How I Got Here by Hannah Harvey Read Free Book Online Page A

talk about that by the way, so don’t think you’re off the hook just because I haven’t mentioned it.
    Anyway, my grades started returning to normal, my mother had quit her job before anyone could fire her; she got into another teaching job quickly, because none of the kids wanted to tell on her, they wanted to make my life misery, not hers. The teachers didn’t say anything, because in some way or another they’d all been involved, they’d known my grades were being inflated, and they had sat back and allowed it to happen.
    This turn of events made things more difficult at home, my mom was furious that she’d had to give up her job, she was still a principal of a high school, but because there weren’t that many jobs going at the time, she ended up working as the principal in a public high school, and that was far from her ideal job.
    My tuition was paid up until the end of the school year, but after the summer I didn’t know if I would be returning, I didn’t know if my mom would be willing to let me return, and I didn’t care if I went back or not. My grades had started slipping, and the bullying had become more constant and a lot worse, and so I had finally built up the nerve, I had decided to go and see my brother.
    Wade lives in Connecticut like I told you; he was in grad school, and he lived in a comfortable house with his wife Becky, and their two year old son Robbie.
    It was the first week of January when I went to see him, I had just gone back to school after winter break, and any hope that the kids would stop their abuse, was shattered when I was pulled into the girl’s bathrooms, surrounded by a group of girls, who all felt it was their duty to tell me how fat I’d gotten, and you need to understand that I’ve never been big, I was on the track team for a while, even though I no longer took part on any teams, since the bullying started, but I still kept up my running, and in do ing so I was also careful about what I ate, I had been a vegan for a while, and I always tried hard to eat the right things, so that I could take care of my body. An athlete’s body that is what my gym teacher told me I had.
    As you know I’m not tall, height has never been my defining point, but I was healthy, and by that I mean I was in a healthy weight range, and I knew that, I truly did, so why was it that their words could get to me so much. Honestly I have no idea, it’s not logical, but then I wasn’t really thinking logically at the time. The only way I can explain it is that same thing again, if you hear something about yourself enough times, then despite your better judgment, you start to believe it’s the truth.
    After that day with the girls pulling me into the bathrooms, I needed one of my self-appointed breaks from school. I hadn’t even made a plan of what I would do, but then I was walking past a bus station, feeling at one of my lowest points, so I got on a bus to my brothers town. I had to walk a mile through the snow to get to his house, and then I had to sit on his porch for four hours, until he returned home from campus.
    Becky, who wasn’t in school and had a job, usually worked late so it was just Wade and Robbie who arrived home at six. Wade spotted me sitting on the porch, I could tell because suddenly his pace quickened, and the expression on his face lost the smile that had been there. I wasn’t sure how much he knew about what had been going on, he knew that mom had changed jobs, I just didn’t know if he knew why.
    He took my arm and led me inside, telling me to make coffee as he went to settle Robbie in his playpen, when Wade came back downstairs with the baby monitor in hand; I was curled up on the couch holding a cup of coffee in my hand. He sat next to me and I angled my body to face him. I was freezing cold, because it had started snowing heavily when I was waiting for him, and even though I knew where the key was – keeping it under the doormat is stupid – I didn’t want to go