It's my pleasure to have Mia Kerick on my blog talking about her personal experiences with bullying and her newest novel, The Red Sheet!
Hi, Cody. Thank you for inviting me over to be guest on your blog today and for writing the foreword in my book.
Bullying. It has been around for as long as people have; even cavemen dragged each other around by the hair. I went through it. Chances are fairly good that you went through it, too. And bullying changes you.
I was bullied by other girls since I first set foot in my neighborhood park as a very young child. Back then I thought of bullying as getting “bossed around.” Getting “bossed around” included being pushed, tripped, or pinched, having your forearm twisted painfully, and even being slapped or scratched factored in—all of which were committed when my mother wasn’t looking. I was always an easy victim; one who never pushed back. Never. Why did the other little girls do this to me? I think it was just a pecking order thing. If I was on the bottom, then they weren’t.
In my grade school years, bullying came in more subtle forms. And these are the bullying experiences from which I never fully recovered. Out on the playground during recess, the other girls would shape themselves into what I called “the inner circle”; they would form a tight O-shape with their bodies and present their backs to me, refusing to let me in. So I stood outside the circle and stared at the backs of the more “worthy” girls, and wished I was one of them.
By the time middle school hit, the female bullies had achieved a degree of finesse in their tactics. The result: I lived in fear. And not fear of physical pain, but emotional destruction. They used note-writing, name-calling, and even somehow managed to rally the boys’ help, to throw their “superior” weight around. It always seemed strange to me that the teachers could not see through these girls’ falsely smiling faces, or past their cruel barbs, which were often referred to laughingly, of course, as “teasing.” The teachers seemed to accept and even encourage the “popular” girls catty behavior, as if they too wanted to belong to the “inner circle” of these teens who were so snarky and shiny and confident.
And so until sophomore year of high school, I tried my hardest to fit in. But my very nature—insecure, sweet, and so very open—allowed my status as an easy target to prevail. But I was growing older, and I soon tracked down the resources to go outside my school for acceptance. I found this acceptance it at a roller skating rink several towns away, where no one knew I was such an easy victim. I found some other things at that rink, too. Not good things at all. But I felt that I fit in somewhere for the first time in my life so I stuck around. I guess, in hindsight, it is easy to see that I was successfully driven out of my hometown high school.
I graduated high school alone with my parents in the principal’s office, as I was unwilling to face those teenaged girls, who still figuratively formed the “inner circle” and wouldn’t let me in, for even one more day. And unsurprisingly, friendships with other women have always been extremely difficult for me to achieve. I never learned to trust, to grow with, to become comfortably familiar with other females, and this pattern extends into adulthood.
Bullying changes you. The ways in which you protect yourself from the pain, the coping mechanisms you develop, are pattern-setters in your life, and in this manner they mold your very nature, as well as your life experiences.
Scott Beckett is bullied in my new release, The Red Sheet. Find out how he reacts to his emotional pain.
About The Red Sheet
Bryan soon realizes this compulsion to wear a red cape is accompanied by more unusual behavior. He can’t hold back from retrieving kittens from tall trees, helping little old ladies cross busy streets, and defending innocence anywhere he finds it.
Shockingly, at school, he realizes he used to be a bully. He’s attracted to the former victim of his bullying, Scott Beckett, though he has no memory of Scott from before “the change.” Where he’d been lazy in academics, overly aggressive in sports, and socially insecure, he’s a new person. And although he can recall behaving egotistically, he cannot remember his motivations.
Everyone, from his mother to his teachers to his “superjock” former pals, is shocked by his dramatic transformation. However, Scott Beckett is not impressed by Bryan’s newfound virtue. And convincing Scott he’s genuinely changed and improved, hopefully gaining Scott’s trust and maybe even his love, becomes Bryan’s obsession.
The Red Sheet is available at Harmony Ink/Dreamspinner Press
You can also read about The Red Sheet on Goodreads
Excerpt:
I plunked my tray down at the Superjock Table and was just about to start forking it in when I heard Brandon’s voice, loud and offensive.
“Hey, Beckett, why aren’t you wearin’ green today?”
There was no response from the corner lunch table where Scott always sat.
“And where’re your wings?”
The entire room became silent. The pin-drop kind.
“You’re a fairy, right? So, I expected you’d be all decked out for Halloween like Tinker Bell!”
I heard a scattered round of uncomfortable laughter emanating from all corners of the lunchroom. Then I looked over at Scott. His face was beet red, but he hadn’t lifted his eyes from his tray. And I’m pretty sure I’d turned a matching shade of red, as well, because I was pissed.
“What the fuck’s your problem, Wilson? Lay off the kid,” I said and then looked around at the five other faces of the guys at the Superjock
Table, wondering if I’d get any support from them. Jackson, Broughton, and O’Reilly were staring into their casseroles, and Delgado was scowling in my general direction. Only Javitt was looking directly at me, but he was blank-faced. And not that I really cared, one way or the other, but it was clear that none of my so-called friends were gonna go out on this particular limb with me. I stood up anyways.
Brandon got right in my face. “You wanna make somethin’ of it?” His breath smelled of fish. “You know I can take you.”
“I don’t feel like fighting. I just want you to find a different hobby, and stop harassing Scott Beckett.” We were both speaking in our “outside voices,” or so teachers liked to say. And we had gathered an enthralled audience.
“He’s nothin’ but a faggot, so what do you care?”
Well, that was an easy one. “He’s a person, just like you and me… and everybody else here.” I scanned all the staring faces, and then I picked up my tray, marched straight over to the table where Scott sat alone, and that’s when I really hung my ass out there in the wind. “Mind if I join you?”
He looked up at me, clearly unsure of my motivation, probably waiting for me to spring some kind of a cruel practical joke on him. “It’s a free country. You can sit wherever you want,” he replied blandly.
So I dropped my tray, and then my ass, down and started forking in the food.
Scott gawked at me for a moment (along with everybody else in the cafeteria, so he was in good company) and then started shoveling down his own lunch. We didn’t talk to each other at all, but I hoped I’d made my point, to Scott and everyone else: I didn’t give a single shit what anybody else thought about me.
Over at the Superjock Table, Brandon was far more vocal than we were. “What the fuck’re you thinkin’, man?”
I kept on chewing, looking at my tray, contemplating my next forkful.
“Get your ass back over here, douche bag… and I’ll lay off the little pussy, if it means that much to you.”
Sorry, dude. Too little, too late.
“Come on, Dennison, you made your fucking point. Now get back over here!”
Brandon went on that way for a few more minutes—until his frustration told him it would be a good idea to flip over the Superjock Table—which led to the vice-principal finding it necessary to restrain him before he did any further damage, and finally him being escorted forcefully from the lunchroom.
Truthfully, my goal hadn’t been to piss Brandon off, and I felt kind of bad that he was now up shit creek. But on a positive note, nobody was staring at Scott and me anymore.
The Red Sheet is available at Harmony Ink/Dreamspinner Press
You can also read about The Red Sheet on Goodreads
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