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"  Early on a September morning in the small Florida city of Lakeland last fall, Rebecca Sedwick woke up and started texting on her cell phone. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m jumping,&amp;quot; she wrote to a friend in another state. &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t take it anymore.&amp;quot; She got dressed for the day &amp;amp;#151; white hoodie, black denim shorts, mismatched pink socks &amp;amp;#151; and walked out the door. Instead of boarding the school bus as usual, she walked nearly a mile to an abandoned cement plant. She slipped through a chain-link fence, crossed a concrete lot, and climbed a ladder on one of two towering silos. And then she leapt to her death. She was 12 years old. Rebecca&amp;#039;s anguished mother, Tricia Norman, told police that her daughter had been ostracized by a circle of middle school girls. Detectives investigated and agreed that bullying &amp;amp;#151; both online and in person &amp;amp;#151; had contributed to Rebecca&amp;#039;s death. And that&amp;#039;s when this local tragedy exploded into a national controversy. The sheriff brought felony aggravated-stalking charges against two of Rebecca&amp;#039;s former classmates: Katelyn Roman, who was 12 years old at the time, and Guadalupe Shaw, who was 14. Their names and photos, which officials released to the public, soon led news reports. CNN called it a &amp;quot;tipping point&amp;quot; that could spark other charges against &amp;quot;adolescent bullies.&amp;quot; The charges against the girls would be dropped for lack of evidence: Detectives said the companies behind the texting apps Rebecca had used did not provide a history of texts she received. But Katelyn Roman, in an interview with Cosmopolitan,says police didn&amp;#039;t find harassing texts from her because she is not a cyberbully. She says she had a typical middle school fight with Rebecca a year before the suicide &amp;amp;#151; and it ended there. &amp;quot;I did not do what they said I did,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I feel like they had no right to put my face out there.&amp;quot; The Polk County sheriff, Grady Judd, stands by the arrests and says he would do the same thing again. &amp;quot;Our concern was for the victim,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It was the right thing to do &amp;amp;#151; period.&amp;quot; Citing research that says girls are more likely than boys to commit cyberbullying and to be the targets, he says he felt a moral obligation to raise awareness. The tragedy leaves troubling questions. What constitutes bullying, exactly? When does it become a crime? And how do you punish it when both the victim and the accused are sixth-grade girls?  Katelyn, now 13, stands outside the chain-link fence at the cement plant where Rebecca jumped to her death. It&amp;#039;s a cloudy January afternoon, some four months after the tragedy, and Katelyn is here with two good friends and her mother. The girls stand together in a silent row, gazing up at the pair of silos, several stories high. It&amp;#039;s a lonely scene, a forgotten lot in a rundown area on the fringe of town. Weathered tributes to Rebecca line the fence &amp;amp;#151; purple plastic poinsettias, a lineup of teddy bears, a Snoopy card. A handwritten note reads, &amp;quot;You were amazing.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I think she might have slipped,&amp;quot; murmurs one of Katelyn&amp;#039;s friends, whose family has asked that her name be kept private. The other friend, Rumi, whose family asked that her surname be kept private, nods and says, &amp;quot;I think so too.&amp;quot; The three girls discuss how the tragedy could have happened &amp;amp;#151; perhaps Rebecca lost her balance or misjudged how much space she had up there. After some discussion, all three agree: she slipped. Katelyn and Rebecca were once good friends. They first met at Crystal Lake Middle School in the fall of 2012, when they were starting the sixth grade. Both had gone to different grade schools, and they were trying to find their footing at the new school. &amp;quot;In fifth grade, you&amp;#039;re at the top,&amp;quot; Katelyn says. &amp;quot;Then you&amp;#039;re just this little sixth grader.&amp;quot; A soft-spoken girl with long brown hair and hazel eyes, Katelyn liked Rebecca because &amp;quot;she was really fun &amp;amp;#151; she knew how to let loose,&amp;quot; she says, recalling a time the two girls drew cat noses on their faces at school and &amp;quot;went around like that all day.