Hey guys! This is a commissioned piece by TELUS & WE Day for their campaign to #RiseAbove cyberbullying. I am so honoured to be a part of this campaign and hope you like the story! Cyberbullying happens every day and it's never a joke, it's never funny and it should never be ignored.

Chapter One

Eva had one mission.

Get through high school without attracting too much unnecessary attention to herself. That of course was easier said than done. Seeing as Westwood High was a particularly small school with no more than twenty students in each class and situated within an even smaller town where everyone knew everyone; getting by without some kind of drama surfacing was probably impossible.

But Eva was still going to try. Grab my diploma then get out, she would tell herself.

Simple.

But of course nothing was quite so simple when it came to High School.

The rusty yellow school bus staggered down the road that was filled with pot holes from the harsh frost and heavy dumping of snow Canada's long winter had come with. Eva put a hand on the seat in front of her to steady her when the bus took a sharp corner. She glanced over to the front of the bus and looked through the rear-view mirror at the driver who just hummed and pushed her shades higher up on her nose. Eva scowled but the bus eventually made a jittery stop outside of Westwood High where every student quickly made a rushed exit from the bus in a hazardous mass of limbs and backpacks.

Slipping through the side doors and narrowly avoiding a group of freshman running up the stairs and nearly colliding into her, Eva finally made it to her bright orange locker in one piece. As she hung her bag up on the hook and sorted out her binders, a person came over from the corner of her eye.

"Hey," Natasha smiled, arms filled to the brim with textbooks and notebooks.

"Hey," Eva greeted her back and crouched down to grab her textbook from the bottom of her locker before freezing. "We had homework in math, didn't we?"

Natasha winced a little. "Sadly yes, sorry."

Eva closed her eyes and took a deep breath before getting back up. "It's fine, I'll say my...dad ate my homework."

Natasha laughed and hiked her books higher up against her chest. "Just tell him you left your textbook at school. Mr. Riker doesn't seem to hate you yet so you should be off the hook."

Eva smiled amusedly and shut her locker up. "Is Carmen not coming to class?"

The second piece of the infamous trio Eva had been invited to be friends with was usually there by their lockers to head off to homeroom. The spunky blonde would come sauntering over, a new shade of lipstick on each week and a crazy story to start rattling off about some rumour surfacing around the school or a 'perfect' couple breaking up.

"She's skipping to hang out with Ryan," Tasha smirked and Eva rolled her eyes.

"Of course she is."

The two walked down the hallway towards their first class when the first bell rang and Tasha tapped Eva on the arm suddenly.

"Oh man, look, look!" she hissed at Eva with a quiet laugh.

"What?" Eva looked over and Natasha tilted her head to the side so she could look past her and see a girl she recognized as Cathy Ricks dressed in badly sized sweatpants and a shirt that clung to every inch of her body. Her light brown hair was pulled into a loose pony-tail that was about to fall out.

"That shirt is doing her no favours," Natasha scoffed.

Eva frowned a little. "She's not that big."

"Big enough to not be able to wear a tight shirt," Natasha said. "Come on, I didn't mean anything by it."

"Right," Eva mumbled and didn't say anything else until they reached the classroom.

Her first two classes went by slowly, each teacher talking for too long and the clock moving too slow. Her workload began to pile up and numbers were a jumbled mess in her head by the time second period had ended and the chance of grabbing some food was now there. Eva only happened to take a quick few bites from an apple she'd snagged from the resource room before she was on her way to get work out of the way.

The library was packed during lunch when Eva managed to grab a table with a growling stomach but a set of arms full of homework. Books and papers littered half the table by the time Natasha and the last piece of the trio, Taryn, came over with a much smaller pile of work. That was the problem when Eva had decided to take all three sciences instead of just one like nearly everyone else. She would be stuck with question after question where her friends would get by on homework every other day if that.

Taryn and Natasha took up two of the four chairs at the table and Taryn ran a hand through her black hair as she whipped out her phone, scrolling through the apps. Eva saw Taryn grin when she looked over at the library entrance and caught Carmen making her way over.

"There she is!" Taryn laughed and Eva glanced over at the teacher supervising the library, knowing that they were probably going to get kicked out by how loud the three of them always were. "How was your date with Ryan?"

Carmen narrowed her eyes at Taryn but smiled anyway as she sat down opposite Eva. "It wasn't a date, but, it was still good. Great even."

Taryn and Natasha laughed and they all began to talk as Eva hunched down and continued with her text work. It was moments like this where she felt like an outsider with the other three girls. Seeing as they had all been friends before high school and Eva had only come to the school last year, she had a lot of catching up to do when it came to her friendship with the trio.

