#7 Julia

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Speaker 3 Hello. Happy birthday, birthday, girl.
Are you going out for dinner tonight with Rick or anything?

Speaker 4 What?

Speaker 7 It's not my birthday for another seven months.

Speaker 3 Hang on a second. Hang on.

Speaker 7 I'm hanging.

Speaker 8 I'm hanging.

Speaker 9 I'm in traffic, so it's perfect for you.

Speaker 3 According to my calendar alert, it is your birthday.

Speaker 4 It's not my birthday.

Speaker 9 Are you sure?

Speaker 9 Could you stop?

Speaker 3 You're 100% sure.

Speaker 7 I don't know how many times I'm going to say it's not my birthday and how many times you're going to repeat that it is my birthday.

Speaker 7 This year you didn't actually

Speaker 7 this year you forgot to call me on my birthday.

Speaker 11 Not even an email. Nothing.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 3 Okay, what about that time you got me an ice cream cake for my birthday, knowing I'm lactose sensitive?

Speaker 3 Do you remember? The man at the roller rink kept on knocking on the bathroom door.

Speaker 3 That's good.

Speaker 3 Are you kidding me?

Speaker 3 From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Julia.

Speaker 3 Julia is a journalist, and she's endlessly curious about the world around her. Once, on assignment for the New York Times, she investigated the benefits of bacteria.

Speaker 3 And as a part of her research, she didn't bathe for a month. She's done political stories too, where she's kept after a source or a story for years,

Speaker 3 which is what makes her reluctance to seek out the answer to a question that's been dogging her for over two decades all the more curious.

Speaker 11 I think the story begins on a Monday. I'm pretty sure it's a Monday, and I was 14 years old.

Speaker 3 This is Julia, and the question she can't stop thinking about revolves around a moment moment from her own life.

Speaker 3 It all began 21 years ago, in the eighth grade, at one of the fanciest all-girl schools in Montreal.

Speaker 11 I remember wearing my itchy green kilt.

Speaker 3 You have to wear a uniform there.

Speaker 11 Yes,

Speaker 11 sort of a puke green uniform with a button-down white shirt, and on Mondays we had to wear ties. We also had bloomers.

Speaker 3 I don't think I ever understood what bloomers were.

Speaker 11 It was just sort of like like

Speaker 11 a balloon with holes in the bottom.

Speaker 3 And were they ruffled?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 3 Cursed with a lifelong inability to distinguish between bloomers, culottes, pantalettes, pantaloons, drawers, and even knickerbockers, I was glad for the opportunity to finally sort it all out.

Speaker 11 The shape of it.

Speaker 3 But that's not why we're here. So after about 15 minutes of inquiry,

Speaker 3 I was ready to move on.

Speaker 3 Okay, sorry. Yes,

Speaker 3 go on.

Speaker 11 As I left morning assembly on Monday and walked into homeroom,

Speaker 11 I

Speaker 11 looked for my desk.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I stopped and looked around and it was missing. My desk was gone.

Speaker 11 And that was where it started.

Speaker 3 The desk had been hidden by her classmates, and that was just the beginning. Without warning, the girl she'd been friends with since third grade completely froze her out, and Julia had no clue why.

Speaker 3 To top it off, her best friend was the ringleader.

Speaker 11 The girl who used to be my best friend,

Speaker 11 I guess we can give her a name, let's call her Jane.

Speaker 11 It was just strange knowing that she and I had hung out at my house and all of the secrets we'd exchanged and all of the the fun fun we'd had and then you know seeing seeing how she was being now it it just it was a bit surreal but um

Speaker 11 yeah

Speaker 3 then what started happening was every time she walked into the classroom julia noticed that the girls would drop what they were doing and study her

Speaker 3 If she so much as scratched her nose or sniffled, they'd furiously take notes. It seemed like everyone was collaborating on some big project that she knew nothing about.

Speaker 3 The notes were collected by Jane, who buried them in her desk. The girls kept at it, day after day, until finally, Julia reached her breaking point.

Speaker 3 She gathered up her courage and, like the good reporter she'd eventually become, decided to investigate.

Speaker 11 I eventually snuck into homeroom one day during recess. It was empty, and I searched Jane's desk.
and there at the bottom I found

Speaker 11 a nicely bound document with a cover page and I picked it up and read it and it said

Speaker 11 100 reasons why we hate Julia

Speaker 11 in my memory this document I'm holding is

Speaker 11 a hundred pages long but I'm sure it was only ten and I opened it and

Speaker 11 inside I read about myself. Everything was something about me that they hated.

