"Come on, piggy, drink it all up."

The smell was the worst part. Not the dirty water or the cruel laughter, but that penetrating stench that clung to her skin like a second layer of shame.

She had made the grave mistake of going to the bathroom. Although, in truth, perhaps the mistake had been drinking a large glass of water before leaving for school. But she had had no choice, because drinking plenty of fluids helped ease, at least a little, those terrible migraines that had been tormenting her for months—a constant hammering behind her eyes—and water seemed to calm them somewhat. But at school, any physical need became a trap.

Unfortunately for her, Madison, Savannah’s right-hand girl, was standing in front of the mirror fixing her hair when Emma walked in. Their eyes met for a second in the reflection, and that was enough. Madison smiled with that false sweetness she saved for special occasions and ran off to find her "boss."

In total, four girls cornered her, plus one who stayed back to film it all. They dragged her to the last stall—naturally, the one that was clogged. There, a mixture of urine and feces struggled in vain to drain away. There, they forced her to her knees and kicked her in the buttocks to shove her forward, while Savannah grabbed her hair tightly and plunged her face into that foul liquid.

The world turned cold, slimy, and suffocating. She kicked but only managed to make them push her harder. Panic blurred her vision. For an instant, she thought that this time they would not pull her out.

"What is going on here?"

Fortunately, one of the teachers had come quickly when he heard the shouting and commotion. His voice cut through the air like a lifeline, and the girls immediately backed away. Savannah, with her perfectly styled blond hair, turned around with an innocent smile.

"Nothing, teacher," she replied, while the victim managed to lift her head out of the toilet. "We’re helping Emma. She slipped."

"What happened?"

"Nothing, like… Emma slipped, and since she’s so fat… like, she couldn’t get her head out."

"What?"

"Well, actually she could," Madison quickly came to her boss’s rescue. "Like… the floor was slippery, and, like, because of her weight… like, she couldn’t get up."

The teacher, who was no fool, quickly figured out what had happened.

"Get out of here. I’ll take care of this."

The girls left amid giggles, leaving the teacher alone there with the poor girl. He opened the restroom door so it could be seen from outside that he was there helping her, and so no one else would come in. The last thing he needed was for someone to see him coming out of the girls’ bathroom with a student after opening that door. Then he took out paper towels and began drying her face and hair, though the smell would not go away no matter what.

"Are you all right?" he asked kindly.

She nodded, still trembling, and put her glasses back on between sobs, with an expression of deep sadness.

If she had been a boy, the teacher would have taken off that badly stained shirt. But since she was not… he had no choice but to go find a female colleague and tell her what had happened. She came back with a clean shirt of her own and removed the dirty one, since Emma was so shaken that she could not manage to do it herself.

"This has to be reported, Frank. We need to talk to the principal."

"The principal? It won’t do any good, and you know it. She doesn’t want trouble."

"I know, but we have to do something!"

Something had to be done, of course, though both of them knew perfectly well there was no solution. It was not the first time Savannah, the most rebellious one, had threatened to accuse them of sexual harassment, especially the male teacher. With only her word, without proving anything, that brat could ruin his life.

"The district supervisor will be here next week," the teacher said. "We could talk to him."

"Right, and what would we accomplish? At most, they’ll suspend Savannah for a week. And that’s if her mother doesn’t insist otherwise."

"She’s a real piece of work."

"Yeah, like her daughter."

They took Emma to the teachers’ lounge, and there they waited patiently for her mother to come and take her home. There, the girl waited and waited with her head down, sobbing nonstop, while with her thumbnail she tried, unsuccessfully, to carve deep wounds into her other hand, searching for a pain that might eclipse the one inside. Maybe then she could ease the profound unease, as well as the severe migraine that was once again drilling into her skull, pulsing in time with her racing heart.

The migraine grew worse and worse, until the pain became so intense that she thought she was going to die right then and there… until, at last, she woke up.

It was three in the morning, and she was soaked in sweat. Once again, she had dreamed about those traumatic events, which, however, were not the worst she had lived through. She remembered, though only fleetingly, in an effort to wipe it from her memory, the time they locked her in the broom closet in the dark. It was only a few minutes, but her claustrophobia brought her to the brink of a heart attack. She also remembered when they threw her down the stairs, and she was saved only because one of her classmates caught her before she fell. Not to mention the humiliating photos circulating through WhatsApp groups.

Three years had already passed since the toilet incident, and physical harassment had certainly stopped. So, for the most part, had the harassment on social media. Her "friends" no longer sent images of pink little piglets with her name on them, nor did they mock her so openly. Now they simply ignored her. Savannah, in the splendor of her sixteen years, devoted herself to seducing boys and cared only about her own physical appearance—not anyone else’s, except for comparison—rivaling Madison to see who could sleep with the best-looking older boys.

However, although the worst had already passed, all those events had left such a deep mark on Emma’s soul and spirit that she had been left truly battered. Although her body was no longer what it had been, since she had lost weight by depriving herself of needed food, she was traumatized, unable to sleep at night, spending those nights tormented by vivid nightmares like the one she had just suffered.

She tried to relax. She was safe now, she told herself, over and over. "I’m safe… I’m safe… I’m safe…"

Alone in her room, with the light on all night—she could not sleep in the dark—she tried to calm herself… but without success.

She might have been safe from those harpies, but she was not safe from herself. In a way, she was now her own worst enemy.

She sat up, hugging her knees, and repeated the breathing exercise the psychologist had taught her: breathe in while counting to six, breathe out to ten.

The psychologist… she was the third one Emma had seen, in addition to the psychiatrist. They had diagnosed her with everything: severe anxiety, depression, possible personality disorder, paranoia… and, of course, trauma.

No wonder. In fact, since she had lost weight, at school they no longer called her "piggy," but "the crazy one," and she slept with the light on, not only because of her claustrophobia, but to avoid seeing ghosts. Ghosts that, according to her, she had seen stalking her on more than one occasion.

She went through several cycles of breathing, but her heart was still racing, unable to calm down, and the damn migraine would not stop tormenting her. "It’s because of the anxiety," the psychologist had told her. Whatever the cause, her life had no solution, and all that suffering had to end as soon as possible.