“That your impression of me

needs a lot of work.”

She pretends to take

a knife out of her heart.

“And that I give bullies

way too much power.

They tell me

how I should see myself,

how I should feel about myself.

How do I change that?”

She grins from ear to ear.

“I’m so glad you asked.”

Doc has two assignments for me.

The first is to tell Mom

when she hurts my feelings.

If I don’t feel comfortable doing that alone,

I should ask Dad to be there with me.

The second assignment is

to start replacing all my

untrue, negative thoughts

with true, positive thoughts.

That reminds me of

what I have students doing with

the trash can bulletin board

Enemy Number 3 and I made

at the library.

But it’s a lot easier

to toss into the trash the thoughts

others have about you

than the ones

you have about yourself.

DEEP DOO-DOO

Thanks to a screwdriver and chutzpah,

I’m about to get some practice

with changing thoughts.

Every Monday, Mom makes me

step on the scale.

I’m eating breakfast when

she stomps into the kitchen.

“Where is it?”

“In the trash.”

I eat the last spoonful of yogurt as

she digs through the garbage.

I buried all the pieces of

the scale on the bottom,

underneath dog doo I dumped.

She gets it all over her hands.

“You’re grounded, young lady!”

Doc and I talked about

me having the right to stand up to Mom,

just like anybody else,

and that she probably wouldn’t be happy about it.

Doc and I didn’t talk about

involving dog poop.

Crappity crap crap.

My bad.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

She gags as she runs to the sink.

“Not letting you weigh me again.”

Untrue, negative thought:

The higher my weight,

the lower my value.

True, positive thought:

A scale does not

determine my worth.

I’M ELLIE

In English class,

Mrs. Boardman asks

us to sum up what we’ve read with

our favorite quotes from the book.

I know just the quote

from Song for a Whale.

I raise my hand and

she calls on me.

“The whale ‘didn’t need to be fixed.

He was the whale who

sang his own song.’

That really hit home.

That’s what the best books do.

They make you think,

and rethink

how you see

yourself,

others,

and the world.

Most of all,

they make you feel.

Feelings toward people

who aren’t like you.

Feelings you didn’t know

you had.”

Mrs. Boardman asks me for an example

of singing your own song.

“Well, a lot of people blindly follow others

instead of thinking for themselves,

having their own voice.”

My eyes meet Kortnee’s.

“It’s okay to be different.

We’re all different.

Inside, everyone just wants to be

accepted for who they are,

but then they act like other people

to fit in.”