Speaker 11 I hate the way she walks. I hate the sound of her voice.

Speaker 11 I hate her face.

Speaker 3 After that, Julia started skipping school. Eventually, she told her parents what was going on and they contacted the administration, but the bullying continued.

Speaker 3 Ultimately, her parents decided that the only solution was to send her to a new school, but Julia still had a few weeks left at the old one.

Speaker 11 I became a double agent. I pretended that I was coming back the following year and

Speaker 11 I didn't tell anyone I was changing schools because I had no friends left to tell.

Speaker 3 The school year ended and her new life began. But because her new new school was so close to the old one, Julia lived in constant fear that her old life would find her.

Speaker 3 Every day, she'd map her route to and from school, carefully avoiding the streets her old friends lived on, the coffee shops they hung out at. And for the most part, it worked.

Speaker 3 For those first few weeks at her new school, she managed to hide in plain sight. She was starting to feel like things would be okay.

Speaker 3 But then, one day after school, Julia was upstairs in the den doing homework and the doorbell rang.

Speaker 3 She went to her parents' bedroom window and looked down at the doorstep and saw standing there her former best friend Jane, along with a few of her old classmates.

Speaker 11 I hit the ground as if someone was shelling the second floor windows. I was in a state of total panic and

Speaker 11 I saw them in my mind's eye there on the front steps, waiting for someone to answer the door.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I was just on the ground trying to breathe, and they rang the doorbell again.

Speaker 11 And I waited.

Speaker 3 Eventually, they left.

Speaker 3 And this is the moment that Julia has fixated on for over 20 years.

Speaker 3 Why had the girls shown up at her door? And what did they want?

Speaker 3 Maybe they'd shown up to bully her, but maybe they'd had a change of heart, realized how mean they'd been, and were there to apologize.

Speaker 3 Whatever the case, Julia was too scared to open the door and find out. And that decision to not go downstairs and face the girls who tormented her still haunts Julia.

Speaker 3 Even listening to her talk about it all these years later, it still feels raw.

Speaker 11 I'm 35 now, and

Speaker 11 that day has become one of my only regrets

Speaker 11 because

Speaker 11 the memory of my weakness

Speaker 11 sometimes

Speaker 11 supersedes all of the strong things I've done since then and it makes me feel weak.

Speaker 3 Even though you were you were just a child.

Speaker 11 I was 14.

Speaker 11 I think it's the memory of that fear

Speaker 11 still somewhere in my physiology.

Speaker 11 It makes me fearful when I think of it.

Speaker 11 I just wish I'd gone down there. I wish I'd had the guts.

Speaker 3 What do you think has stopped you up until now from just posing the question, you know, like just finding the girls and just asking them why they were there that day?

Speaker 11 I'm afraid to find out what I did to bring on

Speaker 11 the bullying because it's very possible that

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 11 was bad.

Speaker 11 I think deep down, I don't really know what was wrong. I don't know what was wrong with me and I don't want to know what was wrong with me.

Speaker 3 I mean, it feels like you're being really hard on yourself or being hard on this little kid basically, you know? Like, do you look at photographs of yourself at that age?

Speaker 11 I try not to.

Speaker 3 Well, I think you'd be surprised by like, I mean, I have memories of being that age where I thought like I was at weddings and I thought I was like flirting with adult women and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 And I look at pictures of myself and I look like a cabbage patch doll.

Speaker 5 You know?

Speaker 11 I think I probably looked like the tin man because I had a full set of braces. And then after I graduated from my braces, I immediately went to headgear-neck gear combo.

Speaker 11 I don't know if you've ever had that, but.

Speaker 3 I've only seen them on TV sitcoms.

Speaker 11 So combine that with my glasses.

Speaker 11 It was a sad state of affairs.

Speaker 3 As soon as she graduated high school, Julia left Montreal for good.

Speaker 11 Depending on

Speaker 11 the outcome of that conversation, I might have chosen not to leave Montreal.

Speaker 11 When I'm in Montreal, once a year, I avoid the neighborhood I grew up in, where all of this went down for the most part. And

Speaker 11 those girls are long gone. I mean, we're all grown-ass women now with careers and jobs and kids.
And

Speaker 11 here I am

Speaker 11 avoiding friends of friends on Facebook because I don't want any of those girls to know what's going on with my life.

