If there was one student we loathed, it was Agnes Atwiine. We wanted to hurt her. But it was unlikely that anyone of us would drum up the courage to fight her. She was quite healthy. (We started using ‘healthy’ in the place of ‘fat’ after being told it was impolite to call someone fat.) She owed her ‘healthiness’ to our common enemy and master, adolescence.

So what made Agnes loathsome was the fact that she chose to join our common enemy and master to thump our self-esteem. Adolescence sent ugly humongous pimples to attack our faces from time to time and Agnes laughed in our faces whenever it happened. Seeing as adolescence required that we wear our emotions on our sleeves, the slightest provocation always led most of us to burst into tears. Agnes would mock us further. We wanted to hurt her. We want to make her cry. Seeing as fighting her was out of the question, we opted for emotional abuse. We decided to send her a letter.

"Dear Agnes,” it read, "Your big nose is the reason why we open all the windows in class; there’s hardly enough oxygen for everyone else when you breathe in. We suggest that you use glue to make it smaller. And stop hugging people because you will suffocate them with the stench of your armpits. Also, your breath smells like sewage. And by the way, ugly people should compensate the world for their ugliness by being nice so please revise your ways. Signed, concerned citizens.” We put the letter in an envelope, along with glue and a certificate which read, "This is to certify that Agnes Atwiine is the ugliest girl in S.2.D.” The certicate was made of a piece of paper plucked from an Art Book.

The letter had the desired effect. As soon as she finished reading it, Agnes burst into tears. Then she ran out of the classroom and headed straight to the staffroom. That evening, the school administration summoned us and demanded to know the brains behind such a cruel act. One by one, we were asked to name suspects and one by one, we insisted we had no idea. Both the letter and the certificate contained words that we cut out from newspapers and magazines because in the past, it had proved risky to use handwriting.

Our class councillor was finally asked to give her view. "It could be anybody,” she said. "Agnes is not a popular student in our class. She makes fun of people when they get pimples and mocks them when they cry.” The school administration was made up of people who were well over forty. They couldn’t possibly relate to or empathise with our distress. It was clear that they couldn’t remember what it was like to be attacked by adolescence and to be made fun of while under attack.