*Lounge room – Tiff arrives home upset a...

*Lounge room – Tiff arrives home upset and tries to avoid her mum seeing her. *

MUM: Tiffany, is that you? You’re home early…. Is everything ok?

TIFF: Hi mum… um yeah, we just had a study lesson so I thought I would just come home early.

MUM: But I thought you had netball after school today?

TIFF: I do, I mean I did but I don’t really feel well so I just came home.

MUM: Oh, sweetheart, are you ok? You have missed a lot of netball lately, as well as school. You are going to fail if you keep missing days. Are you sure you don’t want me to ring the doctors?

TIFF: No! No, I’ll be ok. I’m sure it’s just been one of those flu things that are going around.

MUM: What for three months? Tiff this has been going on since the start of the year.

TIFF: Mum, I’m fine. Get off my back, will you?

Tiff’s phone beep, she ignores it.

MUM: Aren’t you going to get that?

TIFF: It’s none of your business. Leave me alone! (goes to leave)

MUM: Tiffany come back here!

TIFF: I said, leave me alone! Why can’t you just keep out of my life?

MUM: What’s wrong sweetheart? Why are you acting like this? I don’t understand. You have not been yourself lately at all. You’ve been locking yourself in your room and missing so much school. You never go out with your friends anymore. You are always angry or upset…

TIFF: I said leave me alone!

Mum grabs Tiffs arm to make her listen.

MUM: Tiffany, listen to me! This is not like you at all, you used to be so happy, you used to love school. What is going on? Please tell me. I’m so worried.

Tiffs phone starts ringing, Tiff gets it out and listens, then starts to cry.

MUM: Who was that? What did they say? Why are you crying?

TIFF: It was nobody. I don’t want to talk about it!

MUM: Give me your phone.

TIFF: What? No!

MUM: I said give me your phone!

Mum wrestles the phone off Tiff and starts scrolling through messages.

TIFF: No! Please don’t look at it.

MUM: Oh my God! Who has been writing these messages to you?

TIFF: I don’t know… Everyone…

MUM: What?

TIFF: (breaking down) Everyone hates me.

MUM: Nobody hates you.

TIFF: Oh yeah, well how come there’s an Instagram page called ‘Everybody hates Tiff Sanderson’ with 243 followers? How come I have no friends and all the ones I used to have don’t speak to me! Except to give me a hard time. How come I get at least twelve texts a day full of abuse.

MUM: A Facebook page? What are you talking about? What about Monica? She’s your best friend. She’d never be involved in all of this.

TIFF: She started all of this.

MUM: Why?

TIFF: Why? Because, I kissed a boy at a party that she liked, and then he started spreading rumours that we did more than that. So now she hates me. She has posted all these disgusting doctored pictures of me on Snapchat, and made up all these lies that I have been messaging everyone’s boyfriends. And it’s all lies. All of it. But they don’t care.

MUM: I’m ringing her mum and I’m taking you out of that school.

TIFF: Don’t you get it mum? I can’t get away from it now. It’s bigger than that. I can’t escape… I can’t turn on my phone or my computer without seeing hate messages, or horrible pictures of me. Kids from other schools have joined the page too. So that’s it. I’m screwed.

Mum hugs Tiff.

MUM: I know it seems big right now, but it’s going to be ok… You know that don’t you?

TIFF: No…. Yes… I don’t know.

MUM: Times like this really show us who your real friends are…Monica is not one… And that’s ok. You’ll move on. She’ll move on. We’ll get through this and soon it’ll be a bad memory.

TIFF: Not soon enough.

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