I was a broken twig, forced onto a different family tree. I was adopted—not because my biological parents chose a different path, but because fate has a cruel way of splitting people apart. Like many kids, I grew up hearing the lie: "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you," even though bruises fade, and words can haunt you for years. Words don't just hurt—they linger. They embed themselves like splinters under the skin, small but sharp, aching long after the moment has passed.
I was seven, starting grade two in Sydney, when someone first called me an "ugly monster." The voice cut through the classroom noise like glass—sharp and cold. My heart pounded and my face burned—not from embarrassment, but from the sting of being seen in a way I didn't understand yet: ugly. I always noticed stares whenever I was with my parents, but up until that moment I just thought people were confused how two Mexicans can produce an entirely White kid. At that age, I still believed in magic, in playground wishes and backyard secrets. I was just a kid with scraped knees and tangled hair, lost in childish joy. But after that moment, something inside me shifted. The way you learn fire is hot by touching it once, I learned cruelty from the echo of that one word. Those words became a shadow, trailing me through hallways and echoing in every silence. No matter how often I repeated that rhyme, it felt like a lie I told myself to dull the ache—a chant to keep the tears at bay.
The playground was worse. Day after wretched day, I was outnumbered—dodging fists disguised as balls, or standing still, pretending not to feel, while they tore someone else apart. The laughter of other kids wasn't laughter to me—it was a warning. I didn't know which was worse—being their target or being their witness. I didn't speak. I didn't run. I just existed in the middle, floating in a strange limbo where I wasn't invisible, but I wasn't seen either. I was always the outsider. Always the underdog.
By fifth grade, I'd grown accustomed to these words—trained by repetition, worn down by stares—all because of a scar I was born with that covered nearly half my face. I used to trace it in the mirror, wondering what my face might've looked like if things had been different. One day, a couple of students taped a sign to my desk: "Caution: Rocky Dennis here." The year that movie came out was especially brutal for kids like me. They saw that face on the screen and found a name to weaponise. The letters were bold, jagged, cruel—like they'd been carved into my skin. The sign stayed there for almost an hour before someone took it down. Not a teacher. Not another student. Me.
No one stopped them. Except Ms. Craigs. She was the only one who didn't brush it off with that tired phrase: "Boys will be boys." She had this steady voice, soft but full of quiet fire.
The truth was, I wasn't scared of the words themselves. I was scared of the silence that followed them. The way people looked away, teachers turned their backs, and even the nice ones only whispered sympathy instead of change. I didn't need them to fight for me. I needed someone to see me.
After my two biggest bullies, Chris and Ted, were suspended for the umpteenth time, she tried to comfort me. But it was the same tired script each time—"They're just words, Elliot." "You have to stand up for yourself." But how could I stand my ground when everyone else was trying to bury me beneath it?