They Mocked the New Teacher's Height

By lunch, the whole junior class knew.

The new biology teacher was Dr. Joy Carter. She had a PhD from Johns Hopkins. She'd spent eleven years at the National Institutes of Health studying growth disorders in children. Her textbook was used in more than two hundred high schools. There were videos of her online, giving talks to rooms full of doctors.

And she'd quit all of it to teach eleventh grade biology at Bradford Academy.

"Why would anybody do that?" someone asked at the lunch table.

Nobody knew.

Madison sat at the end of the table and didn't eat. Everybody kept looking at her. She hated it.

"You okay?" asked her best friend, Paige.

"I'm fine."

"I mean, you didn't know. Nobody knew."

"I said I'm fine."

Madison pulled out her phone. Her hands were shaking a little. She opened her camera and flipped it to selfie mode.

"What are you doing?" Paige asked.

"Getting ahead of it," Madison said.

She hit record. She put on her best smile.

"Okay, so, plot twist at Bradford today. Our new bio teacher wrote the textbook. Iconic. But also?" She held her hand flat at about her shoulder. "She's literally the size of my little sister. Like, she can't reach the top of the board. How is she gonna handle a lab?" She giggled. "Anyway. Love that for her, I guess."

She posted it before Paige could say anything.

By sixth period, it had eleven thousand views.

By the end of the day, forty thousand.

At eight the next morning, Madison and her mother were sitting in Dr. Hollis's office.

Dr. Hollis had the video playing on her computer screen. She paused it on Madison's hand, held flat at shoulder height.

"Madison," Dr. Hollis said. "Explain this to me."

"It was a joke."

"For forty thousand people."

"It was a joke," Madison repeated. "Everybody posts stuff. Tyler said way worse yesterday. Why am I the one in here?"

"Tyler is coming in at nine," Dr. Hollis said. "Don't worry about Tyler."

Madison's mother, Catherine Hart, sat stiff in her chair in a cream suit. She was on the school's board of trustees. She did not like being called into offices.

"Linda, let's be reasonable," Catherine said. "These are teenagers. It's a video. She'll take it down. A strongly worded apology, and we move on."

"She'll take it down," Dr. Hollis agreed. "But it's been shared four hundred times. Dr. Carter's face is in it. Her name is in the comments. And people are saying things about her that I will not repeat in this office."

Catherine shifted in her chair. "Well. With respect. Is that really our fault? Maybe a person in her... situation should expect a little attention. Maybe this isn't the right environment for her."

Dr. Hollis looked at her for a long, cold second.

"Catherine. Do you know why Dr. Carter came to Bradford?"

"I assume for the salary."

"She took a sixty percent pay cut."

Catherine's mouth closed.

There was a knock on the door. Dr. Carter stepped in, in a navy suit today, holding a coffee.

"Linda. You asked to see me?"

She saw Madison. She saw Catherine. She didn't look surprised.

"I've seen the video," she said, before anyone could ask. "My niece sent it to me last night. She's twelve. She asked me if I was okay."

Madison stared at her shoes.

"Are you?" Dr. Hollis asked.

"I've been four foot one for forty-four years," Dr. Carter said. "I've heard every joke. Most of them better than this one."

She sat down in the empty chair. Her feet didn't touch the floor. She didn't seem to care.

"I'm not here to get anybody expelled. I want to understand something." She turned to Madison. "Yesterday I asked you a question in front of the class. A question you didn't know the answer to. And you were embarrassed. Right?"

Madison didn't answer.

"So you went and made a video to embarrass me back. In front of forty thousand people." Dr. Carter tilted her head. "That's a lot of effort for one wrong answer, Madison. I don't think this is about the answer."

"It was a joke," Madison said again. But her voice was getting smaller.

"Was it a joke when you said I can't reach the top of the board?"

"You can't."

"Madison, I wrote a two-hundred-page chapter on growth disorders. Do you know how I can tell when somebody knows a lot about being short?"

Madison's head came up.

"They know exactly where it hurts," Dr. Carter said softly. "And they aim right there."

The room went very still.

Catherine Hart's face had changed. She reached over and put a hand on her daughter's knee.

"Madison," her mother said quietly. "Tell her."

Madison jerked her knee away. "Mom. Don't."

"Tell her about the shots."

Madison stood up so fast her chair tipped back and hit the wall.

"You promised," she said. Her voice cracked. "You promised you'd never tell anybody. Ever."

"Sweetheart..."

"Six years! Six years of needles every single night, and you said nobody would ever have to know!"

She grabbed her bag. She looked at Dr. Carter, and for the first time, there was no smirk on her face at all. Just a scared kid.

"Don't you dare feel sorry for me," Madison said.

Then she ran out of the office. The door slammed so hard the diplomas rattled on the wall.

Dr. Hollis looked at Catherine.

Catherine had her hand over her eyes.

"From eight to fourteen," she said. "Growth hormone injections. Every night before bed. She was in the first percentile. The kids at her old school called her Thumbelina. She'd come home and lock herself in the bathroom."

She dropped her hand.

"When she finally grew, she decided nobody would ever laugh at her again. So she started laughing first."

Dr. Carter set her coffee down on the desk.

Without a word, she got up and walked out the door after Madison.