She wasn't too sure what their friendship was based off. Eva wasn't as loud as them, as expressive, as confident with herself and everything she did. She was more the girl that floated along with everyone else until she had to leave and try something new. Natasha, Carmen and Taryn were a force to be reckoned with; constantly bouncing off rumours, laughing the loudest, being the most daring and generally making Eva go to her limits to keep the friendship steady. Being uncomfortable was a daily thing, just like now as Eva sat in the library trying to get things done and the three girls were just throwing words off each other about Carmen's escapades with a boy Eva was sure she had never met.

"– seen it before, Eva?"

Eva looked up quickly at the girls to see that she must have faded out for a while because they were now all huddled around with Taryn's phone in the middle of the table. Three sets of eyes were on her and Eva blinked in confusion.

"Sorry, what?" she asked, putting her pen down gently.

"Have you seen this before? The website," Taryn asked again and Eva shook her head, leaning closer.

"What website?"

Taryn brought her phone over and scrolled down a dark blue website page that looked more like a blog than anything else.

"Paige sent me the link," Taryn said. "Apparently it was only made last night but it must have so many views by now. I'll text you all the link."

Eva took hold of Taryn's phone and read over each little sentence-long post that took up the website's only section. There were only two current posts, all uploaded the night before at 10:09 with one name in each one.

Cathy Ricks.

"What is this?" Eva asked quietly.

"Someone's made a whole website just to mock Cathy," Carmen said and Eva was surprised when she looked over to see that she was smiling, trying to cover up a laugh.

"I don't know, it's a little mean," Eva said.

"Oh come on," Natasha muttered. "It's funny. Loosen up a little. It's not causing any harm, it's just a bit of a joke."

"Whoever made this site is a legend," Taryn laughed and Eva looked back down at the website posts.

"Even you have to admit that Cathy's grade eight graduation dress looked completely ridiculous," Carmen said and Eva looked over at her.

"You saw her dress?" she asked.

"Look in the corner of the post," Carmen supplied and Eva looked back down, clicking on the upload that talked about how 'funny' and 'stupid' Cathy had looked in her graduation dress.

In the corner was the option to open a picture attachment. Eva clicked on the button and a picture popped up after the loading sign. The angle was bad and was obviously taken by someone in the audience of the graduation ceremony. A younger Cathy was walking up on stage, a bright smile on her face and a giant, poufy pink dress surrounded her body. It spun out in row after row of ruffles and sparkled embellishments and had a strange corseted top which was attached onto long, flared sleeves.

"She looks like a Victorian marshmallow," Natasha grinned.

Eva felt bad for laughing.

***

Getting to her locker at the end of the day was an even more strenuous task than the morning. Once the end of school bell rang there was a surge of people from every part of the school taking up every inch of the hallways. Backpacks hit other backpacks, people skidded to stops before they crashed into someone else and shoulders crashed into doors to get them open as hands were preoccupied by books and mobile phones.

Having a locker in the busiest hallway was one of the worst things that could ever happen to someone at Westwood High but Eva had no other choice so now shouldering and grunting people out of the way was a daily routine.

Her orange locker stared back at her as Eva finally made it to the tall, metal door. She began to pack up her bag that practically groaned with each new weight she threw into the weak leather. Her back was going to be wrecked by the time she got home.

The hallways began to clear a little as Eva took her time getting her stuff together. As the first round of buses left the school's driveway, Eva closed up her locker and turned around only to stumble straight into someone. She lost her footing and nearly went down to the ground with the person but managed to catch herself just in time by gripping the handle of her locker.

"I'm so sorry..." Eva said as she caught her heavy bag on her arm, in the dent of her elbow, and looked up at the person she ran into.

Cathy stared back at her, eyes glistening with moisture. She quickly ducked her head and said nothing back as she made a hasty exit out of the back doors of the school towards the parking lot, everyone's eyes on her.

Eva finally got her bearings together and walked down the hallway to the buses and saw a few people snicker as they looked at the doors Cathy had scurried out of. Eva slowed down and looked around. Nearly everyone had been looking at Cathy when she made her exit. Eva was now pretty sure that way more than just a little quarter of the school had seen that site.

It had only been created last night and it seemed as if the entire school had managed to view it in less than twenty-four hours.

They had all seen Cathy being tormented.

And it seemed like most of them had probably laughed like Eva did.

***

Eva's home was far too big and echoed far too much.

