity or getting into Vivian's crowd. None of them ever spoke to me again... and Vivian suddenly was more distant than ever.

Perfect. I'd never get a chance to tell him how it really went down. It just looked like I was the one bullying the little blonde girl... go figure.

The question of the day is, how would you have handled the Vivian's situation?

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Thanks for reading.

Originally appeared in LOVE HAPPINESS AND OTHER MYTHS under a different title and a few edits.