I DROP THE TRAY OF fries and sauce packets onto the table, unceremoniously sliding into the booth next to Benjamin. "Okay, how'd we do?"

Soft music streams outwards from the radio centrepiece of our table. Though the café is calm, I glance to the door one more time nervously. We all remember what happened the last time we were at the Stereo Shack, the day after Benjamin and Drew fought with Reece and Derek. If the Monarchy walks in on us discussing their downfall today, shit is going to fly.

Leah shares first. "I did fine. Ash and them were practically already on our side. Dance Club was more than willing — considering their vendetta against Brittany — though they made me wait for their rehearsal to finish before anyone would talk to me. They're going to spread the message through the marching band."

Drew leans over the table and pulls the tray of fries closer to him. He waves a mayonnaise packet questioningly at Delaney, who shakes her head.

"My Mathletes are all for this, but they want anonymity whenever they're involved. The Olympiad kids were reluctant," Benjamin says carefully, "But most of them know me so they came round eventually. They want the same anonymity."

Drew pitches in, "Half of Chess Club said yes, and half said no. They were really scared, so I don't blame them. And those Drama kids are an evil piece of work. They said that if I cleaned their practise room, they would join."

"I would have paid to see that," says Delaney, shaking with laughter.

"I wish you would have!"

Leah asks mirthfully, "Well, did they agree?"

"Yeah, about that," Drew complains, "Turns out they were always planning on saying yes. They just saw an opportunity for free manual labour and thought why not?"

Considering how little I had to do in comparison to get the Photography Club behind the Revolution, Drew caught the sour end of the deal. Recounting my meeting with them, I announce, "Book Club took a little bit of persuading but they agreed eventually. I gave up the camera to the Photography Club, which I think helped convince them to join. Is that okay?"

Everyone gives me a variation of, "Of course."

"Well, I wish I had any of your groups. Turns out, Debate Club wasn't the hardest group to convince. All of them were willing to join. The newspaper team, however—" Delaney squeezes her hands into tight, vengeful fists. "I want to wring their necks."

She looks beyond pissed off right now, and I edge away from her, taking the fries, in case she decides to release her anger. "Why?" What could they possibly have done?

"Because, they said that if I wanted them to join, I would have to write a piece every week for a new column they're doing. Basically become one of them."

Well, that's not so bad. But from the way she says it, it sounds like she had to walk through a field of Legos with no shoes. That is to say, painful as fuck. "And what did you say?"

"Yes, of course. We need all the people we can get. But now I have to give up my time, my energy and my amazing brain to write a stupid article just so a few kids will help us!"

"Glad to see your ego wasn't damaged," Benjamin comments. Delaney's lips curl into a snarl, and her hands come up in front of her—

Before a quarrel and begin, I interrupt cheerfully, "That's great, almost everyone joined."

"Well, almost everyone wants the Monarchy gone," Delaney rolls her stormy grey eyes, settling back down into her seat. "They just need a little incentive. Or free labour."

"Makes me wonder what would have happened if we hadn't started this," I muse.

Leah answers calmly. "That's easy. We'd probably still be at the Monarchy's beck and call."

"But, wouldn't it have ended when they left school?"

Leah shakes her head, causing her rainbow hair to ripple around her face. "I don't think so. They've accumulated a lot of power over the years they've been here and as soon as they leave, one of their younger followers will take their place. That's how Brittany got so influential; she dated a string of seniors starting in freshman year."

"The Monarchy is a mantle," Delaney explains. "Maybe this is the first generation of this form, but it's like bullying in general. Cyclical. Whoever takes over next year will already have proximity to the Monarchy this year."

A heavy sigh escapes me. Delaney's words only embed deeper the knowledge that bullying is not easily stopped.

If only it were as easy as chasing off five people. But no, the Monarchy has their own followers — to say nothing of lovers and haters. People who internally dislike them might join the bandwagon for any number of reasons. To be popular by association, to protect themselves, or to simply fit in with the masses.

I've seen proof of it before. The people who started gossiping about me as soon as I sat in Terrence's bus seat. The crowds that prevented any of us leaving the fight at the start of school. The students who helped the Monarchy win the carwash.

No-one can run to an authority figure and rely on them to stop things when so many are involved — either as instigators or bystanders. What could authority do? Yeah, they could give the select bullies that can be named a few detentions, make them write apologies to everyone they've wronged — which'll take a minimum of a year in the case of the Monarchy — but it's unrealistic that they will be able to stop it.

The Monarchy will just get better at hiding what they're doing, or get others to step in for them, or take to the internet.

