Disclaimer: If you've seen them on the show, they're Dick Wolf's, not mine.

This is a scene from Mean, how I picture it when Olivia was talking to Agnes in the classroom.

I walk into the classroom to see a girl with dirty blonde hair, wearing a blue sweatshirt. I immediately see why her classmates tease her so much; she is the definition of obesity.

But that's not how I judge people, so I give her a small smile and say, "Hey Agnes. I'm Detective Benson."

She just stares at me, obviously not trusting me, and I don't blame her. She knows I'm a cop and she knows that Emily, a girl who'd tormented her all her life, is dead. She probably doesn't know how to feel about that. "I know," she says, her expression blank. "You were at my house last night. I don't know what happened to Emily. We're not friends." She says this all in a monotone, as if she's repeated it over and over but still people don't believe it.

It's not hard for me to accept. I remember high school better than most people, much as I would love to forget. Kids can be cruel and I know that firsthand. I was always teased about my mother. Ever since I was eight and my mother came to my end-of-school party, drunk out of her mind, my former "friends" avoided me like I was a leper. By the time we'd hit high school, they'd made it their mission to torment me. I can still hear them now: "Your mother's a slut and so are you!" "I know why you were late this morning. You were probably with your drunken mother while she had a hangover, weren't you?" "You look like a homeless person. Doesn't your mother love you enough to buy you clothes? Oh, that's right. She doesn't."

And the worst part was that most of it was true.

I push away my own memories and turn my focus back to Agnes. Even though Emily maybe deserved to be punished for what she did to Agnes and Agnes had every reason to want to kill her, if Agnes did it, she was still wrong. There were many girls throughout my own high school career that I fought with, even threw a few punches, and maybe I even thought of doing worse one day. But I would never take it farther.

"Well, your principal said that you two don't get along," I comment; an understatement.

"Yeah, well, he spends most of his time kissing Emily and her friends' asses," she says bitterly, then sighs. "I know you don't believe me. Nobody does."

The first part's easy for me to believe, but when she says the second, my heart goes out to her. I look at Agnes and all I see is my insecure teenaged self, when no one believed me. Every teacher I ever told ignored me and said I was being too sensitive. Whenever a kid hit me and I hit back, I ended up in hot water and they went unpunished. After all, who would believe the girl who sits in the back of every classroom, getting C's in every class, wearing oversized sweatshirts and ratty jeans to school and layers of makeup to hide the bruises that cover my face over the perfect queen bees who rule the school?

I know instinctively how to talk to Agnes because I was just like her and I know how hard it is for her to even get up in the morning and come to school. It takes courage that most girls her age don't possess. "You know, Agnes, I want to help you," I say gently, sitting down across from her.

She's clearly not buying it and I don't blame her. "Right," she bites out sarcastically. "You're gonna be my friend. You know, if you and I were in school together, you'd be just as much of a bitch as the rest of them."

I decide that a little sympathy will go a long way in this situation. Sometimes it helps just to know that someone else understands. And dismissing what she goes through at the hands of bullies every single day would not only be unfair, but cruel. So I tell Agnes something that I rarely tell others because I'm still ashamed of it, twenty some years later. "Actually, when I was in school, I pretty much kept to myself. I didn't want anybody to find out about my mom. She used to drink a lot." I hesitate, then add, "It's easier not having friends but it doesn't make it any less lonely."

She watches me carefully, clearly trying to determine whether or not she can trust me. Finally, she tells me, "My mother died when I was nine. When I was twelve, Emily started the rumor that my mother left us because she couldn't stand how ugly I was. Funny, right? People still believe that."

I understand her pain. In high school, kids used to start rumors about me, too. One girl said that my father left us because of how stupid I was. When I was eleven, a girl said my clothes were always dirty and my hair always greasy because I spent the night on the streets when my mother was drinking. Another said the bruises that adorned my body came from my mother when she was in a drunken rage. But then, that one was hardly a rumor because it was true.

"So you've known Emily a long time," I comment, forcing myself back to the case at hand.

Agnes sighs. "When we were little, we were all friends. I don't know why it changed."

Because you grew up, Agnes. And when kids grow up, they get even meaner.

I know that best of all.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Review if you did!