I saw the Chrissa movie (some spoilers)

Welp, today was the day.

After fifth period our principal called everybody out of class and told us to sit in the gym. When I looked around the gym, I saw Meredith and her gang had pretty much taken the seats on the top row. They were flipping through magazines and chewing gum and polishing their fingernails.

Then the student council sponsor told me to come forth.
"Haley, since you're class president, I'd like you and Megan to do the presentation."
Megan, of course, is Megan Ryder, editor-in-chief of pretty much every school publication at Adams -- newspaper AND yearbook. She says she's wanted to be a journalist pretty much forever, since her dad travels all over as an international correspondent. We're acquaintances, we work with each other, but we're not friends. Megan has goalpost-straight red hair and green eyes.

"Would you like to say a few words?" the teacher asked. "About bullying, I mean." Of course, having been bullied myself, you'd think I might have leapt at the chance to spill the beans about my own life. But I chose not to.

So while everyone else gathered in the gym, Megan and I stood in front of this huge screen where they were getting the movie ready to show.

"Well, today the school has called this assembly, so that we can talk about bullying." I told them that bullying was a very serious problem all over the country, and that surveys showed that a lot of kids had been bullied while in school. I didn't tell them, though, that I'd been one of them. Maybe I should have.

"Sit down, Four Eyes!" Meredith shouted from the top seats, to laughter from some of the other kids. She didn't realize, I was intending to. I decided to go back and sit in the first seat I could find, so I could watch the movie.

While I'm watching the movie, Harriet gives me a nudge. "Haley, she kinda looks like you."

I'm like, "Well, yeah, she doesn't have freckles and wear glasses and hair she can never really manage."

Okay, about the movie.... there's this girl named Chrissa Maxwell who moves to Minnesota to stay with her grandma after her grandpa dies. When she starts school she's bullied by three girls -- Tara, Jaden, and Sonali. Sonali is Indian, which I found interesting. Tara is the queen bee and the worst of the bunch, kind of like Meredith -- the other two are just followers. And Chrissa isn't the only victim. These girls also pick on another girl, shy and quiet Gwen, who turns out to be a talented violinist. Well, Chrissa wants to try to make friends with Gwen but Gwen has a secret. Chrissa's bullies seem to stop at nothing to make her miserable. When Chrissa joins the swim team, Tara's cruelty seems to get worse.

Chrissa to me seemed a little desperate for making friends -- it was like, she had made that her only goal upon getting to that new school. It was a little annoying, cause she kept saying 'hi' to the girls and the girls wouldn't say 'hi' back -- but then I got to like Chrissa, because she's willing to stand up for herself and what she believes in. Gwen really reminds me a lot of Katarina, so quiet and doesn't say much at all, keeps to herself. Sonali, I'm not sure who she is. I think she wanted to be friends with Chrissa from the beginning, but she was afraid of losing Tara's friendship because of it.

After the assembly, Kristy wanted to watch the basketball team practice, so Harriet and I stayed in the gym awhile before we left. "What did you think about the movie?" I asked them.

"I wanted Chrissa to beat those girls silly," Kristy said. "Especially that Tara, she deserved it." Kristy then told me that back in fourth grade, she did just that to a girl who picked on her for being a tomboy. The girl has since moved away.

"I didn't get Sonali," Harriet said. "I mean, she's Indian, right, and she's following behind those girls like a lost puppy dog."

"That's only in the beginning," I reminded her. "But Sonali starts to come to her senses I think around the time she signs up to do the ceramics thing. I don't think they made a big deal over the fact that she's Indian."

I have to admit, Sophie was right, it does kind of remind me of what happened to me when I first came to Adams. For those new to my blog, I'll crosslink the post so you can read about it. http://aghaleysblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-first-day-of-school.html I heard Meredith and her gang talking and laughing pretty much throughout the whole movie, till finally the teacher told them to leave. They were only too glad to.