Natalie Robinson was three months short of her 15th birthday when she started at Bayside High, but she still looked 12 and she had never been kissed by a boy or had a date.
Fastforward a year and little had changed. At almost 16, Natalie was still 5'4 and stick-thin with a cute although freakishly small box-shaped face. Boys preferred to tease her rather than date her.
Though she had lovely shiny long dark hair with perfect bangs, her body was as "flat" as a surfboard in all areas and very pale.
Embarrassed about her skinny legs and knobbly knees, she wore long pants at all times just to feel more protected.
An only child and straight-A student, she never seemed to get any attention from the opposite sex and didn't have a single friend in the school.
Apart from a slightly annoying tendency for backchat that needed ironing out, she was the perfect victim.
The boys in her class seemed to only be interested in girls with well-formed chest, bum, hips and legs.
All of the girls who were considered attractive at Bayside had incredibly shapely bodies with powerful legs, curved hips and very noticeable bum and tits already.
Natalie felt it was so very unfair that she was expected to have developed like that by 15, but physically, she was the odd one out in her class and considered a "boy" by most.
She couldn't understand why she had been picked as the class victim when there were at least two other very thin girls in her class.
But while those skinny girls had good development in the right places and were able to carry off their slight frames with an air of confidence, Natalie lacked all of that.
Young for her age socially, the highly intelligent 10th grader just wanted to focus on her schoolwork - and the Irish dancing classes that her Irish parents sent her to at the weekends - and be left alone in school.
She had made some friends at Irish dancing and looked really cute in her dance uniform. But she generally hated school - apart from the teachers and the studying of course.
One big reason she had been marked out from the very start was because in her first week of high school, she had enthusiastically formed an Anti-Bullying Club and made herself its President.
To this day, Natalie remains its President and only member and has been ridiculed endlessly over it.
Natalie didn't really understand most other girls her age, or why sex was already so important among her classmates.
She had no idea about how domination of the weak and unsuspecting is essential for many teenage girls in helping them to assert their new-found womanhood, establish strong friendships with other like-minded powerful females and most importantly, attract the strongest males.
Natalie didn't yet have any of those concerns - she wasn't even in that race. She found most of her classmates "so immature and basic", especially as she had made some friends at Irish dancing as young as 12 who were infinitely more emotionally mature, thoughtful and considerate than these girls.
Natalie would hear stories about her classmates casually having sex with each other and think to herself, "How could they be doing THAT - we're not even allowed to do that yet!"
Having been moved to the States from Ireland at age 14 just in time to start as a freshman at a Florida high school, she'd been marked out as different from the very start by her peers at Bayside High, isolated completely and teased endlessly.
The skinny and shy Irish girl with her pale skin and long dark hair was the favourite class "outcast" and her classmates delighted in actively excluding her as much as possible - mainly just to see the look on her little face.
Group work in class was always very predictable for Natalie - everyone simply refused to work with her.
There were three girls in particular who had targeted Natalie from the beginning and had persuaded everyone else it was cool to be mean to her – Allison Hardcastle and her best friends Kelly and Michelle.
Being that bit older than her classmates having turned 16 ahead of everyone else, Allison was considered the queen of freshman year, and she got off on wielding power over the weak-willed with the help of her six foot tall 18-year-old boyfriend Ben.
For the first few months, Natalie was mainly called names and isolated, with the occasional incident.
Like one day, when their History teacher had left the room for 10 minutes, someone (she didn't see who), pulled her shoe off her right foot and it was then passed around the whole class for the whole time until the teacher returned.
Natalie stayed in her seat in the front row, said nothing and made no attempt to get her shoe back until it was returned. She made a point of not even turning around to look.
One boy had suggested throwing her shoe out the window at one point. That had really worried her.
She was even more concerned when one of the girls said loudly: "Good shoes and in my size, get me the other one will you? I want them."
Within seconds, a boy was approaching her from behind on his tip toes. Spotting him out of the corner of her eye at the last second, Natalie quickly pulled her left foot up under her small arse and kept it there obstinately. Nobody was getting her other shoe, she thought. She kept looking straight ahead, refusing to turn around.
