What Every Girl (except me) Knows Read Online Free

drawn to what was happening up on the hill. Amber Whitman led the other girls as she marched up the hill toward Taylor Such. Taylor had no idea what she was in for.
    I did because I, myself, am a survivor of a dissing experience. It happened the beginning of last fall, not on the playground, but in the gym.
    Maybe I should mention something about what I look like. I am not fat or thin. I am kind of tall for a girl in sixth grade. I have dark hair and brown eyes. I turn real brown in the summer. My hair is curly, but it is always in a tight ponytail so it looks straight. I wear the sort of stuff that my brother wears. Jeans and T-shirts (a horribly ugly winter coat), sweatshirts, whatever’s comfortable.
    I have tried to dress differently. I saw a pleated skirt in a Seventeen magazine once, and then by total chance I saw it in the window of a store when I was in New York City visiting my grandfather and step-grandmother. (My mother’s mother died five years ago and my grandfather remarried.) Of course, my grandfather made me try it on as soon as I mentioned that I liked it. Or I might have just mentioned that I had seen it somewhere.
    Anyway, he had me try it on in the store. It was a little long, but it fit. The skirt was made of a beautiful sheer material that touched softly against my legs, and when I twirled around it lifted into the air. I suddenly had to have this skirt, and my grandfather was so happy to have something to buy me.
    But when I got back home and put it on for school I looked terrible. I didn’t have the shoes that the girl in the magazine had. I didn’t have the sweater. I sure didn’t have the face. And I didn’t have something else, but I didn’t know exactly what that was, exactly.
    I just knew I didn’t have it.
    Girls with mothers have it.
    But it was late—the bus would be coming soon—so I wore it anyway. As soon as I got to school wearing my skirt, I couldn’t wait to get home. It was like having really bad chapped lips and no Chap Stick. It irritated me the whole day, and I promised myself I’d never try to be a girl again. At least I felt better when, at one o’clock, we changed for gym. So I must have been playing ball a little extra hard. I accidentally hit Melanie Berger in the back of the head with the volleyball, and she was on my team.
    “Ow.” Melanie dropped instantly.
    Amber went rushing to her side. The gym teacher blew her whistle to stop the game and freeze the score.
    “I’ll get some ice,” she announced, and she disappeared through an unidentified door only gym teachers use.
    “Gabby, what do you think you’re doing? Trying out for the Olympics?!” Amber glared up at me.
    Melanie had tears in her eyes. She remained on the gym floor. Above her head was the sagging volleyball net. The boys in the class immediately took the volleyball and began shooting it through the basketball hoop at the other end of the gym. Lynette wandered off toward the bleachers and sat down facing the wall, counting something.
    Kelly and Sophie stepped over from the other side and hovered over the wounded Melanie. Now more than half of The Ones were present and attending to Melanie like they were all Clara Barton. I wanted to say I was sorry. I had wanted to say it right away, but now it was too late.
    “What’s your problem, anyway?” Kelly started it. She put her hands on her waist and positioned herself in front of me but several feet away. There were bleachers behind me and a wall beside me. Entrapment is a major feature of the “diss-out.”
    “Is it that stupid skirt you wore today?” Amber joined the attack immediately.
    I wonder how it is that someone so mean can be so accurate.
    By this point all the girls were circling around me, and most had their hands poised like Kelly’s. But it was Amber who did all the talking.
    “Gabby Weiss. Do you have to be so angry?”
    Then just to prove that girls have to pretend to be nice even when they’re being mean, Amber said, “You