The mistakes of a naive girl

Middle school horrors part 2

When I went back to New Heaven after being at Pace I learned a few things. Apparently I was now the "psycho bitch" and "emo freak" of my grade now. All of this was curtesy of Hailey.
Oh how she loves to be so cruel to me. Yet no one bats an eye at the things she does and says to me and about me. How stupid is this world we live in. How hypocritical is it. Everyone around me, in this town is nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.
People who care not for the underdog, the girl who tries her best but still always fails and is made to look a fool. With 7th grade over the next thing I had to get through was 8th grade. I'm not even sure why I wanted to get through 8th grade so much, it's not like I even got planned on staying alive long enough for high school to make much of a difference. I at least wanted to try and get further in school than my dad before I tried to end my life. My dad's not dead or anything, he's just dumb and he dropped out of school when he was young. He wasn't smart enough for it anyways.
Sometimes I think maybe I'm like him, stupid, dumb, sometimes I worried I was too dumb to even realize just how dumb I was, but I did good in all my classes. I was an A & B student, I never got any grade below a C in any of my classes, I tried in my classes, but I could have always tried more and tried harder than what I did. 8th grade started. I was scared.
I didn't want to have to deal with Hailey and her constant bullying me and degrading me, but what could I do about it? I couldn't go to the principal, Mr. Cable hated me. Everything was somehow my fault, even when I was the one getting bullied? Not sure how that was, but that's how he made it out to be. And then I would get in trouble for going to him about my problems with other students. Then I would be the one to get ISS for the next couple of days and be yet again a social pariah.
But how could I complain? After all it's not like they were sending me back to Pace for something that, yet again, wasn't my fault or was an accident.
During 8th grade my self harm got so much worse, I was cutting myself every single day just about. I'd hear whisperings if this or that rumor about me, most of which were started by none other than Hailey, the devil of my school herself.
I was straight I always told myself that, that's what I had always heard. But somehow thanks to a rumor started by Hays Neiler, an annoying guy who also happens to be super close friends with Dayton, the guy who I "stabbed", "cut up" and "attacked" last year. According to Hays and the rumor he was starting I was now gay?
And wow let's just say that as a girl who all her life she had been told that she was straight, and that "gay people are sinners" thanks to her bible thumping family, I was terrified of this rumor. I was torn up, distraught. Hays said that I had called this popular girl "hot" and that I thought that she was "sexy" and all that crap.
Being the emotional mess that I was, I took this rumor as yet again another a strike against me from the kids who wouldn't get in trouble for anything. I swear I'm this town it's like the teachers, principal, cops, everyone just gets to pick favorites and they are then seen as ones who can do no wrong.
After this rumor sent me hiding in the bathroom, skipping class as I cried my stupid eyes out I was then caught being bad, disobedient, and causing trouble. All because I skipped class to avoid seeing the people who started rumors about me and called me names, just because I couldn't handle the whispers and looks and laughter that I was so scared had to do with me that I just couldn't bring myself to actually going to class that day.
After spending some tome in Cables office, being told how much trouble I was in for skipping class and then being allowed to explain myself, explain why I skipped and what people were saying about me. Which caused me to get all emotional and be in tears yet again. All that happened was Cable told me that sometimes people say things about other people, whether it's true or not, and that we just have to accept that and get on with our lives and what we are doing.
My mom got called, I went home as "sick" for the rest of the day as well as the day after.
How could I face these people who said these things about me completely unprovoked? I never talked to Hays, never messed with him, never did anything to him, so why did he go out of his way to humiliate and embarrass and harass me all of a sudden?
When my mom got there she was ushered into Cables office as I was pushed out and told to sit in the hall as they talked. The looks I got from classmates, both the ones that were mean to me and the ones that left me be and don't bother to talk to me, were painfully humiliating to deal with.
We were middle schoolers, high school is just around the corner, why are these people around me still acting like this, like putting another person down somehow lifts them up, like making someone feel less than somehow magically makes them more than. 8th grade started off on a rocky foot, with Hailey saying some not so nice things about me, making fun of me as usual, and just overall being a bitch.
Then Hays starting this rumor, which made others say things about me, assume things about me, and do the stupidest things just to get under my skin.
One of the things that came from Hays's little rumor was what Campton had said at the very end of the school year. It had been a couple months at least since Hays started the gay rumor about me. It was the last day of school. I was in the lobby of the gym with my friend Abby when Campton cake up to us and asked "What are you two lesbians doing?" Even though this comment was meant as a mean joke and nothing more, even though I knew and I kept telling myself that he's wrong it still bothered me. Why is everyone telling me what my sexuality is, why is everyone telling me that I'm bad, that I'm "wrong" why is there nothing that I can do about this and why is it that it's perfectly fine for them to do this to me? Campton just started laughing when I defended myself and said that he was wrong and that I was straight. Why was he laughing at me, about this, about me defending myself?
What was my response to this? I hit him. I smacked him on his back as hard as I could with my shoe when he turned away from me to go to the water fountain. A cheap shot I know. But that's all I could manage. I was a little scared of him. Scared of getting into a fight with a guy, especially one who was taller and obviously stronger than me.
His retaliation? He grabbed me by my shoulders and shoved me so hard that I lost my footing, and fell on the floor, smacking my shoulder on the water fountain in the process. He laid me out like it was nothing, tossed me around basically like a rag doll. The rage in me came from somewhere deep inside after he did that. How could he just make fun of me, call me a lesbian, and then push me around (literally) like that? I ran after him and started slapping him in the back, shoulders, side, arms, everything as hard and as fast as I could. That when the teacher yelled at me. Coach Space, he was friends with my mom, they knew each other, went to school together, he respected her, he was one of my teachers who actually was nice to me, he was an ally to the naive girl who nobody liked and everyone was able to start shit and get only her in trouble for it. Thankfully Coach Space didn't get me in trouble for my outburst. He simply told me to take a breather to calm down and to leave Campton alone because he's not even worth getting in trouble over.
Coach Space was one of my first allies. One of the first people to ever actually believe in me and not just see me as a bad student or disobedient and trouble making kid. For that I am truly grateful. Not too many people actually believe in or give a second thought to the girl like me, the one always getting in trouble no matter who stared it or who did what to whom first.