Shane = Bold

Cleo = Italics

"Oh my god. I am so sorry about that e-mail that Jaxon sent. It was completely out of line. I swear with all of my heart that I had nothing to do with it. If I had known I would have attacked him and made sure to unplug every source of WiFi, service or network. Hell, I would keep all the pens and paper away from him as well. Actually, come to think of it I may as well just send him up into space. That's probably the safest way to ensure tha-"

"It's fine. It doesn't bother me, at all. I've had a whole lot worse."

"Worse than someone practically degrading your self-worth to an object of absolute insignificance in the space of four long paragraphs?"

"Compared  to the other stuff I've received over the years it was almost a blessing."

"What other stuff could you  possibly have received that makes that abomination of an e-mail seem like a blessing?"

"I prefer not use the term hate mail because that would be wrong...I think. I believe that the term 'hate mail' refers to a large amount of hate directed in one e-mail, tweet, text message or through any form of communication, even face to face. I would describe your boss's very elegantly written letter as hate mail. I don't need his words to know that he already despises my very existence."

"I'm going to ignore the fact that you didn't actually answer the question and instead question why the hell you would class something that insulted you as 'elegantly written'."

"His grammar was good. I mean, it's good to know that if someone is hating on me they actually took the time to express their hating in an elegant way."

"..."

"As for the 'had worse' thing I've received a whole lot worse than hate mail."

"How so?"

"Pure vile. Vile comments. Swearing at me. Calling me names. Calling me a complete and utter slut when all I did was wear skirts and heels that were a bit higher than they should have been. For some reason, my clothing choice, amount of make-up and popularity rank determined my amount of sexual intercourse."

"But that's ridiculous. Who the hell just goes around proclaiming people as sluts just because of the clothes they wear?"

"Pretty much everyone. I was called a slut when I have actually never had a male partner, ever. Which, in all honesty, is probably down to me wishing that all the men in the world would live up to the ones in books."

"B...but. That's ludicrous. Why would they hate on you for something that you haven't done?"

"I guess that's why I found it so hard to change. Nobody wanted me to. They all wanted...no, needed something to hate on order to make them feel somewhat better about their own lives. I guess as soon as they saw a target they jumped on it."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"That's what I said. At first. Then I figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

"Everyone needs a villain in order to feel like a hero."

"Still not getting it."

"Think about it. I mean, let's come up with a scenario."

"Okay."

"Let's say, hypothetically, that you had cheated on your girlfriend, with her best friend. You would feel terrible, right?

"Right."

"What would be the first thing that you would to do get rid of some of the guilt that you're feeling?"

"Blame it on someone else."

"Exactly. It's part of human nature. No one wants to be responsible for their decisions. So, they blame it on someone else. Now, imagine that there's a girl in your school who wears short skirts, high heels and is practically the definition of a mean girl from a teenager's favourite novel. Imagine that in every one of those novels that girl always has a habit of ruining relationships."

"...the classic villain."

"Exactly. So what do you do?"

"Blame it on her. Spread rumors that she forced you to do it. Blackmailed you or something."

"That's pretty much the definition of what happened to me for an extensive three years of my life. What's still happening."

"You were blamed for relationship problems?"

"And everything else. Once people see a villain to blame something on they don't hesitate to do it."

"So, say someone got a really bad test score..."

"Guess who changed the answers when the teacher wasn't looking? Yup. Me."

"B-but you didn't."

"That's not what they tell everyone else though, is it? In the end, it doesn't matter whether they think it's true or not. Which, most of the time, they don't. It's what they tell everyone else that counts. Their parents. Their peers. Their teachers."

"...and so the rumors begin to speculate."

"And I become the classic villain in my school that everyone hates but can't quite say it to my face. Hated more and more each day, inbox overflowing with insults and things that aren't true but for some reason has become a sacred vow for every single person at my school."

"That's awful...why didn't you tell them it was all lies?"

"I tried to, at first. But I stopped after I realised it wasn't doing anything. It only made things worse."

"Wasn't there at least one person who believed you?"

"I used to think that there was but then it escalated into so much of a hate fest that even my own friends had turned on me to talk trash about me behind my back."

"So you basically became a source of blame."

"Pretty much. I was basically transformed into a pawn in the game of the deranged human conscience."

"The human conscience doing everything it can to stop the blame descending upon itself."

"Because no one wants their record tainted by a bad decision."

"So they blame it on someone else."

"Someone else's record that is so tainted it may as well be poison."