"The best thing we can do is try to change the way people respond to bullying," Benjamin says. "Don't just lie down and take it. Even if we only affect a fraction of the school, hopefully people will carry it on after we all graduate."

Bullying is too widespread, too intricate to find and destroy. Bullying is much like dust. Most cases are miniscule — seemingly negligible in comparison to the big, wide world. But when added up, that is when it smothers people. That's when the enormity of the problem reveals itself.

Bullying is massive and widespread, and similar to dust, trying to fix it only unsettles the whole piece, and makes things even messier. Unless you approach it from all angles, everyone, at once.

A metaphorical vacuum, pre-empting the fallout before it happens.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

In a chequered hoodie, Drew waits at the bus stop with headphones on and phone in hand. When I approach, he notices and smiles at me. "Hiya," he greets cheerfully, pocketing his phone.

The conversation continues comfortably until the bus rolls up to us, puffing its nauseating fumes into our faces. Drew offers me the window seat, while he immerses himself in a new game. When Terrence's stop comes up, my eyes flicker to the door out of habit. Then the familiar mop of tawny hair appears.

His eyes are completely glued to his phone, all slender and grey in his hand. He could be Luke's doppelganger with the way he stares. Scrolling rapidly, with each passing second, the crease in his eyebrows deepens.

Shoulders hunched with heavy worry, Terrence shuffles to his seat without really looking. Of course, he doesn't actually need to. That's probably been his only bus seat for as long as he's been taking the bus to school, reached by familiarity.

And as I watch, I notice his head straighten and turn. Terrence looks straight at me, with such intensity that he might have seen the person who killed his childhood pet.

He searches my face but must not have found anything incriminatingly murderous, because his eyebrows raise slightly and the panic fades. Then just as quickly as he glances back at me, his face becomes carefully blank. He mouths to me, What did you do? Strangely, no-one is trying to talk to him, or listen in they used to. From his seat across the aisle, two rows up from mine, I can barely read his lips.

He's acting like I committed a crime, when my worst transgression this year was releasing that video. More unnerving still, I have no idea what he is talking about. So I don't reply, opting instead to turn my head to the window. Drew hasn't noticed anything wrong, distracted as he is by his game.

But I can't forget the outraged, nearly betrayed, expression Terrence had pinned me with when he first stepped onto the bus. Or whatever was on his phone that demanded his absolute focus. Or how he thinks I'm the one at fault for it.

Something tells me I should prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.

As I walk towards my first class, my eyes are dutifully peeled for any signs of change. Briefly — I don't fully allow myself to hope — the thought of the Revolution actually gaining traction suggests itself as an explanation to why Terrence looked so stricken on the bus. There has to be a reason he was so... afraid of me.

It's when I catch another person's eye for the first time that the worry surges through me. She looks right at me, and ducks her head shyly when I make contact back. Like she knows what I've done. Like she's scared of it. She looks at me the way people look at Brittany.

My stomach twists uncomfortably; from that point onwards, my gaze is solely trained on the ground in front of me. I don't want to look at people, for fear of seeing the same hate directed at me.

"This was not what I imagined would happen," Drew eventually remarks, a frown of worry etched on his face.

"I agree. They're treating us too much like—"

"—the Monarchy." Drew and I exchange nervous glances, and I give a solemn nod.

The Revolution wasn't designed to make us the new central powers. I don't want to replace the Monarchy at all, I want us made equal. From around the corner, a sharp, distinctly feminine voice carries to me. "Can you move? The hallways are for walking, not making out."

In a moment of pure terror, my heart gives one aching squeeze. With all the mayhem, I never gave a thought to how Brittany's going to react. Is she—

Then Delaney's fiery red hair rounds the corner, flicking up as she walks to us, and my entire being heaves a sigh of relief. It's a bristly, demanding girl, but she's our bristly, demanding girl. "Sophie, Drew. You have to see this. Now."

She latches onto Drew's collar, dragging him to the side of the hall to get out of the way of the people heading to first period. "Whoa, whoa! I can walk." Not wanting to meet the same fate, I follow obediently.

Nestled next to a row of lockers, Delaney whips out her phone, and opens one of her social media channels. Expectantly, chewing her lip anxiously — which is enough to make me dread what I'm going to see — she holds it out to us. Drew moves aside enough for us both to look, his tangled head of hair nearly blocking my view of the screen.

He scrolls down quite hastily, and I barely catch the familiar faces woven through the posts and memes. The first one we come across is a picture of Riley from Book Club, standing against a brick wall with a piece of paper held in front of her.

In what I assume is her plucky handwriting, she's written mean and hateful words, which have probably been directed at her over the years. Her face is utterly emotionless though, and not at all affected by the insults in her hands. Freak, worthless, insignificant. Geek.

