Sally Eunice Griswald

            Barbie stood, hands on not yet developed hips, eyes glaring, nostrils flaring, her mean streak alive and well. “Stupid Ugly Girl! That’s what your name stands for Sally Eunice Griswald. S-U-G! Stupid Ugly Girl. We should call you SLUG Stupid Looser Ugly Girl!”

            Barbie and her five followers began chanting. Their nine-year-old voices a cacophonous sing-songy unison: “Stupid Looser Ugly Giiiiiirrrl! Stupid Looser Ugly Giiiiirrrirl”

The Lady of the Flies was proud. The six fly-girls shared knowing gleeful glances. Sparkling eyes looked upon each other with excited amusement. Pig and pony tails flying, heads bobbing, hugging each other and moving their limbs in awkward jerky dancing motions as they threw cups full of water and handfuls of cornflakes over the stall door as if they were overtaken by a Dionysian god and ordered to perform some long forgotten but joyfully remembered virgin maiden ritual. It was fun to have someone to hate.

            Sally sat on the coverless toilet seat, her skinny clothed bottom atop the toilet, her hands covered her head in attempted protection from the cornflakes and water. Quiet, oversized tears streamed down her narrow face to her skinny tanned arms and into her lap. She wanted to cry out loud, but if she did, she knew she would just be giving them more ammunition to use against her.

They were not the first to pick on her, though they were the first to use her name as a weapon. She didn’t think it would help to tell them Eunice began with an “E.”

She’d been picked on before and feared that this was to be her lot in life. She wished she knew what it was that made her a target. She was nice, people told her that. She wasn’t ugly though she was plain. She just wanted to fit in, but had never felt quite like she fit in anywhere. She did have a few friends, but not here, not at camp. She sat quietly crying and listening to them chanting their horrid mantra. She wanted to punch the person who came up with the phrase “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Words hurt terribly. Words cut deeper than any stick or any stone ever could and their pain stayed longer. She hated her name; Eunice was a weird name, but a reason not to like her? She had been named after her gandmother’s sister. Great Aunt Eunice had died in a concentration camp during the holocaust, and Sally was sure that the name had been cursed.

Bored, probably because of the lack of response from Sally, the evil queen and her spritely quintuplets who were drunk on their clever cruelty left Sally alone with her thoughts.

Sally hated camp. She wanted to go home, but she could never tell her parents about this. She didn’t want to hurt them, and she could never tell the counselor because that would just create more problems with Barbie and her sidekicks.

When the only sound left was the pounding of her heart and the far away shouts of kids, she stood still, listening, her ear against the splintery wooden door. She looked underneath to make sure a sneak attack was not being prepared and then stood gingery on each side of the open toilet seat to make sure she was alone.

Sally climbed back down, ran her hand over her damp, brown hair to remove any corn flakes, and looked at her clothes to see how wet she was. Now what? Where should she go? Where could she go? She opened the stall door and nervously walked into the main room.

Then she saw his face at the window looking around the room. She thought about running back into the bathroom when Josh Stone spotted her, smiled, and waved to her, a broadening smile on his face. She just stood looking at him. He waved her over, and she looked over her shoulder as if she expected to see someone else. He pointed to her and she pointed to herself questioningly.  He shook his head yes and scooped his hand in a ‘come here,’ gesture, but she didn’t know if she could she trust him. She could not be sure that Josh Stone was not the sneak attack she’d anticipated before.