The tell-tale gets owned

Chapter 2: Escalation

As Natalie got older but continued to look 12, while her classmates hurtled towards womanhood, the bullying got meaner and 10th Grade was the worst year.

One day, she had walked out of the shower after PE class to find her schoolbag tied to the ceiling rafters in the gym.

In a cruel twist, whoever did this had also stuffed her whole school uniform - along with her PE kit and gym shoes - into her bag before affixing it to the high-up wooden beams using a piece of rope.

Perhaps most calculatingly, they had left her with nothing to wear for the rest of the day apart from her underwear, socks and school shoes.

"How could anyone do something so mean to me?" Natalie thought to herself while wondering how they even got her bag all the way up there in the first place!

But Natalie suspected that she knew exactly what this was about. Earlier, in the locker room just before gym class, she'd become frustrated with the usual bullies endlessly making fun of how immature she looked for 15. 

Sick, tired and fed up with the mean stream of questions and personal remarks about her small chest and ruler-shaped body from Allison Hardcastle and her friends, she had finally snapped and told Allison to "Shut up." 

Big mistake. 

The whole room had gone silent in that moment and then it was time to go into class, so she had put the whole exchange out of her mind. And during gym class she had been left alone by the trio - Allison and the two other girls had even smiled at her - so she'd assumed everything was okay now. Maybe they'd realised they were just being too mean to her?

But Allison and her friends were quietly seething over Natalie's piece of insolence and had agreed that the victim needed to be taught a lesson. Cleverly, they intended to lull Natalie into a false sense of security during PE class so that she wouldn't suspect anything was up. It was basketball that day and Allison had even picked Natalie to play on her team and told her she was "quite a good little player."

So Natalie jumped in the shower after gym having no reason to suspect that quite a spectacular humiliation was on the way.

She was never able to establish exactly who did it, but most of the girls – including evil Amy from History class - delighted in her humiliation and stayed back in the locker room for a long time after class just to watch her squirm.

Standing in her underwear with a group of about 12 of her fully dressed classmates observing and commenting on her small stature and lack of body development, she was completely humiliated.

"Don't think she has a single bit of muscle on that body," one girl remarked.

"Nope, nothing. Like a leaf," agreed another.

Nat had a bit of a dilemma to know if she should actually put on her long socks and shoes that the supposedly anonymous perpetrators had thoughtfully left for her to wear.

She knew she was going to look ridiculous if she put them on – and yet, at least it was something to wear that would make her feel a bit less exposed.

First, she felt she had to say what she was thinking.

"What have I done to any of you? No one has the right to interfere with another person's property," she complained.

Looking the victim up and down, Allison teased: "Oh no, has someone broken a rule of Anti-Bullying Club?"

Natalie: "Yes actually."

Allison: "Well this is how it is smallface. You can't prove anything. You have nothing on anyone, do you Natalie?"

Amy: "Nothing she can do."