Speaker 3 Do you feel like had you answered the door and they had apologized to you, that that would have changed your life in some way? That it would have changed your relationship with your past and the city

Speaker 3 and these friends?

Speaker 11 I think it might have,

Speaker 11 but I'll never know what they wanted to say to me because I didn't answer the door.

Speaker 3 It's scary to return to the moment you've spent your whole life running from.

Speaker 3 So when I gently suggest that she try to find out why they were at the door that day, Julia suggests that maybe the past should just stay in the past.

Speaker 11 You know, we move on with our lives and we,

Speaker 11 you know, we move on.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 it's another thing to

Speaker 11 open up, you know, that Pandora's box again.

Speaker 3 Even the language that you're using about fear of opening up that Pandora's box, it is so similar to the language that you used in describing like fear of opening that door.

Speaker 11 So, what you're saying is, I should really just finish the job.

Speaker 3 I think so.

Speaker 3 After the break, opening Pandora's box.

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Speaker 3 In spite of her initial trepidation, once Julia decided to find out why the girls came to her door that day, she was all in.

Speaker 3 Watching her take it on was impressive. Julia went back to Montreal and reached out to her former best friend Jane, who agreed to meet with her, but said she didn't remember anything.

Speaker 3 And so, for the first time since eighth grade, Julia returned to her former school to go through the yearbook and find the names of her old classmates. And then she started searching.

Speaker 11 I reached out to probably 12 girls from

Speaker 11 my grade.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 in my worst moments, I imagined that none of them were going to write back. And it was sort of going to feel like

Speaker 11 You know, I was on the outside of the group again, you know,

Speaker 11 and that the social dynamics I remembered from the eighth grade were still in play and all that. But then the responses started to trickle in.

Speaker 11 Hello. Hello? Hello? Yes.
This is Julia.

Speaker 3 Julia logged hours and hours of interviews

Speaker 11 and rang my doorbell. I thought you might have been one of them.
I don't think so. Do you remember anything about that?

Speaker 15 Was I there? No. Oh, boy.
I don't remember much about high school, to be honest.

Speaker 10 I remember one time you were hiding in a bathroom stall.

Speaker 3 But just like Jane, not a single person said they could remember showing up at her door that day.

Speaker 15 Well, I honestly don't remember doing that.

Speaker 10 I don't. I don't.

Speaker 10 I don't. I'm sorry.
I don't.

Speaker 7 I don't remember anything.

Speaker 16 I just don't remember it.

Speaker 10 I promise you, I have no recollection of this.

Speaker 10 I'm sorry.

Speaker 10 Sorry.

Speaker 3 Sorry. But what each of them did remember was their own pain.
There'd been a lot of bullying that year, and no one felt safe.

Speaker 3 Julia heard about one girl who'd found her desk filled with meticulously cut out images from porn magazines. Another girl remembered someone spreading rumors that she had AIDS.

Speaker 3 I hated that place, said one. It's all a big fog of chaos, said another.
A dark cloud over the class. You never knew who you could trust.

Speaker 4 We were awful, awful little girls.

Speaker 3 The more Julia heard about it, it started to sound like a Stephen King novel, and not one of those cutesy ones about clowns or talking cars.

Speaker 3 In almost every conversation, one name kept coming up as the person who had it the worst. Even Julia acknowledged it.
The name was Sarah Taba.

Speaker 3 Sarah had the misfortune of being the only eighth grader who was slightly overweight, and as such, she was always kept at a distance.

Speaker 3 In high school, I was also someone who existed on the margins, so I understand how oftentimes kids like me, kids like Sarah Taba, become the eyes and ears of the school, fidgety, uncomfortable witnesses, forced to watch from the wings.

Speaker 3 I'm reminded of this all the time with the friends I went to high school with, who were more popular than me. Remember the time Robert Siolik wore a three-piece suit to school, I ask?

Speaker 3 The time Madame Rebecca slammed the classroom door so hard the clock fell off the wall? The day Sharon Weiner got suspended for leaving the schoolyard during recess?

Speaker 3 Of course they don't. They were living their lives.
But I was on the sidelines, taking it all in, remembering.

Speaker 3 Hi, Sarah.

Speaker 12 Hi. It's been a really long time.
Yeah,

Speaker 4 it has.

Speaker 4 Yes, it has.

Speaker 3 Having all these conversations made Julia think about Sarah and what she might remember.

Speaker 3 But when she asked her if she had any recollection about the day those girls showed up at her door, Sarah couldn't remember remember anything.

