With the commotion dying down outside, Abby resumed explaining what happened. "So one day Rebecca finds out she's supposed to start tutoring this boy Doug from the grade ahead of us at school. It wasn't unusual for her to tutor older kids. Most of them understood she could help with any question they had and she was naturally sweet and patient. She was starting to enjoy sharing the things she had learned and coming out of her shell with her older classmates.
"She was supposed to tutor him for the first time one day during his recess period but he didn't show up. Rebecca came to me and asked what she should do. I thought he must have just gotten the schedule mixed up, so we told the principal he hadn't shown up and asked if they should go look for him. They found him in the schoolyard bragging to a bunch of older boys that he didn't need any dumb little girl to teach him anything because boys were smarter than girls.
"Well, of course Rebecca knew that couldn't be true or he wouldn't have been signed up for tutoring with her in the first place. She marched right up to him and challenged him to prove he was smarter than her and that if he couldn't than he should start showing up to his lessons with her on time. The Principal thought it would be a good way to teach the boys a lesson about thinking they were better than girls, not that anyone of them really needed it besides Doug. The Principal brought them all inside and sketched some advanced college level math problem on the board. The contest was to see who could solve it faster.
"Rebecca the little genius could do it in her head of course. Just to prove the point though she whistled cheerily as she wrote out the work on the chalkboard while standing on the little foot stool she used to reach it. The board was placed higher for older children and she was shorter than average to begin with. It only took her a few seconds.
"When it was Doug's turn he took one look at the problem and knew he had no idea what he was looking at. Still for a minute or so he stared at it trying to figure out how to follow the numbers and symbols. He was almost crying and he threw down the chalk and ran from the room. My sister couldn't believe he would be so childish. Why not just admit she was smarter than him and that it had nothing at all to do with their genders?
"Well, from then on the Principal escorted him to his tutoring with Rebecca every single day at recess. She did everything she could to be nice to him, but he was always mean, surly, and resentful to her like it was below his station to be taking instruction from her."
Wendy nodded along as Abby spoke. This sounded exactly like her little sister. All he could think of, was, "I'm a boy and boys are better than girls at everything. Girls are just weak pretty little toys for me to bother and annoy for my own amusement." It was a juvenile and old fashioned way to think, but every time he saw something that proved it wrong, like a little girl who was way smarter than he was, rather than learn a lesson like other boys he would just lash out and try and hurt them. It was as if he thought the ability to make them cry meant he was better than them somehow.
Abby continued explaining, "Eventually, his grades started to improve and Rebecca said it seemed like he was getting over it and actually starting to become friends with her. But really, he was just gaining her confidence so he could pull a horrible, nasty little prank. You see, he was still bitter about being humiliated in front of the other boys by her demonstration of her vastly superior intellect so he wanted to try and trick her to try and prove that he was the smart one.
"Like I said, Rebecca was socially naive. As smart as she was, she didn't think a boy would just tell lies to her face to confuse and hurt her. The thought never crossed her mind. All he did was prove he was a nasty, insecure, mean little creep."
"What did he do?" Wendy demanded, glaring towards the still squatting feminine figure outside in the rainbow colored pigtails and rainbow themed outfit.
"He gaslit her," Samuel said harshly, looking in the same direction.
June squinted at Samuel. She knew the story but had never heard that term. "What does that mean?"
Samuel paused a moment, thinking, "It's from some old movie. It means you trick someone into thinking they're going crazy when they're actually totally sane. Or, something like that. You lie to them and give them false information that confuses their perceptions or their memory. They could believe 100% that something is entirely true, even though reality is just the opposite, if you are clever enough in how you trick them."
June still looked confused.
"Santa Claus. The tooth fairy," Wendy said abruptly.
June smiled. "Yeah, I get it. I mean, parents do it for fun, but it's a trick. My Dad would break the logs in the fireplace. He and Mom would eat the cookies and drink the milk we left out. Then in the morning, 'Look June, it's proof!' I didn't question it because why would they lie? That's exactly what he did to Rebecca."
