Chapter 1
TW: This chapter contains brief flashbacks of bullying and sexual assault
ISABELLA
Valedictorian, third-best scorer in the country, an IQ of 146, and a letter of acceptance to Princeton. I was ready to move halfway round the world and start my life anew. Nevertheless, my ever-so-protective parents decided the United States was too far to let their only precious daughter go.
So… as an overachieving Spanish Baccalaureate student who had her heart set on studying abroad to get away from her torturous school dynamic, I chose the next best thing—England.
Only a couple of hours away by plane, surely that should be acceptable. Moreover, my older brother, Matteo, was attending Oxford Brookes University for a flaky Undergraduate course in Spanish. It was a mockery of higher education, especially given that he grew up in Spain. He just wanted to get in three years of partying without parental supervision.
For someone like myself, who had planned the next ten years to the minute and had an admission letter to an Ivy League university, it was a definite low blow to be lumped in the same boat as him. Matteo couldn’t even make the effort to apply to the real Oxford University, and it was then that I realised I was bitter.
My peachy disposition had turned sour. Gone was the sweet girl who smiled with her eyes. I was instead a person that stunk to be around, battered, and bruised, and admittedly needed to take stock of my life before embarking on a fresh new start.
With that in mind, I took a sabbatical year to mull over my disappointment; convince my parents about the British Isles; have enough time to apply to the more prestigious bracket of universities, as well as make some cash on the side to try my hand at independence part-time.
To my surprise, my school recommended me as an extracurricular tutor to the very same bullies who made my life a living hell. I was tasked by concerned parents to help class clowns and preppy golden boys finally graduate. Being able to give my bullies homework and getting paid was somewhat satisfying payback for what felt like an endless, traumatised adolescence in one of the most prominent private schools in the country. They made my time in a castle, straight out of Harry Potter and the Princess Diaries, into a commuted sentence bordering on Shawshank Redemption. Each morning walk to the lockers felt like the dreaded last steps from the Green Mile’s death row. I say I got retribution. I, however, was too much of a big-hearted Michael Clarke Duncan without his perfect skin and barely 5’4 to do anything vindictive.
I taught these classes three times a week. And albeit I certainly wished to hate them, I couldn’t. The needy hole, looking to be filled with kindness from someone other than my family, begrudgingly didn’t let me seek said reprisal. I was a consummate professional who wanted her students to succeed. And their mothers held my work ethic in such high regard, they even employed me for the younger siblings.
Yes, that will teach them..., you bleeping loser!
I was nineteen going on twenty when I first set foot in university. This year was going to be different. I was going to a place where nobody knew me, and I could leave the nerdy persona behind and do what people were meant to do in Fresher’s Year. I attended the first few introductory balls, including the well-talked-about Masquerade, and lost my virginity in a hurry. I was anxious to get it over with, and ended up in the arms of a hot stranger, lifted against a wall and masks on. I went from zero to a hundred in a downwards spiral of one-night stands to sleep away those feelings of being unloveable. I wasn’t a tart, I don’t think. But I was an inexperienced freak, who bedded a few in the name of fun and an ‘oh so predictable’ search for self-esteem, and found neither. Only more emptiness.
In my journey to self-discovery and bare-naked truths, I uncovered I had welcomed the changes bullies made over the years. I was who I was, broken and put back together. A joined and glowed up Kintsugi shell of a person. The damage to my psyche had been cemented, bricked up, and plastered over. My mirth and innocence had been immured and entombed deep within.
I was intelligent and self-aware. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop all the body dysmorphia, and self-deprecating, destructive behaviour from settling in, due to developing boobs and a sizeable arse before other girls in high school.
Their whispers became sneers and whistles in a matter of days. I had a big behind, they would pinch and slap at any chance they got. People degradingly spat in my hair, and called me a whore. Gossips in the locker room and showers were trumped by someone sharing a recording of me getting undressed after gym class. That progressed into online bullying and further harassment, and through all of it, I was alone because I refused in shame to share it with my parents.
The only way I knew how to get back at them was through impossibly good grades, being the best at every single class, and a thick layer as wide as my arse of sarcasm. If I was mocked for being a know-it-all and a little Miss Perfect, I would not let them down. Probably my smart mouth and twisted logic didn’t do me any favours, but at least I didn’t feel stupid and defenceless any more.
The extensive size of the campus and sheer alumni at Birmingham University, Edgbaston, was big enough to become invisible in the first year. I melded into the furniture, and barely attended lectures because my course required more research than facetime. I ate in my room, cried as a cathartic detox from the years of abuse, and I picked myself up for the second year, making a conscious decision to change my course, chip, and tactics.
I was going to make my mark, and that’s when they found me. I had managed to dodge and hideout for a year with minimal incidents. Hoping and praying that their sights would settle on another. Yet, no matter how much kindness you have and the changes you put yourself through, a bully will always be a bully. They can sniff their prey in the air. Although my bullies had changed faces, it was almost as if they’d all got together in some sort of Bully Olympics and handed off their torch and baton to keep their victims running scared. Every year, they refined their skills, and upped the ante when you thought it couldn’t get any worse.
It had been long enough of a lull to delude myself into thinking that by some miracle and grace of the Olympian Gods my prayers had been answered. That I had escaped the clutches of my tormentors. Gods, however, will always favour the strong, and I was a blithering fool to think otherwise.
When I come to think of it, it was probably Ares. Through the annals of Antiquity he looked down on the puny; thriving on acts of violence and jealousy; tormenting his endless chain of demigod stepbrothers, and eternally seeking the approval of the mighty king of the gods and father. For what are bullies, but misunderstood youth with daddy issues taking it out on the rest of us, who should worship the ground beneath their feet. And mine—the President of the Student Guild, and the Captain of the rugby team—were the crème de la crème of pathological predators, roaming the green, leafy grounds of campus.
Focus Isabella, you’re in a taxi alone.
This is how people who are not paying attention fall prey to the hands of overgrown bullies, aka rapists, sadists, and sociopaths.
Mind over matter. Breathe, and ignore the creepy eyes boring down on you from the rear-view mirror. Repeat your mother’s words as a mantra, and remain the picture of equanimity. And breathe again.
Drive quietly into the night.
Speed towards your doom to face Matthew Hopkins and Jake Taylor, who picked up the figurative baton in the race that is your bullied plight.
The day after the Masquerade ball, they both made me their favourite pastime, theirs to fright.
In passing, sexist soundbites developed into trite slights, but running seemed to suffice.
The second year brought their spite to vicious hands-on heights.
Once I open this door, down a shot or two, and find a quiet place to hide, I’ll put an end to this sadistic rite.
They expect me to sit tight, be polite, and they’re probably right.
Mind over matter. One way or the other, I will make it out, but I will not go gentle in that good night.
Calm down, wannabe Dylan Thomas.
Stress rhyming right now in the middle of nowhere, ain’t bright.
In a summer out of hell after my first year at university, I put my body through the ringer—lost weight I probably didn’t need to lose—and swapped most of my bright coloured clothes for black. It’s renowned for being slimming, and what’s even better is that it’ll hopefully call for less attention. I’m on the cusp of doing something appallingly stupid and bordering on insane. They say, however, with both bravery and genius juxtaposed to their respective counterparts, one can only marginally determine which one you fall into after the fact.
So, here we go.
