April 22, 2025

By Meredith Claybourne

It’s been years, but I still think about her.

Senior year, our Spanish class went on a trip to Costa Rica. I shared a room with my best friend and a girl I didn’t know very well—Ellie. She was the kind of person you could easily overlook: soft-spoken, always reading, never interrupting. I don’t think I ever saw her speak unless someone asked her something directly.

And maybe that’s why we targeted her.

God, it makes me sick to write that now. We weren’t physical bullies, not the kind with bruises or yelling. We were worse—we smiled while we did it. We laughed at her, not with her. Made jokes about how quiet she was, how she dressed, how she clearly hadn’t “lived” like we had. We prodded her about her love life, asking questions we knew would embarrass her. My best friend and I shared stories from parties and hookups, exaggerated, of course, and watched her shrink into herself with every detail.

I remember one night, the three of us were getting ready for dinner. The hotel room had one small bathroom. I was showering and she knocked, asking if she could just wash her hands. I said yes. And then, for some reason I still can’t explain, I told everyone later she’d tried to peek at me. Loudly. Jokingly. Like it was funny.

She cried. I pretended I didn’t notice.

A year later, I heard she’d taken her own life.

I don’t know if what we did pushed her there. I’ll never know. But I can’t stop thinking about that trip—about how small she looked when we laughed at her, about her quiet voice asking to use the sink, about how she cried on the last day.

I don’t want forgiveness. I just want to tell the truth. And maybe, finally, stop pretending that what we did was just a “joke.”

It wasn’t. It was cruelty. And it haunts me.