Tease by Amanda Maciel
In our day and age, bullying is a big deal. Some kids are bullied to the point that suicide seems like the best option to escape. This book is about bullying from the side of the bully.
Emma Putnam killed herself in March. Her parents claim it was due to the bullying she received from Sara and Brielle, but we'll never know because we never "hear" Emma's side of the story. We do, however, "hear" Sara's.
The book goes back and forth from the present to the events that lead up to Emma's suicide. Apparently, Emma has a thing for the boys because she has earned a reputation for being loose and a boyfriend stealer. She steals Sara's boyfriend, and that is part of why Sara and Brielle bully her. They call her things like skank and slut because they feel those names are earned by her actions. They pull pranks on Emma, like sending her fifty roses for Valentine's Day. Apparently, it all gets to Emma because she kills herself.
Sara, Brielle, and a couple of others are going to trial because Emma's parents believe they should pay for driving Emma to suicide. Once again, I have a hard time believing that's all that drove her to that. There's a story there that the reader doesn't know. Now, this in no way means I am downplaying bullying, but without her side, we just can't know for sure.
Anyway, Sara is the one telling the story, and it is clear that a lot of what she does to Emma is because her best friend is doing it. I am not trying to absolve Sara either, but peer pressure makes us do bad things sometimes. And yes, this is me speaking from experience. By the end of the book, I felt some empathy for Sara.
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