&amp;quot; The girls enjoyed roller-skating and hanging out at the mall in Lakeland. It&amp;#039;s a scenic city of lakes, mossy trees, and historic buildings in soft pastels but with rampant poverty too. Outside the picturesque main square, pockets of town are lined with ramshackle homes. Katelyn grew up in Lakeland with her mother, Michelle Gill, a divorced mother of four who works in sales. Katelyn&amp;#039;s father, Emilio Roman, a retired veteran, had lived nearby until his daughter was arrested. The day after Katelyn&amp;#039;s arrest, he moved in with his ex-wife and daughter to help them navigate the crisis. In the early weeks of the sixth grade, Katelyn met another girl she liked, Guadalupe Shaw. &amp;quot;I thought she was cool. I wanted to get to know her,&amp;quot; she says. At school, Guadalupe was the queen bee, with a growing hive of friends. At home, Guadalupe had her struggles, according to her lawyer, Andrea DeMichael. &amp;quot;Her upbringing was not a model upbringing,&amp;quot; she says. Guadalupe grew up with her father, rarely saw her mother, and often had to care for her siblings. She now lives in a blended family of seven siblings, along with a stepmother and her father, according to her lawyer. Katelyn says both she and Rebecca became friends with Guadalupe. But then Katelyn began to have some issues with Rebecca; she says Rebecca was lying. &amp;quot;Nothing major,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Just tiny things. One time, she said we skipped school together when we hadn&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; Another time, Katelyn says, Rebecca spun a story about being kidnapped to explain why she hadn&amp;#039;t gone home after school one day. At the same time, Guadalupe grew interested in a boy who had once been Rebecca&amp;#039;s boyfriend. Worried that the boy still had feelings for Rebecca, Guadalupe began turning girls against Rebecca, according to Katelyn. &amp;quot;She had so many people on her side,&amp;quot; she says. More than a dozen girls began to ostracize Rebecca, and Katelyn felt the pressure too. &amp;quot;I was still her friend. But everyone was telling me she was a liar. I&amp;#039;d hear it all around school. Every day, I&amp;#039;d hear stuff about her,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t want to believe what everyone was saying, but I didn&amp;#039;t know what to do.&amp;quot; To get away from the drama, she told Rebecca she didn&amp;#039;t think they should be friends anymore. That did not go over well. &amp;quot;She was mad,&amp;quot; Katelyn says. &amp;quot;She said it didn&amp;#039;t matter, because I wasn&amp;#039;t a good friend anyway.&amp;quot; For Katelyn, the peer pressure didn&amp;#039;t end with the de-friending. She says the other girls started suggesting that she &amp;quot;fight&amp;quot; Rebecca. One day between classes, some kids pushed her into Rebecca, and the fight was on. Katelyn says that she pushed Rebecca and Rebecca pushed back. Katelyn got her in a headlock while Rebecca was swinging, she says, before a teacher broke it up. Although other accounts differ on the timing, Katelyn recalls the fight happening in October 2012, nearly a year before the suicide. For a couple of weeks before and after the fight, Katelyn says, she and Rebecca zapped some heated texts back and forth, calling each other things like &amp;quot;ugly&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ho.&amp;quot; After that, she says, they stopped communicating entirely. Katelyn says she heard from Rebecca only one more time, in the summer of 2013. &amp;quot;She texted me and said, &amp;#039;Do you want to be friends again?&amp;#039; I was nice about it, but I said no. I just didn&amp;#039;t want anything to start up again.&amp;quot; That, she says, is the last time they were in touch. Rebecca Sedwick was a pretty girl, with long brown hair and a warm smile. &amp;quot;She loved being silly,&amp;quot; says her mother, Tricia Norman. &amp;quot;She loved cheerleading. She and I would go to [the mall] once a month for a &amp;#039;girls&amp;#039; day&amp;#039; and get our pedis, see a movie, have lunch, visit the bookstore and Yogurt Mountain.&amp;quot; Rebecca treasured her favorite teddy bear, the one with glowing lights in its belly. &amp;quot;I bought it when she was 4,&amp;quot; says her mother. &amp;quot;I sleep with it now.&amp;quot; Rebecca&amp;#039;s Instagram account looks like a typical preteen collage of goofy self-portraits and posts. Her screenname was &amp;quot;_whuuuuut_.&amp;quot; In one picture, she&amp;#039;s kissing a jar of Nutella; in another, she shows off a red streak in her hair. But her comments suggest moments of angst. &amp;quot;Well .. i&amp;#039;m Being ignored .. by Everybody .. So imma Go Try And Sleep .. Thanks To Those ignoring,&amp;quot; she wrote a few months before her death. In one of her final posts, she wrote, &amp;quot;Dear school, I hate you.&amp;quot; Rebecca grew up in Florida with her mother, stepfather, brother, and sister. Her stepfather works in refrigeration and air-conditioning; her mother has worked as a medical assistant. Tricia says that before her daughter went to Crystal Lake, she loved school, made the honor roll, and had &amp;quot;tons of friends.