For context, I’m f17 and mixed. The ex-friend, who we’ll call Derek, is a M18 and fully Caucasian. Derek and I met around Jan 2022. One of my friends at the time, Tay, had just started dating him. At first he was really chill, and seemed like a genuinely smart and funny guy, so we all quickly merged him into our friend group. But things started going south. It was small at first, with him making on the line jokes about different ethnicities, etc. But then prom night in April, he said the N-word, hard R. This alarmed me immediately but I pretended not to care so I wouldn’t ruin the night.

As time went by, it got even worse. He always claimed he wasn’t actually racist, yet he repeatedly would say slurs against all these diff types of people. On top of all this, Derek also just tended to put everyone down around him that he didn’t deem as cool. I was the brunt of tons of this because I’m autistic, and tend to have different interests, and ways of speaking. It sucked. By this year, everyone was fed up with him other than Tay. And we couldn’t wait until Derek left at the end of the school year. So I knew I wasn’t the only one who was upset. It had gotten to the point where I was just fed up with the entire group and their antics at this point as well. I was done pretending like everything that was happening was okay. By January I had enough, and an idea.

Derek’s a senior, so he’s applied to some universities. Tay lives by me, so I’d hitch a ride with Derek and her to go to school. I decided the best way to teach him was to catch him saying slurs and record it in the car, and send it to the universities. But I told Tay’s brother, Carl, about this. He’s expressed how he hated Derek a lot- since he’s made fun of him in the past, so I thought it was safe to text him about it, and he promised to keep it a secret. But the next day, Derek said he couldn’t give me a ride, and he can’t later as well. Every day at lunch, everyone seemed to be ignoring me too.

After days of this, Tay asked if she could come over after school to talk to me- and I knew it had to be about the situation. She told me Carl had shown everyone in the group our texts, and everyone thought I was crazy for trying to do it. People who had claimed only a few weeks prior that they hated him. Tay said she still wanted to be friends, but everyone else wasn’t okay with me hanging out anymore. I was okay with this, because I was pretty done with everything- and I had some friends that had been inviting me to hang out with them for a bit now. So I left the group. Everyone I’ve talked to outside that group has told me I was in the right to try and out him for what he says. Derek has been telling people a twisted version about me getting pissed off at him for “just talking to his girlfriend in the car” and cursing me out. I reported it to my school counselor, but lately I don’t know how to feel about this all. So, did I fuck up?