After years of being bullied in high school, Lily finally gets to confront her bully, Karen. Karen walks into Lily’s restaurant and falls into her petty high school-self, but when she realizes that Lily has successfully navigated her lisp and stutter, and owns a successful business—Karen flees.
Under the soft glow of the evening lights, the restaurant buzzed with the cheerful din of a successful night. Yet, as I moved between the tables, careful not to bump into any sharp table corners, a familiar and unwelcome face caught my eye—Karen.
She hadn’t changed at all. Even after 20 years, the same haughty expression adorned her face, a look that had tormented me throughout my school years with her cruel taunts about my lisping and stuttering.
Suddenly, I was taken back to high school where my lisp was at its worst, making me second guess speaking.
School speeches were the worst part of my entire schooling life, where girls like Karen would begin laughing from behind their hands and end up hanging off their chairs, tears streaming down their faces.
I would escape to the library and spend every free moment there, just to escape the taunts.
I remember the one incident where I was clutching my books tightly to my chest, trying to make myself smaller, trying to blend into the gray of the lockers as Karen navigated the sea of students, in her impossibly high heels.
I could feel Karen’s gaze like a spotlight, singling me out from the crowd.
“There’s Lisp-Lily, boys!” Karen’s voice boomed, drawing a circle of laughter around me.
“Give us a smile and a speech, Lily,” she said. “Show us that stellar s-s-stutter,” she mocked, her words stretching out with malicious exaggeration.
I remember wanting to cry myself to sleep that night. I sat in the kitchen with my brother, Alex, and I told him all about the events of the day and how Karen had lost it.
“You should give it back to her, Lily,” my brother said, spooning ice cream into a bowl for me.
“If I could, I would,” I said. “But the moment I open my mouth, you know what happens.”
My brother went off on a tangent about how I should never allow anyone to make me feel less than myself.
“You’ve got to stand up for yourself,” he said.
And I did. In my own way.
At school, I made myself scarce often seeking my teachers during lunch breaks or after hours if we had to do any speeches.
And then, I went to a speech pathologist to help work on my lisp and stuttering. I was going to put an end to the constant bullying.
Inside the quiet, sunlit room of the speech therapy center, I sat across from Mrs. Thompson, her speech pathologist. The room was a cozy space filled with soothing blues and greens, designed to make patients feel at ease.
“Lily, today we’re going to start with some new exercises that are specifically designed to help with your lisp and stutter,” Mrs. Thompson began, her voice calm and reassuring.
“We’ll focus on techniques that improve your speech fluency, and we’ll also work on building your confidence in speaking situations.”
I nodded, my hands nervously fidgeting in my lap. The mockery from Karen and the others often echoed in my mind, but each session felt like a step to reclaiming my voice.
And the best part was that Alex was always waiting outside for me—ready to whisk me off for ice cream or pizza or whatever I wanted.
After leaving school, I entered the culinary industry—I knew that it would be the best place for me because I discovered that cooking was my passion and although I had sorted out my speech issues, it was a place where I didn’t need to speak.
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