&amp;quot; Tricia says Rebecca first told her in November 2012 that she was being bullied at school. In the weeks that followed, &amp;quot;she came home near tears every day,&amp;quot; Tricia says. &amp;quot;And every day, I would address the school, either by phone or in person.&amp;quot; A spokeswoman says the school received only one written complaint, a claim Tricia denies. In December 2012, Tricia noticed marks on her daughter&amp;#039;s wrists. &amp;quot;When I saw the cuts &amp;amp;#151; more like scratches &amp;amp;#151; I immediately took her to the ER and asked them to please get her some help,&amp;quot; she says. Her daughter said she had been cutting herself to relieve stress. &amp;quot;She went to counseling from that point on,&amp;quot; Tricia says. &amp;quot;She told them she was not and never had been suicidal.&amp;quot; The school changed Rebecca&amp;#039;s schedule to separate her from the other girls, according to case documents, but in February 2013, Tricia says, her daughter was targeted in a schoolyard fight. She says this was the fight with Katelyn, but Katelyn says that fight happened months earlier and is being mistaken for another incident. The school won&amp;#039;t comment, citing student-privacy laws. Regardless, Rebecca&amp;#039;s mother had had enough. She took her daughter out of Crystal Lake to homeschool her for the rest of the year. Things started looking up, she says, remembering how Rebecca liked to dance to an Xbox game as a form of phys ed. In August 2013, Rebecca started a new school, Lawton Chiles Middle Academy, where, as far as Tricia knew, &amp;quot;things were a lot better for her.&amp;quot; On September 8, Tricia saw her daughter texting around 11:30 p.m. while lying on the loveseat, which, according to case records, is where she slept in the family&amp;#039;s crowded mobile home. &amp;quot;Go to sleep,&amp;quot; she reminded her daughter. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a school night.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Okay. I love you, Mom,&amp;quot; she said. The next morning, after her stepfather had left and before her mother was up, she made the 15-minute walk to the cement plant. When Rebecca didn&amp;#039;t come home that afternoon, her mother called the school and learned that her daughter hadn&amp;#039;t shown up that day. She called the police, and they drove out to her home. According to case documents, she described some of the recent struggles in her daughter&amp;#039;s life. Rebecca had been upset lately because her mother and stepfather had been arguing, while her relationship with her biological father had deteriorated, deeply affecting her. Tricia had seen a recent text on Rebecca&amp;#039;s phone indicating that she had broken up with a boy. And she said that Rebecca had been bullied. She named Guadalupe Shaw and Katelyn Roman. In the early morning hours the next day, detectives found Rebecca lying on her side beneath the cement-plant silos. In the wake of the tragedy, hints of her mental state emerged. For a screen saver on her Nook, she had been using a photo of herself lying on a train track with her head on the rail. Web searches on her cell phone revealed her anxieties: &amp;quot;What percent is considered overweight at 13?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;How many Advil to die?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;How do I get the blade out of my razor?&amp;quot; On the morning of the suicide, she had texted two friends: &amp;quot;I wanted to say bye ... for, like, ever.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Death is part of our business,&amp;quot; says Grady Judd, the Polk County sheriff, sitting at his desk overlooking a shimmering lake in Winter Haven, a few miles from Lakeland. &amp;quot;We deal with it every day. But this one was personal, to all of us. When you look at a 12-year-old child who&amp;#039;s dead, who jumped off a silo, you ask why.&amp;quot; The sheriff&amp;#039;s office began investigating immediately. Rebecca&amp;#039;s family showed detectives several screenshots they said they had snapped of anonymous texts sent to Rebecca&amp;#039;s phone in the past, urging her to die. (Rebecca had deleted the majority of texts on her phone before the suicide.) Detectives began talking to Rebecca&amp;#039;s classmates. Guadalupe, in her interview, denied bullying Rebecca, admitting only to saying on Facebook that she didn&amp;#039;t like her. Some of Guadalupe&amp;#039;s classmates told a different story. Several said they had seen or heard about confrontations between the girls. One girl said she had seen Guadalupe call Rebecca &amp;quot;ugly&amp;quot; and tell her that she should die. Another said Guadalupe had turned other girls against Rebecca. Another said she had seen Guadalupe tell Rebecca to &amp;quot;drink bleach and die.