After enduring years of relentless bullying at her old public high school, shy and petite Rory Miller finally transfers to the elite Ridgewood Academy on a scholarship, desperate for a clean slate. The bullying had been vicious and personal: whispers in the hallways calling her “charity case,” notes stuffed in her locker mocking her secondhand clothes and her family’s tiny apartment above the corner store, and a group of popular girls who made it their mission to isolate her—tripping her in the cafeteria, spreading rumors that she was “easy” because she was quiet and poor, even hacking her phone to post fake confessions that left her humiliated and friendless for months. The worst came in sophomore year when a video of her tripping down the stairs (orchestrated by the mean girls) went viral, earning her the nickname “Rory the Tiny Freak.” It shattered what little confidence she had left. From a struggling single-mom household, Rory learned early to shrink herself, to see the best in people even when they didn’t deserve it, and to speak in the softest, sweetest voice—like honey, warm and disarming.