Chapter Seventy-Eight

"This is Gwen Glover reporting from the Sims University quad, the scene of a massive demonstration. Let's give a listen..."

 

Anastasia walked up to a desolate podium. Looking around, she was scared as she took a deep breath

 

.

"My name is Anastasia -- and -- and --" Her voice faltered a bit, and then grew more assured. "I was bullied."

 

 

A crowd gathered behind and around her, including her classmate, Derek Khan, who held a megaphone. Taking a deep breath, Anastasia grew more confident, more sure, of her words. "While I was a student at Smuggsworth Prep School, I was bullied relentlessly," she said, showing a photograph of herself during her senior year there. "I was painfully shy and eighty pounds overweight. I had no friends. It was four years of torture, and the school administration did nothing about it. The only thing that ended it was, frankly, when I graduated."

"What we have to make sure is that what happened to me doesn't happen to another individual ever again!" Her comment was met with thunderous applause.



"No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!" The chants pierced the still cold air.





"We will not let bullies win!"