What had she ever done to them? Had she ever spoken a rude word about them, even behind their back? Had she ever even thought something bad about them? No. She hadn’t done anything. She thought that they were her friends, and yet she was their target.
She wore glasses and loose jeans. She didn’t care until they made her. They forced her to change. She was no longer the girl she once was. They killed her, with their knives disguised as words. It didn’t matter that people thought she was nice or pretty, all that mattered was pleasing those hypocritical people.
*          *          * 
She sat at the end of the lunch table surrounded by her friends. She laughed loudly at a joke the girl next to her had said. She turned her attention to the friend sitting across the table, but that didn’t stop her from hearing whispered words.
“She’s so annoying,” one voice said, dragging out each word.
“I know. She looks like her mom dressed her,” replied a second voice.
“Those glasses are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,” the first voice whisper-yelled.
“But hey, they match her face, don’t they?” the second voice added on, snickering.
She readjusted her glasses and looked down at her feet, trying to hide the tears. She knew exactly who the voices were talking about. The words bit into her soul and buried their way into her heart. She carried them around with her, and still does to this day.
From then on, she started to care way too much. She made her mom get her contacts, and she tried to dress the way they did. Her mom wondered why she had decided to change, but she never said a thing about the words that had ripped apart her heart. “My glasses give me a headache,” she lied when her mom made her answer. “Contacts are much easier and don’t hurt me.” From that moment on, she became exactly what they wanted her to be. She was no longer the person she once was.
*          *          * 
“Wow, you’re actually kinda pretty without your glasses,” the first voice said. Zoe looked her up and down after saying those words that made her feel worse.
“Yeah”, chimed in the second voice, “you actually look nice.”
She walked away, tears fighting to stream down her cheeks. She blinked them away, telling herself that she shouldn’t cry with her contacts in. That was the only way she could convince herself that she shouldn’t cry; that their words didn’t really affect her.
From that moment on she changed the way she looked. The baggy jeans and t-shirts went out.  In came the skinny jeans and shirts with brands written across them.  Her happiness and confidence disappeared, too. They left her a shell of insecurity.
Now she only cared about  being someone everyone liked. She hid the person they didn’t like; the person she liked being. She went home and tried to distract herself from what was going on during the day. Nothing worked. Every time she tried to talk to her friends, all she could think about was that it was her “friends” that had done this to her. They forced her to build a nest around herself and lock everyone out.