Brittney Taylor

Brittney Taylor is the older of the two Taylor sisters who most persistently oppose Tabitha Moore. She is identified as a senior at Springton High School, while Erica Taylor is a sophomore, and she is associated with the abuse inflicted on both Tabitha and Ashlee Taylor. Her role expands from a remembered childhood threat into a participant in the school’s harassment crisis and, later, a revealing witness to the Taylor family’s inability to acknowledge Erica’s illness or Ashlee’s victimization.

Identity and Background

Brittney is first recalled through the fractured memory surrounding Tabitha’s injury. When Alan Moore mentions the girl who pushed Tabitha from a trampoline, he cannot immediately distinguish between Brittney and Erica. The confusion forces Tabitha to recognize that what she had treated as an accidental fall was connected to the Taylor sisters. She remembers that the older two girls were terrible to both her and Ashlee, hitting and abusing them, while Ashlee had been the younger sister Tabitha visited to play with.

The memory is not merely a recollection of ordinary childhood antagonism. Tabitha realizes that the Taylor sisters had put her in the hospital before, and later tells Elena Seelbaugh that the concussion she suffered near the end of Laurel Middle School was caused by one of them pushing her. She cannot identify whether Brittney or Erica delivered that particular blow, but the uncertainty does not lessen the pattern: the sisters are presented as a continuing source of physical danger whose actions had been obscured by trauma, fear, and the story that Tabitha had simply fallen.

Role in the Harassment Crisis

Brittney and Erica are named together by Carrie as the students who hate Tabitha most. Carrie explains that Tabitha used to go to the Taylor home to play with Ashlee and suggests that objects repeatedly went missing there, while also using Tabitha’s reputation and trailer-park background to stigmatize her. This account places Brittney within a social environment where hostility toward Tabitha is reinforced by rumor, class contempt, and the transformation of a childhood acquaintance into an accusation against the victim.

The school’s response eventually treats Brittney’s conduct as part of a criminal harassment investigation rather than as an isolated dispute between students. Mrs. Cribb orders Brittney Taylor, Erica Taylor, and Kaylee Mendolson removed from class and sent to the office for suspension. The decision is supported by an immediate school-board investigation, police involvement, a county lawyer preparing charges, angry calls to the parent-teacher association, and a second notice of claim from Seelbaugh and Straub. The institutional language is severe because Tabitha has endured constant harassment and has been physically harmed twice in the year badly enough to require medical attention.

Brittney is later listed among the students facing suspension pending an expulsion hearing after Halloween, alongside Erica, Kaylee, Clarissa Dole, and Chris Thompson. Her presence in that list marks a decisive shift in her position. She is no longer protected by the ambiguity of playground rumors or by the assumption that injuries are accidental; the school and outside authorities are prepared to impose expulsions, pursue arrests, and testify in court. The threat of formal accountability also helps explain why Tabitha considers withdrawing from Springton High, despite being at the top of her class: the school has become a place where safety cannot be assumed.

Family Abuse and Erica’s Treatment

Brittney’s later scenes reveal that her violence toward Tabitha is part of a broader pattern rather than an isolated feud. Clarissa Dole, apologizing for her own participation in the harassment, identifies Erica, Kaylee, Summer, and Brittney as the students who repeatedly said hostile things about Tabitha. The confession confirms that Brittney belonged to the group sustaining the campaign, even as Clarissa remains too frightened to accept Tabitha’s challenge about becoming friends.

After Erica’s collapse and diagnosis, Brittney remains openly hostile to the medical and psychiatric intervention surrounding her sister. During weekly drives to Ireland Army Hospital, she describes Erica as effectively mind-wiped and mocks her difficulty with ordinary tasks, including putting on her pants. Aunt Kimberly explains that Erica has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, that medication is being adjusted, and that lithium will take time to help. Brittney rejects this account, insisting that nothing had been wrong with Erica and treating the treatment as nonsense rather than as a response to behavior that had harmed others.

Her contempt extends to Ashlee. On the drive back from Ireland Army Hospital, Brittney asks whether Ashlee requested medication for attention difficulties, using an insulting phrase about disability. Ashlee answers that Ritalin is intended to make thinking easier and reduce distraction, while Aunt Kimberly tells Brittney to stop. The exchange shows Brittney occupying the role of an older sibling who polices and humiliates rather than protects. Her language also demonstrates how the Taylor household converts mental illness, medication, and vulnerability into occasions for ridicule.

Institutional Intervention and Change Around Her

The Taylor family’s circumstances finally draw coordinated outside intervention. An attorney, a social worker, a school-board representative, and a police officer arrive at the Taylor home, where Mrs. Taylor defensively explains Ashlee’s truancy and grows increasingly agitated. The social worker asks to examine Ashlee privately and asks whether she has bruises. Ashlee reveals bruising severe enough to interfere with sleep, and the encounter produces a frightening but hopeful possibility that someone will intervene.

Brittney is not shown accepting responsibility for the injuries or harassment. Instead, her reactions to Erica’s diagnosis and Ashlee’s treatment display resistance to the very systems that might interrupt the family’s violence: psychiatric care, school oversight, social work, legal action, and police attention. The evidence therefore gives her no redemptive reversal. What changes is the network around her. The girls who once operated through secrecy and intimidation become visible to administrators, investigators, attorneys, and medical professionals.

Narrative Significance

Brittney functions as both a concrete antagonist and part of the book’s larger cycle of school bullying and domestic abuse. Her seniority contrasts with Tabitha’s age and vulnerability, while her position as an older sister should imply protection that the narrative instead associates with domination. The uncertainty over whether Brittney or Erica caused Tabitha’s concussion emphasizes how collective violence can blur individual responsibility without erasing the reality of harm.

Her treatment of Erica and Ashlee also prevents the Taylor conflict from being reduced to a simple rivalry between popular and isolated students. Brittney participates in a household where cruelty moves laterally among siblings and downward toward the most vulnerable member. Against that structure, Tabitha’s decision to leave her own family and seek safety with the MacIntires establishes a contrasting model of protection. Brittney remains tied to the destructive order that authorities begin dismantling, while Tabitha’s withdrawal represents an assertion that a thirteen-year-old can identify danger, demand safety, and participate in decisions about her own life.