&amp;quot; Guadalupe declined to comment for this article, but her lawyer says that she denies turning girls against Rebecca and the accusations against her were largely exaggerated. Guadalupe&amp;#039;s father, in case documents, said he believes his daughter sometimes acts tough to prevent others from bullying her. Teachers did not appear to know much about the problems among the girls, according to case documents. One teacher, however, remembered calling Rebecca&amp;#039;s name at roll call one morning when she was absent and the students &amp;quot;collectively&amp;quot; calling her a liar. The teacher scolded the class. Separately, several students told detectives they had either seen or heard about Katelyn&amp;#039;s fighting with Rebecca or calling her names. At school the day Rebecca was found dead, Katelyn heard whispers about the suicide. &amp;quot;At first, I was like, No way, she wouldn&amp;#039;t do that,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Then when I was in my last-period class, someone showed me the news on my phone. I started crying. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it.&amp;quot; She and her mother drove to Rebecca&amp;#039;s home that afternoon. &amp;quot;I told her mom I was sorry for her loss,&amp;quot; Katelyn says. &amp;quot;She basically said it was my fault. I felt so horrible.&amp;quot; She was at her father&amp;#039;s house that evening, still reeling, when detectives rolled up. They asked Katelyn&amp;#039;s father to step aside so they could speak with his daughter in private, and he obliged &amp;amp;#151; he says he never imagined his 12-year-old daughter would be considered a suspect. Katelyn understood quickly that the detectives thought she had harassed Rebecca. &amp;quot;They kept telling me I could get in trouble if I wasn&amp;#039;t telling the truth,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I felt like everyone was telling me how horrible I was. Rebecca&amp;#039;s mom thought it was my fault; the police thought it was my fault. I felt guilty because they were making me feel like I did it.&amp;quot; Katelyn told the detectives about the fight with Rebecca a year earlier and the insults that flew back and forth at the time, according to case documents. She told investigators that the girls had stopped communicating soon after the fight and she did not cyberbully Rebecca in the months that followed. However, she did refer to her behavior as &amp;quot;bullying.&amp;quot; The sheriff&amp;#039;s office would later cite that as a confession. But Katelyn says &amp;quot;bullying&amp;quot; meant something much different to her &amp;amp;#151; that one fight at school &amp;amp;#151; than it did to authorities. Detectives called in cell phones from students, focusing on Facebook posts as the kids discussed the suicide. In one exchange, a friend comforted Katelyn, saying it wasn&amp;#039;t her fault and blaming the people who cyberbullied Rebecca and told her she should die. Katelyn replied, &amp;quot;I was one of them&amp;amp;#133;&amp;amp;#133;.&amp;quot; Her friend wrote, &amp;quot;Noooooo don&amp;#039;t say that u werent i know u wernt u did it face to face like straight up i rember.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And online&amp;amp;#133;.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No. So your telling me for the past few weeks you&amp;#039;ve been bullying her online.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah im bully i deserve to die i wish it was me and not her&amp;amp;#133;,&amp;quot; Katelyn wrote. &amp;quot;No don&amp;#039;t say that stop katy.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Its True!! Why Stop Im A Bad Person&amp;amp;#133;.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;NO Ur NOT&amp;amp;#133;DON&amp;#039;T EVEN THINK ABOUT DIEING ON ME,&amp;quot; her friend urged. Katelyn&amp;#039;s mother says her daughter&amp;#039;s Facebook notes could easily be misconstrued: &amp;quot;Anyone would feel terrible if someone they knew committed suicide, especially a 12-year-old girl like Katelyn, who is being told by the cops that it&amp;#039;s her fault. She&amp;#039;s just a kid. She was in shock, distraught, trying to deal with this confusing death. Of course she would think, Well, maybe it was my fault. Maybe I&amp;#039;m a bully. But it&amp;#039;s not her fault. She&amp;#039;s not a bully.&amp;quot; Katelyn agrees, adding, &amp;quot;I felt bad because everyone kept telling me it was my fault. I thought it must be my fault.&amp;quot; In another Facebook exchange, Katelyn talked with Guadalupe about the suicide. Wrote Guadalupe, &amp;quot;I feel so bad omg I feel like its all my fault for saying all that s--t to her.