Overexposed~Surviving Southside by Susan J. Korman

Author:Susan J. Korman [Korman, Susan J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00ARMXNG4
Publisher: Darby Creek TM
Published: 2013-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Somehow I managed to make it through my morning classes. But my stomach was churning. My head throbbed. I barely looked at anyone or said anything. Mostly I just concentrated on not throwing up.

I had the same lunch period as Nora and Laurel, and I’d decided to try and find them. But when I stepped into the cafeteria, a group of girls looked up at me and started whispering together.

That was the last straw. I whirled around and rushed for the front doors.

I let myself into my family’s apartment through the back door and climbed into bed. My parents were downstairs, working. Lunchtime is their busiest time of the day. I knew they wouldn’t notice that I’d come home from school. Anyway, I could tell my mom later that I just wasn’t feeling well.

As I lay there, thoughts kept spinning through my brain. How could I fix this? Was there anything I could do?

At the beginning of the school year we’d had an assembly about cyberbullying. A dad whose daughter had committed suicide had talked to us about all the ways kids get harassed online. Then a police officer got up and told us what to do if we became victims.

But I had barely listened to a word the men were saying. Instead, I’d been laughing with Simon the whole time. We’d made fun of the policeman’s weird-looking mustache and Mrs. Núñez’s short pink skirt. We’d doodled dumb cartoons all over my English notebook. Simon and I weren’t dating then, but we were on our way, flirting with each other all the time.

I could kind of remember the cop saying that we should talk to an adult if we felt bullied. He’d talked about sexting, and I was pretty sure he’d told us never to forward any “lewd” pictures of anybody. The best thing to do was delete them right away.

So maybe some kids deleted the photos, I tried to tell myself.

But I knew there would be plenty of kids who had kept them. In fact, they’d probably send them to even more people.

Besides, I kept thinking, my situation didn’t really count as cyberbullying, did it? Simon was my boyfriend. So wasn’t this just called “a nasty breakup”?

The door to my room creaked open. Our orange cat, Pedro, padded in and meowed when he saw me. Then he hopped up on my bed and curled up beside me.

I wish I were a cat, I thought. Cats didn’t have boyfriends, and they didn’t have cell phones.

I closed my eyes, but the images from Laurel’s phone were haunting me.

What if my parents find out about this? I wondered. If Dad discovers that I sent naked photos to a boy, he’ll totally freak out. He’ll ground me until I’m twenty-one!

Waves of anger washed over me. I sat up and grabbed my phone. Then I pounded out an angry text message to Simon: What the hell???

It felt kind of good. I typed out another one.

Can’t believe u did that 2 me!!!

And then a third one.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.