Nerd girl gets a come-uppance.

I was twelve years old the night my mom's second marriage imploded. Mom, Holly and I were in the drive-thru at Wendy's. We had just finished ordering our hamburgers, when I heard the roar of a motorcycle beside us.

"You fucking cunt! You think I don't know what you're doing? Trying to steal my daughter? I'll fucking kill you first!"

"Charlie," mom yelled back "what the fuck are you talking about? I came to buy some fucking hamburgers for dinner. Go home you stupid bastard!"

They argued for what felt like hours, cursing and spitting at one another. Charlie finally sped off, leaving me to dread the confrontation that awaited us at home.

The teen girl working the drive-thru stared, mouth gaping, the greasy bag of hamburgers in her hand forgotten. My cheeks burned with embarrassment, and I tried to push myself as far into the floorboard as possible. Mom looked at me, hiding from the shame.

"Rebel, get out of the floor. We're going to leave Charlie, and I need your help. Can you do that?"

I nodded my agreement. I had seen this coming. Charlie's behavior had become increasingly paranoid and violent. He accused my mother of telling me about shadowy adult secrets that I could not comprehend. He thought the phone was tapped and someone was peeping through our windows.Everyone thought his stint in rehab would fix him, but he had come back with eyes that were even wilder than before. It was clear that we needed to go.

The following Friday, we smuggled our essential belongings out of the house.We were only allowed to take what we could fit inside a backback. Mom did not want to arouse any suspicion. My stomach flip-flopped as she kissed Charlie good-bye. He was going to know what we were doing. Even when the house had long disappeared from the rear-view mirror, I kept watch to make sure he didn't follow us. My mom deposited me at my grandmother's house. I'm not sure where she took my sister Holly.

"I'll be back to get you Sunday," she said.

When she came to pick me up, she had Pooger. She had been dating him since she was 13 years old, but I had never met him. I hated him instantly. He was ugly, loud and brutish. Mom explained that Pooger had helped us establish a new residence, and he would be living with us. I had assumed that we would stay in the same town. I was wrong. She had already rented a house in another town, 50 miles away. Unable to deal with the complete destruction of everything I knew over the course of a weekend, I rebelled.

"Bitch, I'm not moving to a new school with six weeks left. I have a solo in the choir concert. I'm not leaving."

"Rebel, you can't stay with Charlie. He's not even your real dad," she told me.

"I don't care. I'm not leaving."

After much debate, it was decided that I could stay with Charlie until the end of the school year. This arrangement lasted four weeks. Charlie was so heart-broken that he could only sit around the house in his underwear, crying, playing guitar, and writing awful poetry in a battered spiral notebook. I read it once, and it was as if he had ripped out his insides and smeared them on the page. He forgot to eat, or buy food. I had to prod him into taking care of our basic needs. I created menu plans, and cooked elaborate meals that he pushed around his plate before discarding them, uneaten. He forgot my 13th birthday. I took a perverse pleasure in this, because it made me feel like the character Sam, from the movie 16 Candles. When I told him at the end of the day, he cried, but mostly for himself.

Four weeks into the experiment, mom came to visit. When she saw the complete lack of food in the house and heard the birthday incident, she made me leave with her. That was the first time I tried to punch my mom, but there would be later, more successful attempts.

The move was not an easy one for me. I had always been a nerd, but never really noticed it. My junior high had 1200 students and I blended in because I wasn't hideously ugly, and I had the kids in my gifted and talented class to hang out with. I was also 5' 11", and therefore an unsuitable target for bullys.

My new school was a completely different story. The tiny town we moved to had a population of 1201 people, 75 of which attended my junior high. 2 of those people were my cousins Jason and Jereme. They were popular due to their disruptive behavior and complete lack of respect for authority. They had never liked me due to my perceived "snottiness", and straight A record. On my first day at Ferris Junior High, they made it clear that I would be sacrificed like a lamb on their altar of cool.

As I entered the cafeteria for lunch, Jereme saw me and motioned for me to join him. Relieved to have a place to sit, I headed toward him with my sack lunch. When I got close to the table, Jereme stuck his leg out to trip me. I fell to the floor, a chorus of hooting accompanying me to the floor. Jereme stood up, stomped my lunch and yelled "NERD!". I finished the lunch period in a bathroom stall, crying.

When I boarded the bus home that afternoon, I was a broken and defeated 13 year old girl. No one would talk to me, I just heard them discussing the nerd incident as I passed in the halls. When I sat on the bus, not even the elementary students would sit beside me. I could hear them whispering, and feel their eyes burning the back of my neck.

My cousin Jason was the last to get on the bus. He headed to the back, where the last seat had been reserved for him, the alpha dog of bus 23.

"Where did this lunch come from," I heard Jason ask.

"I don't know," an anonymous voice responded "it's been in the bus for a week."

"It's a bologna sandwich," Jason said, "it fuckin' stinks."

The bus got very quiet, excluding the whispers and giggles in the back seats. I could feel something horrible looming on my horizon. Then, the bus sprang back to life and I was left alone to stare out the window and fantasize about returning to MY school. I had been lulled into a false sense of security.

When we were a quarter of a mile from my house, I heard Jason calling me.

"Rebel." Quietly. "Rebel" Louder. I would not turn around, because my gut told me something so bad was about to happen to me. "Rebel"..."REBEL, I'M FUCKING CALLING YOUR NAME. YOU BETTER FUCKING LOOK AT ME"

This made me incredibly angry, because, goddammit I had had enough of this. I turned around.

"You stupid mot..."

It was at that point that a perfectly aimmed, slimy piece of bologna hit me in the face. It clung to my cheek, a visible badge of my shame. The chorus of "NERD" was absolutely deafening.