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I juss wanna idk say sorry to see her one LAST time,&amp;quot; Katelyn wrote. Guadalupe replied, &amp;quot;Omg i wish it was me instead of her.&amp;quot; But another post on Guadalupe&amp;#039;s page took a very different tone: &amp;quot;Yes ik I bullied REBECCA and she killed her self but IDGAF.&amp;quot; Guadalupe has denied posting the explosive comment, saying a student who had her log-in information posted it. Yet in another startling exchange with a friend, Guadalupe implied that Rebecca had been murdered: &amp;quot;They &amp;#039;think&amp;#039; it&amp;#039;s sewcide hope it stays that way,&amp;quot; she said, adding, &amp;quot;it was for the best for everyone that she went to hell.&amp;quot; The notes floored Sheriff Judd. &amp;quot;Guadalupe knew she was under criminal investigation. Then she goes back on Facebook and says this kind of stuff,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I thought, this girl doesn&amp;#039;t get it at all.&amp;quot; He notes that her claims about murder were investigated and dismissed. But the posts, he says, were a call to action. &amp;quot;I asked the detectives, &amp;#039;Do you have a prosecutable case at this point?&amp;#039; They said, &amp;#039;Absolutely.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Katelyn was wearing pajama bottoms, her hair still wet from a bath, on the October evening when the officers showed up to arrest her. Her mother was frantic. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not going to put her in cuffs, are you?&amp;quot; she begged, but they did, leading Katelyn to their car as her mother screamed, &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re taking my baby!&amp;quot; She got a call to pick up her daughter from the station later that night. In a press conference the next day, the sheriff announced the charges: Guadalupe and Katelyn had both been arrested for felony aggravated stalking, which in Florida carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. &amp;quot;When you harass, intimidate, and threaten over a period of time, you&amp;#039;ve committed stalking,&amp;quot; the sheriff says today. He is quick to note that other factors contributed to the tragedy: &amp;quot;Rebecca was a very fragile child to begin with,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;This bullying and stalking contributed to her death. It wasn&amp;#039;t one hundred percent responsible, but it added to her load. If you were raised on a farm, you know that if a chicken gets sick, the other chickens come and peck it to death.&amp;quot; In his press conference, the sheriff named the girls and showed their mug shots. &amp;quot;In Florida, when you&amp;#039;re charged with a felony, it&amp;#039;s public information and you have to release it [by law],&amp;quot; he explains, adding, &amp;quot;quite frankly, in this day of the cyberworld, who are we kidding anyway? Everything gets out.&amp;quot;  Back at Katelyn&amp;#039;s home, chaos descended as reporters swarmed the yard. The phone rang with threatening calls. Katelyn recalls the scene while sitting in her living room with her parents, a black-and-white kitten in her lap. &amp;quot;I felt so isolated,&amp;quot; she says. Her mother interjects: &amp;quot;It was insane. Suddenly, her face is all over the internet. Someone called and said Katy should die.&amp;quot; Her father jumps in. &amp;quot;Reporters were here all the time &amp;amp;#151; they walked right up to the door. They tried to talk to the neighbors. A lady in a van drove by with a sign telling Katelyn to stop bullying. One day, a pickup truck pulled up with a gun in the back and just sat there&amp;amp;#151;bare-chested men, drinking beer. They just stared at the house.&amp;quot; The stories tumble forth in an emotional rush, with each parent interrupting the other, then reminding each other to let their daughter talk. Katelyn says she watched in disbelief as the case unfolded on national TV. &amp;quot;I felt like everyone wasn&amp;#039;t getting my side of the story,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They said I was pounding [Rebecca] with text messages. I wasn&amp;#039;t. We had barely even been in touch for a year. I thought, How could they say that?