The Day Hanna Hosanna Helped Cootie Judy

By Lauren Thell

My friends weren't really interested in art. Not like me. But small talk was our way of diminishing Kade's power. We weren't bullies. By not watching what happened next, we were reducing the size of the audience that witnessed Jude's humiliation.

 

That made us the nice girls . . . right?

 

Jude Rohmann was that kid, the one everyone picked on and no one wanted to be seen with. After twelve months of pretending he didn't exist, Hanna finally decided to stand up for him just once.

 

Then she wished she'd continued pretending he didn't exist.

 

A contemporary Christian YA short story about noticing things—like boys with sad blue eyes. Approximately 33 pages.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lauren Thell
• Release date: Sep 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215232569

Lauren Thell

Lauren Thell is an author of Christian YA fiction full of characters who find themselves on the undersides of impossible situations. She is a professional musician, an amateur dancer, and a wannabe astronaut.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Bully: 1) v. to treat someone in a cruel fashion.  2) n. Kade Manning

___

Iknew when I walked into the cafeteria three weeks into the school year that something nefarious was about to happen. I could tell by the way Kade Manning and his friends kept glancing at a table on the other side of the room—the table where Jude Rohmann sat. Had I not already been ushered into the line, I might have turned around and waited it out in the hallway. Kade and his hotshot buddies picked on lots of people, but no one more than Jude.

Whatever he had in mind, I didn’t want to see it.

Sure enough, as I filled my tray with limp noodles and soggy garlic bread, Kade wadded up a napkin, rolled it in veggie dip, and flung it across the room where it stuck squarely between Jude’s shoulder blades like a giant, slimy spitball. Kade’s friends howled with laughter. Jude shrugged a few times then finally reached back and pulled it off, leaving a large white splat on the back of his grungy gray T-shirt.

Hey, look guys! Kade shouted, drawing the attention of anybody who wasn’t already watching. It looks like a giant pigeon flew over Cootie Judy!

Laughter swept through the cafeteria like a standing ovation to Kade’s cruel prank. I cringed. Sometimes I wished Jude would move away so I wouldn’t have to feel so lousy about his utter helplessness.

Yes, I actually thought that. And I’m a Christian.

But Jude Rohmann was that kid, the one nobody wanted to associate with.

He moved to our town a year ago at the beginning of my sophomore year—his freshman year. His overlong brown hair created a stringy, greasy curtain in front of his eyes and he walked with perpetually hunched shoulders and a bowed head. But once in a while, he looked up just long enough to flash me a shy smile.

I returned the smiles at first. Sure, he smelled of cigarettes and body odor, but he didn’t ask for much. We shared a table in Advanced Drawing and most of the time, he kept to himself. When he spoke, his speech wasn’t quite right, like his tongue hadn’t gotten the memo that it needed to aid his diction, and whenever someone spoke to him, he stared at them like he couldn’t process their words. I figured he was slow but harmless.

Then the video was posted, a video capturing Jude as he fumbled his way through