Natalie Renelle had been my former adolescent bully. She was one of the popular girls with a naturally beautiful face and blonde hair, which got her a lot of attention. Because people adored her, she became a narcissist. In junior high, she would trip me over while carrying the load of books in the corridors and spread rumors about me with her friends. Her bullying never ended there. As we got older, her bullying became more vicious to the point where I'd refuse to go to school for five months straight.
By tenth grade, she had united with some of my friends, and they would only exclude me. I think the last straw for my parents was when Natalie had stolen my first boyfriend. I was 18 at the time when the boyfriend I'd been going out with for over a year left me for her.
Natalie would also bully my younger sister Keira. She suffered from dyslexia, so there was always a second teacher helping her. Natalie and her squad would spread rumors about her IQ and behavior, making her seem animalistic in the school. It took less than a year before Keira, who had started year seven, couldn't take it and committed suicide. I zoned out while my parents grieved her death.
As graduation was approaching, I could tell my parents were unusually hostile toward Natalie. Their constant glare became unusually frequent to the point where I'd see them passing by our school just to check up on her. Their unusual behavior over the last two months made the teachers perturbed.
I knew she had given me an agonizing time, the reason I didn't end up going to university while she thrived at Harvard. I eventually went to a community college near our home and found a job as a janitor.
However, my parents' hostility towards her didn't end after graduation. Natalie texted me two years after high school, telling me how my father was creeping around outside her house at night. Of course, I didn't believe her and rebuked saying she was "just trying to pull me down". I knew it was eerie, but I couldn't believe her over my parents.
"Hey... oh, it's you!" I knew who it was calling me at this time of the hour.
"You moron!! Your mother... now coming to our uni every morning!!! Even the lecturers see her!" I could hear the panic in her voice, not the usual pride.
"Whatever sickness prank you're pulling stop it!!" I shouted back into the phone despite my agitation rising, "we're not kids anymore!!" I hang up on her and blocked the number.
I'm now 28 years old, living in a rented apartment on my own. Last week, I received a phone call from a classmate of mine from back in high school telling me how Natalie had implanted a bomb that killed her. Her funeral was held yesterday, and the detectives cannot find the reason behind her death. A prestigious woman with a successful career as an entrepreneur and two children would bomb a skyscraper. Being so egregious, I rang my mother for comfort. Surprisingly, my parents sounded rather nonchalant when I told them about the news.
"Oh, so tragic for her!" my mother replied sedately. "It only takes a matter of time before bullies get what they deserve!"
"You shouldn't grief, Eleanor!" my father said with a bit of snigger in his voice tone, "she was never a close friend of yours like Bek."
The detectives managed to find a small diary hidden under the woman's bed. After reading the notebook, they concluded that someone had been harassing her abusively for many years, forcing her to commit suicide. Natalie, the girl who made my adolescence a tormenting hell, was tormented by someone for the past three years. On the final page of the diary, before she bombed her skyscraper alongside 371 other deaths, said "I can't do this anymore! Take care of the kids for me!"
Natalie's perturbing stalker had caused severe psychological damage to her, to the point where she could no longer live.
I refuse to believe my parents nor anyone I know took part in it. However, the story doesn't seem to add up.