By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead Read Online Free Page B

promise.

— 19 DAYS, 18 DAYS —
     
    I wake with dread this Saturday. Not that I ever look forward to waking up, but weekends are especially bad. More time alone with them, their pathetic attempts to draw me out. “What should we do today, Daelyn? Go to an early movie?” Because I can’t embarrass them in a dark theater, and the matinees are never crowded. “Play Monopoly? Or Clue? How about Pictionary?” When I don’t answer, they give up. They’ve come to realize my only friends exist in cyberspace— like they’re really friends. They’re screen names. I don’t do friends.
    When I was nine, Mom said, “Would you like to be in Girl Scouts? I was a Girl Scout. You’ll make a lot of friends.”
    By then being around a bunch of girls my age terrified me. “No thanks,” I told her. Girls were so mean.
    She said, “Go to one meeting. I bet you’ll enjoy it.”
    No, no, no, no, no. She didn’t get it.
    She made me go.
    At the meeting she stayed a few minutes, then left me at a stranger’s house with all these girls who already knew each other. A few were in my class at school and one of them groaned. It clued in the others. The leader made the troop do a ceremonial welcome bridge and I had to walk under everyone’s steepled hands. More than one girl tried to trip me.
    The meeting was boring and stupid. One of the girls from my school came up to me afterward and said, “You’ll like this part, Daelyn. It’s where we eat.” She gasped real loud so everyone would hear. “I hope we have enough cupcakes.”
    I went to the bathroom and locked myself in. The leader tried to talk me out, and even with my hands over my ears, I could hear the girls laughing at me. I sat on the floor against the door until Mom came to pick me up.
    In the car she said, “Did you even try?”
    Why do I have to be the one who tries?
    In her eyes, I’m a failure. She won’t miss me.
    I’m required to keep my bedroom door open while I’m online, even though the first thing Dad did when we moved here was remove all the locks from the doors. I’m up before them so I log on.
    Heavy topic on the Final Forum: Sexual Assault . I don’t want to read those stories. Bullied attracts me again.
    I was teased from kindergarten on because I’m gay. The teasing turned to bullying. J_Doe070790.
    I’ve been called fag my whole life and I’m not even gay. J_Doe112985.
    People call me pizza face. i can’t help it if i have acne. They say “yo zit wad.” girls back up when I come tward them. someone passed around a picture they drew in bio class. It was this sea monster with tennacles. It had my name and unerneath they wrote zit squid. Everybody got a big kick out of that. i wonder how they’ll feel when I’m dead.
    J_Doe090291 writes: Bullycide is the only cure for living.
    Bullycide. I know that word well. Suicide as an escape from bullying.
    I touch the screen for Add a Message . A blank notepad appears with my ID filled in. My hands hover over the keys—five, ten seconds. I want to write my story. But if I do . . .
    No.
    I can’t. I don’t trust people anymore.
    I go to touch screen off, but a new post catches my eye. J_Doe061890. I was always the new girl, so people picked on me. I must’ve done something to deserve it otherwise why? I’ve been at this school for 2 1/2 years and every day these girls wait for me and hunt me down. They’ve threatened to cut me and beat me until I bleed to death. I’m going to save them the trouble.
    I key fast, “In first grade this boy said to me, ‘You’re fat. You’re fatter than the fattest pig on the farm.’ It made me cry. I told my mom and all she said was, ‘Ignore it. Let it roll off your back.’ How many times are you supposed to let it roll off your back?”
    Just writing that much makes my pulse race.
    J_Doe110282 writes: The jocks call me queer fag sissy buttf*ck from the minute I get to school until I get out of there. I know it’ll never end. Never.
    They kill you with