As a child, Ellie had a problem with crying. The slightest thing could start her sobbing. Which made her a perfect target for bullies.
But she cured that habit.
At least she thought she had.
Until, as an adult, she finds herself once again in a flood of tears.
Tears that don’t make any sense to her.
Tears that are different to those she’s ever cried before.
A revealing and cathartic short story of one woman’s journey to self-acceptance and advocacy.
“Crybaby” is available for the month of June 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 2.
Crybaby
By Jessica Baverstock
ELLIE’S RED NAIL polish chips as her fingernails dig into the leather steering wheel of her bronze Ford Laser. Sobs shake her body.
Deep, full, unstoppable sobs.
She can’t stay here, sobbing in an unlockable car in the middle of the night. A twenty-year-old in an empty car park wearing a sapphire blue evening dress, her hair curled into those soft ringlets that drape seductively across her shoulders. It’s not safe to stay here.
But how can she do anything else?
Her mascara is running, she knows that much. Her nose is running too. There aren’t any tissues in her beat-up old car, nor any in her silver satin clutch. She didn’t bring any. Didn’t think she’d need them.
Fighting her mother’s shocked voice in her head and all the principles of etiquette she’s had drummed into her since childhood, she wipes her nose along her bare forearm. The streetlight she’s parked under highlights the faint sprinkles of sparkly colour on her dark skin. They hadn’t been there before she’d left the house. Must have happened sometime at the party.
The party.
She sobs again. It won’t stop. But it’s silly. Ridiculous. What does she have to cry about? It’s not like anyone has died. At least not recently. She’s not mourning a breakup. She’d have to have had a relationship at some point for that. So why is she crying? It makes no sense.
She makes no sense. Hasn’t made sense in years. Not since that dreadful night. The last time she’d worn an evening dress.
But that had nothing to do with this. She hadn’t cried that night or any of the nights since. So why would she start now?
She takes a deep breath, so deep she thinks she’s going to split the side seams of her dress. Calm. She must return to calm and think this through.
What triggered this?
A conversation. A simple, harmless, meaningless conversation. She can’t even remember what was said. But she remembers who was speaking.
Talulah Brush. Toilet Brush they’d called her in school. Ellie can’t remember where the nickname came from. Doesn’t care to. But tonight, Talulah was dressed up like a princess. Long flowing white gown with diamantes tastefully studded here and there, contrasting against her tanned skin—her mother’s Latina side coming out. Makeup flawless, accentuating her smouldering brown eyes. And her rich brown hair piled high on her head, so smooth it looked like melted chocolate, set off with a silver tiara. It was Talulah’s night. Ellie knew that before going. That’s why she went.
It wasn’t a vendetta as such. More a slight grudge based on a hunch. A hunch that had grown into a theory that was now a full-blown certainty in Ellie’s mind. And even though she knew it was stupid to keep thinking about it, stupid to go to the party and see Talulah face-to-face, she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t settle, couldn’t reclaim her life, until she’d looked Toilet Brush in the eye one last time, and won.
They say that schoolyard bullies are attracted to certain types of children—children who are shy, timid, don’t like to make eye contact, and cry easily. As a child, Ellie hadn’t been shy or timid, and she always made eye contact with people. But she definitely had a problem with crying.
No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t help herself. When a mean word was said, she would cry. When she hurt herself on the playground, she would cry. When the teacher pointed out her answer was wrong in front of the whole class, she would cry.
Adults had called her sensitive, like it was a label of hopelessness. She would always be like that. A crybaby for life.
For Toilet Brush and her Gang of Five—girls who strutted their stuff with attitude and pounced on every opportunity to belittle others—Ellie was fair game.
They say that victims have no one but themselves to blame. If crybabies sucked it up and acted tough, then they wouldn’t be picked on. It’s all about how you present yourself to the world. If you show yourself vulnerable, then you will become the victim. Simple as that.
