Your UnSlut Project

Submitted by @elizabethbooben, Author of "Texts to Juni"

Tammy. I'd never really known her, I'd never really talked to her. We went to elementary school together but we'd never talked. I didn't even know her last name.

When I was in art class one day in seventh grade, a guy who sits near me said to our table:

"It's true. There's a pregnant seventh grader in our grade."

They started asking who and when and what happened and why and the rest.

From what they said, the girl was apparently Tammy. And Tammy had sex with a guy seven times and got pregnant.

Choruses of "ew" and "ohmygosh" filled my table as he told us cringe-worthy information that sounded like gossip.

Then I heard the rumor more and more. It was everywhere, and everyone seemed to know it was her. I'd never seen anyone pick on her, but I knew that people shamed her silently because of the clothes she wore (many with holes). She would tell the PE teachers that she couldn't run because her doctors said so.

She sat next to me in PE in our assigned lines. She didn't seem like she was ever pregnant - she was absent a lot, but I doubt that was why. Someone once asked me if I saw a bump and I just said no.

Then it got worse.

They said she'd had abortions five times.

That definitely sounded fake.

I basically just watched from the sidelines, full of regret. No one ever seemed to pick on her especially, but people would behind her back.

Someone at my lunch table told me that they'd heard it from her friend who was angry at her for something so she told all of her secrets.

I really don't know what happened, what will happen, why, and how, and where. Honestly, it's not my life, but it must be hard for her.