Trigger warnings: Suicidal thoughts, sexual assault, and middle school cringiness. PART ONE : The Prologue In the fall of 2010, I was a eighth grader in Boulder, Colorado. I had just started at a new private school. It was my third middle school in my third state. But I was excited for a new start. Alexander Dawson School, a k-12 school, didn’t have uniforms, and it was at the top of tiny hill, and the theater classes were at the bottom of the hill. It was only about 20 minutes from my house, and they had Mac computers everywhere. The elementary school students were experimenting with iPads. The buildings had distance like a college campus. It seemed so mature, at the time. My old school, Waterford School in Sandy, Utah, was one of the most advanced schools I’ve ever attended. They really set a high standard in terms of education and administrative responses to bullying. When I first came to Dawson, it was clear I was ahead of my peers academically. So I was placed in t