“Toughen up,” Ellie’s dad had told her. “They want to see you cry. It gives them a sense of power. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”
And so Ellie had tried. Really tried. The next day at school, when Talulah and her girls had started their calls of, “Hey pip squeak, didn’t know they still made people in your size” she ignored them and kept walking. When they followed her, saying, “It must be such a curse to be stuck with a face like yours. Why don’t you scowl? You’ll look prettier,” she fought back the tears and tried humming her favourite song.
But when the girls shoved her up against the cold, scratchy brick wall and stole her favourite rainbow ribbons from her pigtails, she couldn’t help herself. She cried. She cried all the way home.
That night she didn’t just have the sickening dread of Talulah and her friends to cope with, but now she also had her father’s disappointment to face.
“Fight back,” he told her. “They took something of yours. You can’t just stand there and let them do that to you. Stand up for yourself.”
So she tried. The next day she demanded her ribbons back. And they had laughed. That jeering, belittling laugh of those who have never cried, would never cry. And she…well she just couldn’t stop the tears coming.
They kept coming. They came when she got home and saw her father shrug and give up on her. “I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself,” was all he said.
The tears came the next day when she exited the classroom to get something from her backpack where it was hanging next to all the other children’s backpacks, only to find rude words scribbled in black permanent marker all over her backpack’s floral design. The words never washed out. The girls did the same with her purple starburst backpack and her then her drab, plain green backpack. No amount of complaints to the teacher or the principal made a difference, so her mum just gave in and bought her a black backpack.
But it wasn’t over. One day at lunchtime she reached into her backpack in search of her lunch box and found a long plastic snake in there instead. She screamed and cried and cried and screamed for almost fifteen minutes while the girls giggled and laughed at her. A week later she found an upended pot of chocolate yogurt in her bag, which ruined several school books and stained her favourite white sweatshirt. Her mum bought her a little gold padlock to protect her bag, but two weeks later she found the top of her bag cut to shreds.
The message was clear. Submit. We own you.
She and her mum took the bag to the principal and pleaded with him to do something. But what could be done? The girls had already been given detention multiple times, a punishment that seemed only to enhance their glee at what they had done. A roster had been drawn up for teachers to patrol the school grounds during recess, but the girls were far too clever. “Like little James Bonds,” the principal had said with a laugh, as if their ingenuity was something to be impressed by.
Her mother had demanded something more and so the girls’ parents were asked to come in after school one afternoon to discuss the matter.
Talulah’s father had been too busy to attend. Something about a work conference. Her mother, dressed in a tight, pink dress that looked like something out of a men’s magazine, spoke barely enough English to follow the conversation. Talulah, the absolute model of an attentive and obedient daughter, translated back and forth between her mother and the rest of the adults, explaining how her mother was supposedly horrified that her daughter could do anything like what was being suggested and vouching for her upstanding character. Ellie couldn’t believe anyone would buy such a preposterous lie, and yet the adults seemed confused and uncomfortable by the whole situation.
Ellie’s father stood with his back against the wall, his arms crossed, surveying the people in the room with a frown, every now and then shaking his head impatiently. She hoped he would somehow see the impossibility of the situation she was in. But when they got home and Ellie’s mum suggested removing Ellie from the school and sending her somewhere else, he ruled it out immediately.
“How will she ever learn to stand up for herself if we remove her from every situation that causes her a problem?” he said, pacing back and forth over the woodgrain linoleum floor in the kitchen.
“Not every problem,” replied her mother, filling the little red kettle with water from the tap and then placing it on the gas stove to boil. “Just this problem. It isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” he said. “These are life skills she has to learn. We can’t protect her from everything. She has to learn.”
“We can protect her from some things,” said her mother, her voice rising. “Why not protect her while we still can?”
And as the kettle had begun to bubble and boil, tempers flared until the whistle of the kettle brought an end to the argument.
At least high school would be better, her mother promised. Personal lockers. A new set of teachers and a new principal.
But it made no difference. The pranks continued. The name calling continued. The jabs and taunts and laughter continued. And her crying continued. No matter how hard she tried to hold it in, it just kept flowing out of her.
One night, when she couldn’t sleep, Ellie sneaked into the living room and turned on the television. She flicked across the channels until she came to a wildlife documentary. Little black seal pups on the beach were nestling against their mothers. But food was needed. And so one by one the seals loped down the beach towards the waves.