Speaker 17 The first thing I thought of when you said a group of girls rang the doorbell, I immediately thought it would be a bad experience.

Speaker 19 Like it wasn't people coming looking for you to be like,

Speaker 17 we miss you, where are you?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Grade eight was a bad year at that scroll.

Speaker 18 Either you were being bullied and picked on, or you had to turn around and become the bully.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 11 something toxic.

Speaker 11 Something dark.

Speaker 18 I think normal bullying, if there's such a thing as normal bullying, you can identify the perpetrator and the victim and the, like,

Speaker 12 but it was, it was just so pervasive.

Speaker 11 Do you remember the day

Speaker 11 that you realized that I was gone?

Speaker 12 I don't actually know.

Speaker 18 I remember feeling like you were just sad all the time.

Speaker 11 I remember you being sad too.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 11 One thing I I remember,

Speaker 11 people would call you Tubby Tabba.

Speaker 19 Doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 16 I remember a lot of stuff like that.

Speaker 15 I can't help but think that our grades behavior had impacts on the staff.

Speaker 11 What do you mean?

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 20 actually, I'm

Speaker 20 assuming you knew this, but maybe you didn't.

Speaker 12 But Miss McDonald killed herself the following year.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Miss McDonald was Julia's favorite teacher, and Sarah's too. Miss McDonald had gone to the school as a student and later returned to teach biology.
She was the fun teacher who wore frog earrings.

Speaker 11 You think that there was something to do with what was happening in the school that caused her to to commit suicide?

Speaker 20 I think it had a role in

Speaker 20 her depression. She left right in the end of our grade eight year.

Speaker 19 She,

Speaker 19 because

Speaker 16 what I knew of her,

Speaker 17 it was her school. It was her passion.

Speaker 16 It was, she was an old girl. She was there teaching.
She wanted to instill this love of animals and biology in all of us.

Speaker 17 And we were a bunch of rats.

Speaker 16 I remember there being a lot of associations between that pig that she had on top of her TV and her.

Speaker 16 A lot of comments about her weight.

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 19 it

Speaker 19 had an impact.

Speaker 3 Miss McDonald had been hospitalized over the summer, and when she came back in the fall, she was no longer the biology teacher, but a substitute.

Speaker 3 The last period of the last day day she taught before she killed herself was a class called Personal and Religious Education. The students considered the class a joke.
Sarah was there that day.

Speaker 3 And the grade was just

Speaker 16 running around and doing everything they weren't supposed to do in the classroom.

Speaker 18 She tried to get people to calm down and sit down and pay attention. And, like,

Speaker 20 she wasn't even trying to teach us anything.

Speaker 16 I don't even know if there was any material to cover that day.

Speaker 20 And then we showed up at school Monday morning to find out that she killed herself over the weekend.

Speaker 11 Oh my God.

Speaker 16 She was my

Speaker 9 role model.

Speaker 16 She was the person who survived the school despite not being

Speaker 8 the stereotypical

Speaker 16 prefect or perfect girl.

Speaker 17 She was

Speaker 17 just this

Speaker 16 wonderful round woman who rejuvenated life. And as an overweight teenager, for me, that was like, okay, so you don't have to be perfect to achieve anything.

Speaker 18 She was my role model who the next year killed herself and like shattered all my dreams that you can

Speaker 16 go about living your life the way you're living your life in this environment and succeed.

Speaker 16 which made me want to completely change my body.

Speaker 10 The only way that I was going to get through this school was to lose a bunch of weight, to gain the respect of these people that have basically disliked me since I was 11.

Speaker 20 And I did it.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I've been really

Speaker 11 over the years, I wondered about you and then when I looked you up on Facebook, I saw pictures of you and I clicked right by them.

Speaker 21 I thought, oh, I have the wrong person.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Because you didn't look like yourself.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 11 So, I mean, you, you didn't, You just stopped eating, it sounds like.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah, in 10th grade.

Speaker 18 10th through 11th grade.

Speaker 16 And then basically destroyed myself in the process because it's an illness that I've been battling for the last 20 years.

Speaker 16 It's amazing what your childhood experiences can push you to do.

Speaker 16 Well, that I definitely remember because that's how I ended up in the situation I am now.

Speaker 8 I'm actually talking to you from outside of a clinic for treating eating disorders.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 11 I'm really sorry, Sarah.

Speaker 9 It's not your fault.

Speaker 12 That's the

Speaker 19 sort of sad reality of all of this. It's like...

