Operation MMM

Is there a guide for how to torture eleven-year-old girls? If not, those girls I'd started hanging with - you remember, my 'friends' - could write one. In the winter of that year, every day brought a creative new tactic in Operation Make Miley Miserable. They sent me mean notes. They stole my books and made me late to class. They made fun of my clothes and my hair. They told Rachel - the friend who had become tight with them at the same time as I did - that if she sat with me at lunch they'd have it in for her too. So I sat at a table by myself day after day, looking at the goth kids, wondering what I'd look like with black hair and chains. I've since decided: not so good.
The list goes on: Rachel stopped speaking to me. When I wanted to try out for the school cheerleading team, my so-called friends told the principal that I'd cheated and learned the tryout dances in advance. Total lie, but the principal believed them and I wasn't aloud to try out for the squad. Oh and I'll never forget how one of them was nice to me for a few days. She said she wanted the 'fight' to be over. She got me to tell her exactly what I thought about 'our friends' - that I didn't understand why they didn't like me, that I felt like they were being mean - then she went back to them and told them I was a snob. She'd been faking it. Looking back I think maybe she was the one who should have been an actress.
If this sounds like run-of-the-mill Judy Blume Tales of a Sixth-Grade Nothing, well, it was. I wasn't oblivious to issues like world hunger or pandemics. I knew my problems were relatively puny. But they were mine. And they felt heavier than the world on my shoulders. So, if you want to know if I liked school back then, then answer was definitely no.