She hated being alone in it for being too paranoid over any little creak or snap of the walls. Luckily, she was never alone that often. Though when it came to privacy, it had its downsides. Eva's mom was always home when she came in, having random hours that went from being early in the morning on a Tuesday to being late at night on a Friday.

"Hey honey," her mom said from the living room.

"Hi," Eva smiled and toed off her boots and thin coat. "Are you working late tonight?"

"This time yes, which is why the slow cooker is on and doing all the work for me," her mom said and gave Eva a smile. "Your dad should be home in a couple hours."

Eva nodded and headed towards the kitchen, glancing through the contents of the cupboards and the fridge before settling on just taking the entire bag of pretzels and eating straight from the opening. She had maybe got halfway through her fifth pretzel when the front door burst open and her younger sister, Hailey, came rushing in, dragging the relatively cold air into the house with her. Eva heard her sister talking to her mom for a bit before she came into the kitchen, after food as well.

"I swear they let you out of school earlier and earlier each day," Eva said.

Hailey rolled her eyes and opened up the fridge, grabbing the carton of juice. Eva munched on another pretzel and unsuccessfully fended off Hailey when she made a grab for them. After wrestling the bag back from her sister, Eva leaned against the counter and Hailey hopped up and sat on top of it.

"That's highly unsanitary," Eva said.

Hailey shrugged and gulped back a whole glass of juice. "Oh, can we walk up to the stores later so I can get some big pieces of paper?"

"Sure," Eva answered. "What are they for?"

"School project. I have to make a poster about an explorer that explored something."

Eva huffed out a laugh. "You sound really excited about that."

"Oh!" Hailey suddenly jumped off the counter. "I forgot to mention that I got my grad dress the other day."

"You just happened to forget you bought the one dress you haven't shut up about for weeks?" Eva asked, amused and Hailey just grabbed her arm and tugged her away from the counter.

"Come on, I want to show you it."

Eva followed her younger sister up the stairs and into her room. Hailey stuck her head into her closet and Eva put her bag of pretzels down on the desk. Hailey would be graduating from grade eight and then going on into high school just in time for Eva's last year. Even though it was only about three years ago, it felt like even longer ago that Eva had walked onto her school's rackety stage in her first pair of heels and grabbed a rolled up piece of blank paper with a shiny red ribbon around it. The actual graduation sheets were handed out later but that didn't deter from the moment.

"Aren't you three months too early for grad?" Eva asked.

"There's nothing wrong with being a little early," Hailey said. "It means that later on when everyone else is stressed out because they don't have a dress yet, I can sit back and relax."

Eva could have put money on her sister saying something like that.

Hailey grabbed the hanger her dress was strung up on and laid it out onto her bed.

"Okay, here it is!" Hailey smiled and looked over her dress proudly but Eva was frozen as she looked at it.

A short, pink dress was laid out over the white bed sheets. It had fine ruffles going down the skirt and a sweetheart neckline. Eva blinked and focused her eyes back in. It wasn't the same dress, not by a long shot, but Eva couldn't look past the colour and the ruffles. All she could see was Cathy's dress. A dress she was now being ruthlessly teased about, three years later.

"Evie?" Hailey called out gently.

Eva looked away from the dress and gave her sister a smile, walking over to squeeze her shoulder and pull her into a little side hug.

"It looks awesome."

***

A few hours later when Eva and Hailey had trudged up to the main store and come back with armfuls of coloured paper, glue, markers and more; their dad was finally home and their mom was getting ready to head out.

After dinner, Hailey was scurried away in her room. She had said nearly three hours ago that she was doing her homework but Eva was nearly positive that she was just lying on her bed on her laptop. Her dad was relaxing in the living room after a long day of work with the TV playing lowly in the background so Eva made her way to her own bedroom, school bag over her shoulder.

She dumped the brown leather bag on the chair in front of her desk and slid her phone from her pocket, lying on the soft mattress of her bed. She scrolled through her notifications until she landed on her last text message. It was from Taryn and sent just after lunch had finished. Eva opened it up and was met with a very recognizable link that made her think back to the look on Cathy's face when she had bumped into her at the end of the day.

Eva was sure she had been crying or was at least on the verge of it.

Against her better judgement, Eva opened up the link and was taken into a different window where the dark blue website loaded up. The sizing and formatting was weird seeing as it was on mobile, so Eva picked up her laptop from the floor and switched it on. When she made it to her browser, she typed in the website's address and watched the website show up even bigger and worse than before. But there was more on the website this time and Eva looked down at the time in the corner of her screen.

10:09

Two new posts.