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Please picture, you know, my nerdy-looking 14-year-old self giving you a big hug.

Speaker 9 Oh.

Speaker 9 Thanks.

Speaker 19 I actually do have to let you go because we have to have lunch now.

Speaker 20 But it was nice speaking to you and do keep in touch.

Speaker 3 The conversation had left Julia feeling devastated. The scale of her own pain had been altered in the face of Sarah's.

Speaker 3 Later that night, I couldn't stop thinking about Julia and Sarah's conversation. And as I turned it around in my head, a theory began to form.

Speaker 3 Miss MacDonald had died around the start of the school year. Wasn't it possible that those girls had shown up at Julia's door to let her know?

Speaker 3 Maybe they'd been worried about the way Julia had just disappeared from their school and feared the worst. Wasn't it possible the girls had meant good that day that they came to the door?

Speaker 3 And if so, wouldn't knowing that change the way Julia felt about the past 20 years and maybe even change the way she saw herself?

Speaker 3 So I took this last task upon myself.

Speaker 3 Hey, is this Christine?

Speaker 3 Hey, Jennifer, this is Christine. I phoned up all the people Julia had already spoken with and I ran my theory by them.

Speaker 15 To be honest, I would love to believe that's what their intentions were.

Speaker 7 I can't be sure about anything.

Speaker 8 I can't say, yeah, sure, that's it, because I don't have a memory of it.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 4 Well, thank you. Bye.

Speaker 17 All right. You have a great night.

Speaker 9 Okay. Bye-bye.
Bye, Jonathan.

Speaker 4 Bye. Okay.
Okay. Okay.
Take it easy.

Speaker 4 Bye. Bye-bye.

Speaker 3 There was only one thing left for me to do.

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 3 just feel like I'm at a loss. Like this whole thing started off as me encouraging you to give it a try and that it might be helpful in some way.

Speaker 3 And I don't feel like I brought you any closer to knowing what happened at the door that day. And I just...

Speaker 11 If there's one of us who's disappointed, it certainly isn't me.

Speaker 11 I don't know whether I was emotionally equipped to open the door as a 14-year-old, but to me, the important part is

Speaker 11 that I opened the door

Speaker 11 now.

Speaker 11 I couldn't have confronted that if I hadn't literally

Speaker 11 done

Speaker 11 what

Speaker 11 we decided we were going to do, if I hadn't had these phone calls and asked these hard questions.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I've forgiven

Speaker 11 that little girl for being so frightened. I was so ashamed.
I was so regretful

Speaker 11 and I don't blame myself for being afraid then. I had every right to be.

Speaker 11 It wasn't rational

Speaker 11 and so I think the biggest challenge for me in all of this was

Speaker 11 to allow myself to slip back into

Speaker 11 that 14-year-old girl's skin and say, look, you know, I get it.

Speaker 11 It's okay.

Speaker 11 You know, it's okay.

Speaker 11 I'm proud of who I was then. I'm.

Speaker 11 It's been a long time since I could say that.

Speaker 3 And you feel like that's happened? Like that that's happened in this process?

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 11 I do.

Speaker 5 Well, that makes me feel better.

Speaker 11 Well, I'm happy to make you feel better, Jonathan.

Speaker 3 Ding-dong.

Speaker 12 Um,

Speaker 11 I'm ding-dong. Is this the part where I rewrite history and answer the door? That's right.

Speaker 3 Ding-dong.

Speaker 11 Okay, I'm answering the door. Okay.

Speaker 11 Open the door.

Speaker 3 What happened to you?

Speaker 11 I changed schools,

Speaker 11 and you know why.

Speaker 11 Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home

Speaker 11 Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit

Speaker 11 Take this moment to decide

Speaker 11 if we meant it if we tried

Speaker 11 But felt around for far too

Speaker 3 Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Chris Neary and Kalila Holt. The senior producer is Wendy Dorr.
Editing by Alex Bloomberg and Jorge Just.

Speaker 3 Special thanks to Emily Condon, Maya Goldberg-Safer, Lena Chambers, Emily Kennedy, Laura Scott, and the birthday girl, Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Haley Shaw.
Music by Christine Fellows.

Speaker 3 Additional music credits for this episode can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com/slash heavyweight.

Speaker 3 Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight.
Next week's episode will be our season finale.

Speaker 3 In anticipation of season two, if there's a moment from your past where everything changed, send us an email to heavyweight at gimletmedia.com.

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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.