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“That wasn’t your fault.”
“No. But most people who get bullied aren’t at fault.”
He takes a long, deep breath in. “Would you give me their names if I asked?”
I actually smile at that. “Would you track them down? Now? This many years later?”
“I would.”
“And do what?”
“Show them how fucking amazing, and accomplished, and generous, and gorgeous you are," he says without even thinking. He pauses. “And then punch them in their arrogant, smug faces.”
My heart squeezes. “You think I’m generous?” I ask softly.
“Abigail,” he says, his voice scratchy. “With your brain you could have done anything. You could be a multi-millionaire by now. But you’ve used your brilliance and spent your time and energy on agriculture and conservation. Your passion is finding ways to feed more people.” He pauses, then says his voice gentler, “Yes, I think you’re generous. Among many other things.”
My throat feels tight. I’ve learned over the years that I don’t need to be admired by everyone. Just certain people. People who are working to make things better for others, like Mason and Lauren. And now Torin. He understands what I do and his admiration matters. “You don’t need to track them down for me.”
“I still want to.”
“I appreciate that. But they don’t matter.”
“Don’t they?” he asks. “What they did to you has made it so that you won’t get up in front of groups and talk about the amazing things you want to do, the amazing things you are doing.”
He’s right.
The trauma from those years, the desire to shrink into myself and not call attention to my words, my work, myself, has made it hard to talk about my work. “But I’m still doing the work,” I say. “What I learned from all of that is that the best way to shut up those judging me is to show them what I can do. They can’t argue with results.”
“You never held back.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“Never. I avoided presentations and group work when I could. My teachers understood my anxiety, and my being so much younger did make them pay a little more attention to that. They’d sometimes let me test out or do projects alone instead of in a group. But if I had to present, I’d go throw up and then I’d do the presentation. It didn’t matter if the other kids thought I dressed like a little kid or didn’t understand their jokes and innuendos and references. At the end of the day, I was their competition. And I won. Every time. My projects, my papers, my experiments, my essays, my tests were always the best.”
“You always gave it your best, even knowing they’d make fun of you?”
“They were going to make fun of me anyway. I started going for really pissing them off. The meaner they got, the more confident I got.”
“Why?”
“Because it meant I was doing something right. They wouldn’t have cared otherwise. It meant I really was a threat.” I still feel the weird mix of thrill and terror thinking about it now. Every time I turned in a project or took a test, I felt that nauseating mix of adrenaline. Even in college. I knew I was going to poke the bears who wanted to tear me down, but I did it anyway. “They used words to try to hurt me, to say I was a wannabe, to say I cheated, to say I was a loser, and that no one liked me and that everyone thought I was weird. But I used actual actions, and produced actual results that proved I was no wannabe, I didn’t cheat, and I was the winner. Over and over and over.”
I realize I’m clenching my fists and I’m scowling.
“Were you valedictorian of your class?” he asks. His voice is a little gruffer now.
“Of course.”
“Even being three years younger than everyone else.”
I nod. “Yes. And the salutatorian from my class doesn’t have even one master’s degree.” I can’t help but frown when I add, “He’s on the city council in Shreveport and is in engineering, though.”
“Why does that matter?” Torin asks.
“Because I want to build indoor farms in Shreveport and I’ll probably have to talk to him to get that done,” I say. Then I shake my head. “But that’s not important right now.”
He clears his throat again. “Everything about you is important, Abigail.”
God, how am I supposed to resist him when he says things like that?
