flat

When I was in junior high I was very small. I had always been little but at a time when everyone around me seemed to be growing taller and curvier I still looked like a little boy (I am a girl). Oddly, it really didn't bother me that much. When I was in 6th grade my mom cornered my sister and me in the bathroom and explained all about the things that were going to happen to our bodies in the near future, mainly that at some point we would start having "periods". When she explained what those where all I could think was GROSS, I did not sign up for that and would like to take my name off that list. That is why it didn't bother my in junior high that I was still little, thin as a stick, flat as a pancake and showing no indication of ever getting curvy.
In junior high there was a boy, Bruce Johnson, whose personality was as big as his physicality. He was the class clown, the loud kid who always had some crack to make about what the teacher was trying to teach, the one who liked to snort all the snot out of his nose into his mouth, swallow it and say, "too good to waste" with a stupid smile on his face. For some reason he liked to single me out in English class to tease. I have three brothers, a sister and an Irish mother so his teasing really didn't bother my all that much, I received worse at home on a daily basis. His attempts at making me the butt of his jokes rarely affected me but it did make me wonder why it was me he focused on day in and day out. Of course, looking back I realize he must have had a crush on me and in typical 13 year old boy fashion could only express it by attempting to make my life hell which he failed at miserably for the most part.
Then there was that day, that day I will always remember, the day he managed to succeed in making me want to melt into the floor. As usual we were in English class and as usual he was sitting in front of me and as usual I was listening to the teacher and he was cracking jokes whenever he got the chance. About halfway through the class period Mr. Smith, who up until this day had my respect, started in on vocabulary. He would throw a word out and ask someone to use it in a sentence. When the fateful word came up and Mr. Smith made that fateful decision to have Bruce Johnson use it in a sentence you would think I would have felt a change in the barometric pressure or at the very least a shiver run up my spine but I didn't. "Bruce." he said having no idea, although he should have, what he was about to do, "Could you please use the word 'underdeveloped' in a sentence."
Bruce didn't even have to stop and think about that one, his devious mind was nothing if not fast. Just as my mind came to the same conclusion as his he blurts out, "Deirdre is very underdeveloped."
I must have turned three shades of red, I know Mr. Smith did. I tried to make myself smaller than I was. I plotted Bruce's demise while he laughed.