She looked at me.
“Can somebody be nice and still hurt you?”
“Of course. People aren’t always cruel in every part of their lives. Sometimes they do something hurtful because they’re insecure, frightened, or desperate to fit in. That might explain their behavior, but it doesn’t automatically make it acceptable.”
Emma nodded slowly.
The next afternoon, she came home with more questions than answers.
She and Tyler had spoken after school.
According to Emma, he had finally explained what happened with the boys on his basketball team.
“One of them noticed my arms when we were holding hands,” she told me. “Then they started joking about me.”
I felt my anger rise again.
“What did Tyler do?”
“He laughed.”
The word landed between us.
“He said he didn’t want them to start making fun of him too. They already tease him about things, so he just laughed along.”
I sat down across from her.