And I don't know what's sadder — the countless bullies that must have been behind the piece of paper, or the fact that Riley's desensitized herself just to escape the pain. The post is tagged #TGR, but says nothing else.

The dramatic snapshot is actually rather impressive, and I wonder if any of the photography students helped with the photos. Drew scrolls down more, and many other faces appear, along with their sheet of labels and the hashtag #TGR.

Are we starting an internet trend? Not really the way I planned to get the message across, but it's proving stronger than I thought. And my breath catches at the back of my throat when a familiar face crops up, stoic and defiant.

Our resident guitarist, Ashley. Her paper has about the same number of degrading terms as Riley did, and I catch only a handful before Drew moves on. Disgusting, loner. Geek.

Another person; this time a junior boy who I have seen a few times in the halls, but never caught the name of. I think he's quite athletic, because I've also seen him playing football with friends on the front lawn, next to the courtyard, at lunch. Reject, cheater, scum — and expectedly — geek.

A brunette girl, with frizzy hair and smooth skin. Her face is largely dominated by square glasses and those aquamarine elastic headbands that criss-cross over the front of her hair. She, as the paper says, is ugly and prudish and unwanted. And a geek.

Chubby, blotchy and slightly pimpled, an innocent boy stares back at me. He's been called a whale, fat, ugly, retarded — and a geek.

More and more people. Geek.

The words flash by in a blur, and the photos become more frequent as Drew scrolls up from the first post — Riley — that Delaney stopped at. I can't believe how many people stood up for this.

I would have thought no-one wanted to be identified as a rebel against the Monarchy, since, reportedly, most people aimed to stay anonymous. Therefore, an invisible target.

But all the faces staring up at me prove me wrong. I saw so many people I know. All of our band, all of the Book Club — even Phoenix, surprisingly, with a scornful glare on his face — and Wynter, whom I only met this week.

When Drew and I have finished glossing through the posts, we hand the phone back to Delaney. I'm left unable to believe it actually happened, let alone how quickly it did. I had begun to think it was always meant to be an abstract concept. A horizon that moves a little further away each time I get close to reaching it.

Delaney clears her throat, and gestures for us to start walking again. "I can't believe it's really happening."

She sounds almost nostalgic, which bemuses me because there's not one thing about the Monarchy I'd want to remember. "Why not?"

"They've just been around for as long as I can remember. You kind of adjust to them being there."

"As long as you can remember? Even when you were little kids?"

"Especially then. Brittany's always been the one in control, but the Monarchy didn't officially exist until a few years ago. I guess the evil in her just grew a bit."

Astonishingly, I find myself giving the slightest sliver of respect to Brittany. As hard as the Revolution was to implicate, creating an empire like she did must have been even harder. Not good, but difficult. If only that sheer will was dedicated to something other than ruining lives to fuel her own.

"Before Brittany corrupted them," Drew recalls, a wistful expression on his face, "they used to be quite like us. Normal."

His eyes are tracking his shoes as he moves, making even the air around him droop with sullenness. I gather he's thinking about Reece, Derek and the times when things were brighter.

I get what Delaney meant now — how she can't believe something so immovable is suddenly crumbling. I really have no idea what it was like. There's entire histories that have been written without me. And I can study up and memorise the facts, but they will only create a peripheral understanding. After all, people who read about wars are still unaware of the pain.

"Were they really just like us, Drew?" I wonder.

Drew nods soberly, eyes glazed over with memory. Delaney's taken a small breath, just about to speak when Drew swerves abruptly, cutting her off. He's heading into an open classroom to our left, tilting his head back to lend a quick, "See you later."

Delaney and I exchange a sympathetic look. I wonder how frequently Drew thinks about the people that used to be his friends. Delaney must be thinking the same. "Imagine being friends with the Monarchy. Ugh."

I gaze after Drew, staring at the place his curly hair was only a moment ago, before replying jokingly, "Yeah. Must've been bribed."

"Everyone has things they want, I guess," Delaney remarks.

What is so important that Reece, Madison, Derek and Terrence would sacrifice all the fun, friendly parts of high school for? Instead, they chose Brittany, who sends them to trick, injure and bully others and isolate themselves from anyone else.

"But you have to wonder what the hell is so worth making the whole school hate them," she continues. "If I was Reece... or Derek... I would never trade a friendship with someone like Drew. Never tell him I said this."

A peal of laughter escapes me, and I nod in agreement. Not only with Drew's friendship being much warmer and valuable than the Monarchy's, but how crazy Reece and Derek were to betray him and pass that up.

What the hell were they thinking?