And there, waiting in the waves, was the black and white shape of a killer whale.
Ellie watched in horror as one of the seals unknowingly swam into the orca’s path and suddenly found itself thrown into the air by the giant animal. She expected the killer whale to gulp the seal down whole. But it didn’t. Instead it began playing with it in a deadly, horrific game. Throwing it into the air. Tossing it away only to come storming down upon the frightened animal again and grasping it once more in its mouth.
She wanted to stop watching, but she couldn’t. Something about that seal felt so familiar. She ached for it, willing it to get away, to somehow break free and escape. But it couldn’t. There was just no way. The seal was doomed as soon as the killer whale had spotted it. This was simply the sport before the end.
Submit. He owns you.
She cried. Sobbed. Sobbed so hard she woke her mother in the next room. She didn’t realise her mother was awake until she stopped crying long enough to feel her mother’s arms around her, rocking her back and forth. Together they cried. Sobbed. Sniffled and then sobbed some more.
Over mugs of warm milk, they talked and talked until eventually her mother said, “You’ve got to find some way to protect yourself. Some kind of mental armour to block it out.”
But how? Every adult she came across seemed to believe in a different answer. Ignore them. Fight them. Protect yourself. Perhaps they were right at the very beginning. Perhaps she was a crybaby. Would always be a crybaby. Just like the seal, she was made this way. She was food for those who would control and prey on others. For always.
High school plodded on until school prom came into view. Everyone was excited about who would take who to the prom. Talulah and her girls had the class hunks in their sights and for a few weeks their attentions were focused elsewhere.
Ellie breathed a sigh of relief.
She didn’t care about the prom. No boys had shown the slightest interest in her. How could they? She did everything in her power to be invisible. During recess she was either hidden in a toilet cubical, sitting up in the thick branches one of the eucalyptus trees at the bottom of the school oval, or tucked away in the botany section of the library where no one else ventured.
But for those two weeks leading up to school prom it was like she had stepped out of the vice that had held her since primary school. She could walk down the corridors without fear of Talulah’s girls chanting their latest deriding slogan at her. There were no embarrassing photos of her messaged to all the school students, so no one snickered as she walked past. She could open her locker without worry that an avalanche of M&Ms or marshmallows or pencils or foam packing would come bursting out. She could actually concentrate in class, instead of fending off spit balls and sudden jabs from the girls who sat behind her.
Her mother noticed how much happier Ellie was when she returned home and began quizzing her daughter on what she had done differently. Obviously, her mother felt, she had beaten the hold those girls had over her. What was the secret thing that had finally lifted the curse from her head? Ellie didn’t know. All she knew is it was good to be free.
And then, the week of the school prom, Jake Northwood, the fourth hottest boy in the class asked if he could take her to the prom.
She was blown away. Stunned. And suddenly dreadfully nervous. She knew nothing of boys or proms or even parties.
She and her mother immediately went shopping for a dress. It was a soft pink satin, shoulderless but with a crepe wrap that her mum insisted must not be removed under any circumstances. They found a matching pink flower hair clip and some sparkly pink dusk to spray on her arms.
That night her mum did her makeup, the first time Ellie had ever worn lipstick or eyeliner. The effect was extraordinary. Ellie couldn’t believe how beautiful she looked. And then, to top it off, her father was waiting outside her room with a present. A gold pendant with matching earrings.
Her parents declared her the belle of the ball and waved her off with her escort, after her father had given Jake a very stern talking to about how he expected his daughter to be treated.
She was in heaven and the night only got better when she arrived at the prom. Talulah and her girls were standing just inside the doorway, watching everyone enter and whispering to each other. When Ellie arrived, they seemed stunned at the transformation. Instead of jibes about her ugly face and knobbly elbows, there were complements and even questions about where she had purchased her dress and what was the name of the lipstick she used.