&amp;quot; She went on house arrest and was suspended from school. Guadalupe, who was seen as the ringleader, was sent to juvenile detention. Guadalupe&amp;#039;s stepmother, meanwhile, was arrested for child abuse when a tipster pointed police to a grainy online video of her appearing to punch two unnamed boys. She would later accept a plea deal and receive five years&amp;#039; probation. Katelyn&amp;#039;s parents hired a local lawyer, Mark Taylor, and another attorney, Jose Baez, known for defending Casey Anthony. Taylor says he negotiated with the school board to get Katelyn back in school, where she scrambled to make up the three weeks she had missed. A former homicide detective, he says he understands the drive for justice in such a case. &amp;quot;You have a dead child, and even the most seasoned officers get shaken by that,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;You want justice. But you don&amp;#039;t do it at the expense of somebody else. I&amp;#039;m hesitant to be critical of the sheriff&amp;#039;s office &amp;amp;#151; it&amp;#039;s a tough situation &amp;amp;#151; but I think there was a rush to judgment. They had a 12-year-old girl making an emotional admission about feeling bad about this tragedy &amp;amp;#151; that&amp;#039;s not a legal admission. For everything in this world, context is critical.&amp;quot; As the detectives sought evidence of cyberbullying, they hit a wall: They say the foreign companies that own the texting apps Rebecca had used, including Kik, did not cooperate. A spokesman for Kik says that the company always responds to inquiries from law enforcement and notes that Kik never sees or stores the text of messages between users. Detectives did gain access to Rebecca&amp;#039;s Facebook account &amp;amp;#151; 27,000 pages in all &amp;amp;#151; but did not find harassment there. In November 2013, the state attorney dropped the charges. Guadalupe went into a diversion program that required her to get counseling. The charges can be refiled if she doesn&amp;#039;t complete the program, according to the sheriff. Katelyn went into counseling voluntarily. The notoriety from the case has opened up both girls to online abuse: &amp;quot;You guys are a disgrace in the human race,&amp;quot; one commenter wrote on Katelyn&amp;#039;s Instagram page. &amp;quot;You guys deserve no happiness.&amp;quot; Katelyn&amp;#039;s parents argue that the sheriff acted irresponsibly, arresting their daughter and making her name public before conducting a proper investigation. Sheriff Judd says that he had probable cause for the arrests and it&amp;#039;s up to the state attorney to decide whether the case moves forward. The outcome was not a loss, he says, because &amp;quot;no one wants to criminalize children &amp;amp;#151; this is a case that should be worked out, not a case where you lock them up and throw away the key. Our desire was to make sure these children got counseling. If we had not brought charges, there would not have been any personal responsibility and they would not be in counseling,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I was given the public trust to do what&amp;#039;s right.&amp;quot; Katelyn&amp;#039;s mother counters that her daughter is in counseling because of the trauma from the felony charge, which she calls &amp;quot;outrageous.&amp;quot; Katelyn is still struggling to understand what happened to her and grieving the loss of her former friend. She says that the events of the past few months have changed her and she is &amp;quot;much more aware of bullying.&amp;quot; She wants to give talks at schools about the importance of standing up to bullies. And one day, she and her friend Rumi might start a family law practice where they could help kids in trouble. Katelyn&amp;#039;s mom worries about her daughter&amp;#039;s future. Sitting in a park decorated with twinkling lights in the Lakeland town square, she watches Katelyn and her two friends make silly robotic noises at one another. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s just a kid,&amp;quot; she says, but one with her name splashed all over the web. &amp;quot;This will follow her for her entire life &amp;amp;#151; when she applies to college, when she looks for jobs,&amp;quot; she says. Tricia Norman, meanwhile, is pushing for a federal antibullying law and, in Florida, for Rebecca&amp;#039;s Law, which would set punishments for bullying in that state, says her lawyer, Matt Morgan, who is working with her on the legislation. &amp;quot;Many days, it is difficult to find the strength to get out of bed,&amp;quot; Tricia says. &amp;quot;I have to stay strong for my family, but it can be very challenging. Becca is in my thoughts every second of every day. I hope her legacy will be to prevent this from happening to other children and their parents. This has become my life&amp;#039;s work.&amp;quot; This article was originally published as &amp;quot;Who Are You Calling A Bully?&amp;quot; in the May 2014 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to get the issue in the iTunes store! Comments have been turned off on this post due to the sensitive nature of the topic and the age of the subject. RELATED: Boy Bullied Out Of School For Having My Little Pony Backpack How One Model Overcame The High School Bullies Who Terrorized Her Photo credit: Andrew Hetherington "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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