Abby continued, "See, my little sister has this obsession with rainbows, okay? It's true. She's still a little kid even if she is a brainiac. She thought they were pretty and they had a really personal important meaning to her. She also had short hair back then and she was usually kind of pale. She wore thick glasses too. She is really kind of plain looking and it was worse back then. Not that looks are all that important, Rebecca knows that. Life was really rough on her so she was a bit run down. She had a lot of work and responsibility and other heavy burdens.
"She drew rainbows at art class. She doodled rainbows in her notebooks when she was bored. She wore rainbow print clothes. Rainbow nailpolish. Anything. A rainbow colored backpack. A rainbow colored umbrella if it rained. Rainbow stickers on everything. They cheered her up."
Wendy nodded along, starting to recall seeing a small, frail looking girl with a rainbow colored backpack around a few times in the past.
"So her 'quote unquote' friend Doug tells her that rainbows are actually a secret code. She tells her that rainbows mean..." Abby groaned at the memory and couldn't go on.
"He told her that wearing rainbows meant that she was a lesbian," June spat.
"She didn't even know what that meant," Abby said, choking back tears. June put her arm around her and comforted her as she spoke. "But he showed her all these horrible websites about people hating lesbians. She didn't understand what one was or why anybody would hate one but she didn't want anybody to hate her. So she stopped wearing rainbows, and she wouldn't tell anybody why!"
"And she was miserable," June added.
"It went on all year long because Doug kept telling her all the kids in her class were talking behind her back about how she was a lesbian and they all hated her. She never talked to anybody about it. He told her our parents would hate her too so she would have to keep it a secret. He showed her screenshots of chat conversations from kids at school saying horrible things about her to prove her it was true.
"Eventually, she stopped really tutoring him at all. Instead, they just spent their period together with Doug depressing her with stories of how everyone else hated her and she should stay away from them. It was like a self fulfilling prophecy. Since she stayed away from everyone they started to think she thought she was better than everyone else since she was a genius or whatever. They started being nasty to her too, thinking they were just returning the cold shoulder. That just made her believe Doug even more."
"But...the tutoring stopped?" Wendy interrupted, "His grades were still better...I remember."
"He was blackmailing her into helping him cheat," June said. "He said he was her only friend left and so she had better do what he said or she would be totally alone."
"How did they do it?" Wendy demanded.
Abby spoke again, "She didn't want to be around any of us anymore so she started to spend more of her free time in the library. One day Doug's teacher saw her there looking bored and decided to put her to work...checking math or science homework and grading tests for her.
"Rebecca told this to Doug, totally innocently of course, and noted that the lazy teacher trusted her so much she didn't even bother double checking what Rebecca did. Rebecca was just bragging about being trusted, but Doug immediately saw a way to abuse that trust. It went on all schoolyear. They never caught them. He skipped every homework assignment he could and didn't study for any tests. Rebecca said he should have failed the year."
Wendy's mouth was open in shock. She didn't think he was capable of something this clever. He had found just the right victim that was naive and vulnerable enough not to use her brains to figure out what a lying sack of shit he was but still smart enough to be useful. He had turned the poor gifted girl's world totally upside down. "How did you find out?" she asked.
"She was moping all summer long. I kept trying to cheer her up but she still wouldn't have anything to do with me."
"Or any of us," Samuel added. "Everybody had liked her. It didn't make any sense." June nodded.
"So one day I said I had enough and I demanded to know what was going on and she just burst out screaming that she knew me and everybody hated her for being a lesbian! I asked where she could have come up with such an insane idea and she said she had proof. She showed me all the screenshots. All of these horrible conversations from everyone in her class calling her things like 'Rebekah Rainbow the ugly lesbian' or saying 'Rebekah Rainbow the stuck up cow.'"
"Oh my god," Wendy said in horror, "What did you do?"