Talulah even linked arms with her and lead her across the dance floor to the buffet table, informing her that the trifle was worth having but not to go anywhere near the sausage rolls as she was sure they were teaming with salmonella. Jake brought her a cup of punch, alcohol-free of course, and they all got talking like old friends. Ellie couldn’t believe the difference. She felt accepted. One of them. It felt so incredibly good to have friends after so long alone. The excitement made her feel lightheaded. Dizzy even.
Jake noticed she was flushed and offered to take her outside for some fresh air. He escorted her like a real gentleman, her hand tucked into his arm just like they did in the movies.
Except the dizziness didn’t go away in the open air. It got worse. Much worse.
The world was spinning, her vision distorting and even the sound of Jake’s voice became strange. He tugged her crepe wrap away from her and put his arm around her instead. He pulled her towards him and suddenly, without warning, began to kiss her. Not the soft, gentle kisses of a romantic hero, but the rough, demanding kisses of a nightmare.
And then there was laughter. Distorted, drunken, derisive laughter.
She shoved him away and saw, standing behind him, Talulah and her girls watching them. Laughing.
“You were so taken in,” snorted Talulah. “All innocent and wide-eyed.” They howled with laughter as if they were wolves baying around their prey.
Ellie felt devastated. As if they had torn her open and ripped out her heart. This final betrayal so much worse than everything else that had gone before. But for once there were no tears.
Jake grabbed her again, holding her jaw tightly in his hand and pushing his lips onto hers.
Her father’s words rang in her ears. She should fight back. But everything was spinning and her arms felt so weak she couldn’t move.
And then she felt her stomach turn and the punch, laced with whatever vile concoction they had chosen, came back into her mouth, acidic and burning.
Jake pulled away, yelling and spitting, as she doubled over and vomited all over her pink satin.
Her father had been livid when she arrived home, helped to the door by a police officer. But for once it wasn’t her he was upset with. He unleashed the full force of his fury on the teachers, the students involved, and finally the principal—giving each a full hour of his time in which he clearly outlined their culpability in the matter. Whatever had held him back from protecting her before now kicked into overdrive.
But it was unnecessary.
She was no longer the crybaby. In fact, she did not cry at all.
Perhaps it was her father’s actions, his threats and disgust, that brought an end to their bullying. But in her mind it was the lack of tears.
They could no longer hurt her. She was numb. No word or action could ever hurt her again.
She finished high school with passable marks. Went on to college and realised her love of plants. She dropped out of college after a few months and went to work at a nursery—surrounded by flowers and bees and the rustle of soft leaves. Calm settled over her life. A calm she had maintained.
Until now.
Well, truthfully, the calm had begun to wrinkle when she’d received the e-mail. It was a notification from a social networking site asking if Ellie knew Talulah Brush. She hadn’t thought about Talulah for a few years, blocked out of her memory along with the prom and everything else. If she didn’t think about it, then it never happened. But the e-mail intrigued her. What was Talulah doing now? Was she successful? Did she make something of herself while climbing all over others?
So she’d clicked on the link to see Talulah’s page. And there Talulah was in a photo, as stunning as her Spanish mother, grinning at the camera while showing off a massive diamond engagement ring. The details of the engagement party were on the page.
At first the concept tickled Ellie. Talulah engaged. She didn’t realise her generation did that kind of thing, especially not Talulah. Then she saw the groom. Jake Northwood, looking almost unchanged apart from growing into his shoulders and jaw. The two of them together. Side-by-side.
That’s when the ripples started. She had suspected Talulah had set her up that night at the prom. Jake’s connection to Talulah was no surprise to Ellie. So at first she did not understand what unsettled her. The past was in the past. She had moved on.
Except she hadn’t. Part of her, deep inside, was still that sad and hurt little girl looking for a way to get her rainbow ribbons back. Looking for a way to stop crying.
But that didn’t make sense to her. She had stopped crying. Completely. Even the barbed comments of her boss at the nursery had no effect on her. She was immune. Nothing hurt her.
And yet she suffered a dull, interminable ache in her soul. The ache that had been there since Talulah had started her taunts. The numbness she thought had protected her from the stabs had only blurred the pain into that constant ache.
