When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I kind of coasted in the middle of the popularity scale. I had a variety of interests and got good grades, so I had friends in a lot of different circles. If there were mean girls or bullies, they didn’t both me.

(Except for the time in 7th grade when there was a rumor that another girl named Melanie wanted to beat me up. I’d yet to reach my present height of 5’1″, and the only thing my 4’6″ self could figure that the 5’5″ girl had against me was that we had the same name. The fight never happened, and I moved to another school soon after.)

That changed my senior year of high school. I’d always been friends with kids a year or two ahead of me, so senior year—the one that was supposed to be “the best year of my life”—most of my friends were gone. (My senior year of college was eerily similar.) Two girls a grade below me, for reasons I still don’t understand, decided I’d be their target until graduation. In 1992 we didn’t use phrases like mean girls or bullying, and you didn’t report kids unless it turned physical. And even that often went unreported.

I had an on-again, off-again boyfriend all through high school, and during the off times, if I happened to be near him, they would bark like dogs, implying that I was following him like a puppy. That one sticks out the most, but there were constant digs and comments and nasty looks. And the best part? We were at a 100-student boarding school, so not only did I see them at all my meals, during sports, and between classes, but we lived in the same dorm. Try waiting in line for the shower behind your tormenter. I think it speaks to my nature that I never retaliated.

I know it wasn’t all in my head, because at the end of the year, one of them signed my yearbook, saying something like, “I know I was always a b!tch to you, but good luck!” Ugh. Needless to say, when I received Facebook friend requests from them years later, I gleefully hit DELETE.

Which brings me to today. I know I had it easy compared to many, many others, but I often wonder WHY those girls felt the need to harass me. If anyone treats me like that now I put them in their place, but I choose my friends so carefully that it’s rarely an issue.

When I wrote The Slope Rules, Brianna started as the popular girl at Cally’s new school, but quickly morphed into the most horrible of horrible people. She says and does horrific things without remorse for who she’s hurting, all with a perfectly practiced smile on her face. The words that flew out of her mouth surprised even me, but unlike me, Cally stood up to the bullying. And she went a step further: she helped her new friend escape Brianna’s clutches.

Readers hate Brianna, and I wanted to tell her story for two reasons:

1) To show readers that if they have a bully or mean girl in their life, that there’s probably a reason they act like that. It doesn’t excuse their behavior, just gives an explanation.

2) To show readers that if they ARE the bully, they don’t have to stay that way. It won’t be easy and people may not embrace you with open arms, but it is possible to change.

The Edge Rules opens with Brianna in jail for shoplifting, and chapter one ends with her father announcing he’s leaving her and her mother to go play house with his other family, who he’s kept hidden from them. And Brianna’s life keeps spiraling from there. As a reader of the series, it’s sweet justice for all the horrible things she’s done—and she definitely gets her comeuppance—but the best thing I’ve heard from early readers is that despite not wanting to like her, they were rooting for her by the end.

Telling Brianna’s story is important to me, even though I’ve had to relive some moments from my high school days that I’d rather leave in the past. I stop short of saying I was bullied, but the fact that I still remember how they made me feel 25 years later tells me that this is a story that needs to be told. Diving into why they acted that way wasn’t always fun, but if it helps a reader today, it was worth it.