"Oh my god", Adam exclaimed as he shrugged his shoulders at Amy, the girl who had demanded the other shoe. Natalie was making it impossible for him and most people thought it was game over.
"Why don't you just make her give it you?" Allison, who had taken Natalie's right shoe in the first place, suggested.
Allison had decided not to take any further active involvement, as she was finding it amusing watching these amateurs have a go.
The beguilingly attractive 16-year-old knew from her father – a leading prosecution attorney in Florida – that real power was about being able to delegate.
Natalie was following advice she'd got from her mum about bullies: "Don't react and they will get bored."
Besides, she had more important concerns like her important schoolwork, so she wasn't going to let these simpletons upset her.
Anyway, they would have to return her shoe as it was her property, wouldn't they?
The thing was, her mum's advice didn't seem to work. Despite keeping her head down and not reacting or crying, the whole class seemed to find tormenting her for those 10 minutes absolutely hilarious. Her lack of a reaction even seemed to make them want more.
Adam was still standing behind Natalie and was somehow making most of the class laugh like hyenas at her.
How ridiculously immature, Natalie thought to herself as she tried to focus on studying the passage about Roosevelt that they were meant to be familiar with by the time Mr Hamilton returned.
She still wasn't going to turn around and give everyone that satisfaction.
Adam wasn't a very big guy. He was about 5'8 and lean but very robust and strong. Generally he was a mischief maker and not a bully, but he was finding Natalie an irresistible target.
Another simpleton, Natalie thought.
What she failed to understand was that her determination not to react or "rise to" the harassment only made him more determined to annoy her.
Did she think herself above him, or what?
Adam moved round in front of Natalie's desk, making it hard for her not to look up at him.
"Can I help you?", Natalie enquired.
For some reason that made the whole class erupt into very hard-edged laughter as most of them breathlessly mocked and imitated her polite voice.
This insolent boy pulled her textbook she was reading from under her arms and held it behind his back.
"Go Adam, go Adam", half the class was chanting.
Natalie just looked at him wearily, hoping he would see sense. She resisted the urge to get out of her seat and try to get her book back, so he grabbed her pencil case as well and then she was on her feet, so he held her possessions as high up in the air away from her as he could - while indicating to Amy that now was a good time to swipe that other shoe.
The whole class was watching now with fascination.
As Natalie jumped up and down trying to retrieve her book and pencils from Adam, Amy snuck up behind Natalie and had taken hold of the smaller girl's left ankle just as someone spotted Mr Hamilton outside the door and shouted "Teacher coming!".
Amy was so disappointed and reluctantly let go of Natalie, while Adam abruptly dumped the victim's textbook on the floor and dashed back to his own desk.
Just as Mr Hamilton was walking back in the door, someone chucked Natalie's shoe so hard in her direction that it hit the back of her seat, causing more ripples of hysteria around the room.
Nat turned right around this time, unable to conceal her shock.
"What the fuck are you looking at? Turn around," Amy commanded.
Natalie obeyed instantly before quickly putting her shoe back on and grabbing her textbook from the floor, just in time before the teacher noticed or started asking questions.
Natalie was a bit shook. "That could have hit me in the head for all they care," she thought to herself.
"I hope you've all read that passage now," Mr Hamilton boomed as he resumed he lesson, oblivious to all that had taken place in his absence.
Allison, who had snatched Natalie's shoe that day, and her close friends Kelly and Michelle, were very satisfied with this first effort at humiliation of their chosen victim.
It showed them that they could easily take charge of her whenever they wanted to – and that they were able to attract good support from their classmates.
Amy was particularly impressive, Allison thought, while Adam wasn't bad either; maybe she could use their help in the future.
Allison got a tingling, almost sexual feeling from the knowledge that she'd just made things that bit worse in general for this "pathetic" Anti-Bullying Club president.
Natalie generally accepted she wasn't liked and would be teased and left on her own. But she was petrified of that escalating further into anything physical.
But things weren't going to get much better for her as time went on.