So she began to wonder why. Why her? Was it because she cried? Why had she cried?
She didn’t understand tears. What good were they? They had only served as a sign for attack, as if bullies could sniff tears out as surely as a killer whale could smell its prey. She knew tears were dangerous and yet as a child she had insisted on crying. As if she wanted to be bullied.
Did she want to be bullied?
These questions plagued her. Consumed her. Why would anyone want to be bullied? What did that say about a person?
She could not clear her mind of the thoughts until one day at the nursery, while re-potting a geranium, she suddenly found herself flinging the plant and its plastic pot through the glass of the greenhouse wall.
She stood there in shock, staring at the broken pot, the plant and soil strewn across the pavement, and the shards of glass lying on the ground. Not understanding what had happened. Not understanding anything at all.
Her boss sent her home. Said she needed rest. Said she was probably premenstrual or something.
But she didn’t go home. She went to a park and lay on the soft green grass and looked up at the waving pine needles above her, listening to the calming whistle of the wind through their greenery.
It was there she decided something. It didn’t matter why she cried as a child. The important thing was that she no longer cried. If she had wanted to be a victim as a child then it was her rite of passage as an adult to prove that that was no longer the case. She would face Talulah and Jake, have a normal, adult conversation with them and prove herself her own person.
She went shopping for an evening dress, avoiding pink and going straight for a strong, vibrant blue. The silver clutch made her feel adult and womanly so she got that too. Then she booked herself in for a salon stylist the afternoon of the party. The final effect was stunning.
Heads turned as she walked into the ballroom, heads that did not snicker or sneer but looked genuinely impressed. A few men even looked her up and down in an admiring kind of way, something she’d never experienced before. And she liked it. She felt strong. Feminine. In control. She sauntered along the buffet with her plate, selecting a tiny little quiche, scooped up some pâté on a couple of small crackers, and stabbed several olives with toothpicks.
Then she saw Talulah across the room and her knees threatened to give way. She suddenly found herself stuffing her carefully selected food into her mouth so fast she thought she would choke. It took all her presence of mind to move herself to the corner of the room and stare for a few minutes into the petals of a spider orchid before she began to regain her calm.
When she could no longer hear her heartbeat thrumming in her ears, she left her plate on a little side table and deliberately crossed the room toward Talulah.
Talulah was talking to an important-looking couple, throwing her head back and laughing at whatever it was they were saying. Ellie didn’t want to interrupt and so she slowed her steps a little, glancing around for something to occupy her attention until Talulah’s conversation was finished.
To her left, standing by a round table covered with a champagne-coloured damask tablecloth, were two little girls, a blond and a brunette, wearing miniature evening dresses of their own, their little flat shoes poking out beneath the tulle under their skirts. The brunette was clearly a dominant personality, her little hands on her tiny hips. Ellie took two steps closer in order to overhear the conversation.
The bossy brunette was outlining the proper way to stand, with feet turned out like a ballerina. “No one stands with their feet together,” she told her little protégé. “It’s so gauche.”
Ellie could barely contain her giggle at such an absurd word coming from the small child. She wondered where the child could have picked up such a word. Her mother, no doubt, or perhaps an older sister.
The brunette bent down with the precision of a ballerina herself and began rearranging the blond girl’s feet, grabbing each foot in turn and jerking them into place. Ellie saw the little girl’s face grimace with pain with each movement. She thought about intervening and was just about to step forward when a voice caught her attention.
“Ellie?” said the voice. “Is it really you?”
Ellie turned to find Talulah gliding towards her, the flowing skirt of her white gown barely moving. She seemed surprised, but not angry. “I didn’t realise you were on the invitation list.”
Ellie opened her mouth to give some explanation, though at that moment she couldn’t think what explanation she could give, but Talulah kept talking.
“You’re looking incredibly well. All grown up and a real stunner.”
Her tone was friendly, but Ellie felt panic rising inside her. She couldn’t bear compliments. She had heard them all before. Last time. They hadn’t been true then. No reason to believe they were true now.
“Jake, look who’s here,” Talulah cried, waving down her fiancé. She grabbed his arm and pulled him to her side. “It’s Ellie. You remember her, don’t you?”
Jake had the decency to look embarrassed. He muttered a greeting and then excused himself.
Talulah continued without any hint of embarrassment. “You were such a funny little thing when we were in primary school.”
Ellie felt her gut twist and her shoulders hunch protectively.
“To tell the truth,” said Talulah, leaning slightly forward as if she were about to whisper a secret, “I kinda admired you.”
“Pardon?” said Ellie, the confusion slipping out before she realised it.
Talulah lay a hand on Ellie’s forearm and laughed. Not a derisive laugh. A slightly nervous laugh. “You were so much your own person. You were different. You stood out. You had what we all wanted.”
Ellie stared at her. What we all wanted? What on earth could that have been?
She was about to ask when a sound reached her ears.
The sound of a child crying.
Ellie spun around to find the little blond girl blubbering, tears streaming down her face, her mouth open as she sucked in breath for another wail.
Talulah rushed to the little blond girl’s side. “What’s going on here?” she said in the tone of an older sister.
“Nothing, Tallie,” said the little brunette. “I was just showing Sasha here the proper way to stand. She stands so funny.”
Sasha’s nose was now running and her tears were coming so thick that they clung to her eyelashes before dropping to her cheeks.
“There, there,” said Talulah, patting Sasha on the arm. “Don’t be such a crybaby. There’s nothing to cry about.”
And that was the moment. Ellie realises it now, as her own tears slide down her rouged cheeks and fall onto the steering wheel of her car, illuminated by the streetlamp above. That was the moment that tipped her over the edge.
She had spoken up. Finally. After all these years, she had spoken up.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she’d said to Sasha, reaching out her hands to the little girl. “You can cry all you want to. Where’s your mummy?”
Sasha reached out a wet little hand and tucked it into Ellie’s palm. She looked into Ellie’s eyes and they exchanged a moment, one crybaby to another. A moment of pure understanding.
The understanding of tears. What it truly means to cry. What it takes to make someone cry. The wail of the heart that says I have had enough and I want you to stop. The wail that never truly goes away. The wail that some people stifle and others channel.
And now here she is, sitting alone in her little car, sobbing herself. Understanding the other use of tears. Cleansing. Tears that move all the gunk and debris that have irritated and infiltrated and are now being washed away through a good, wholehearted cry.
Because she’d done it. She’d stood up for herself. She’d said the words she had always been too afraid to say.
Sasha’s mum had appeared at her side, wrapped her daughter up in her arms and whisked her away to safety, leaving only Ellie, Talulah, and the little brunette.
Talulah laughed that same nervous little laugh. “It’s not that big a deal,” she said with a shrug. “Children are like that.”
“No,” said Ellie. “People are like that. It’s a natural response when those around us impose on our limits.”
Talulah frowned as if confused. “That’s just the way life is. You have to get used to it.”
“No, you don’t,” said Ellie. “In adult life you walk away from situations like that. You can quit your job or leave a room. Children should be given the same opportunity to remove themselves from impossible situations.”
Talulah just stared at her as if she wasn’t making sense. But she was, finally, making sense. To herself. And her heart was overflowing with tears.
She turned and walked out, slowly at first and then quicker and quicker until she reached her car. She got in and just started driving until the tears finally overwhelmed her and she could no longer see. She pulled into a car park, stopped the car, and let them come.
And they came. Years of pent-up tears. They came and came until she feared they would never stop.
Finally the tears do let up. She feels exhausted, like she has been wrung out completely. But inside the ache is receding. And she is left with a final question.
What was it those girls wanted that she had?
She starts her car and pulls out of the car park, pondering the question all the way home.
As she turns into her driveway she remembers the answer.
“Crybaby” is available for the month of June 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 2.
“Crybaby”
Copyright © Jessica Baverstock
Cover and Layout copyright © Jessica Baverstock
Cover design by Jessica Baverstock
Cover art © ladyfortune/Shutterstock, and DavidZydd/Pixabay
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Training of generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) using this publication is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.