Encounter Explained

I found myself sitting next to Linh in sixth period.  When I sat down I noticed something was wrong with her face, expression-wise.  I asked her if anything was wrong and she said, "Of course not" and flashed me a smile.
I didn't really buy it but went with it enough to exchange a few jokes, but she was still preoccupied.  I felt a flash of annoyance with people who do a sub-par job of holding it together.  Then I told her about what PJ had said to me earlier about really not being able to stand anyone in this school anymore, making it lighter than it had been, laughing, not telling my real reaction to it.  Then I asked her what it had been about, because I felt like she knew something.  She sort of nodded and kind of closed her eyes.  She looked away from me, drew in a breath, looked back at me with a little extra shine in her eyes and said, "Yeah," on a sigh. "So," she continued and told me about how these girls, particularly one named Amanda Natale, have been spreading rumors around that she cheated on PJ, that Meghan Kelly and Krysta Breugger have been saying things.  She talked about how she used to not pay it any mind but lately it's sort of gotten really bad.
I sympathized with her, knowing this was not the full story because she probably didn't have enough self-control to really talk about everything.  I said I thought the very idea of her cheating on PJ was ridiculous because who would she cheat on him with? There aren't really any other good-looking boys around.  I told her that those girls were just jealous because they've been trying to hard to hook a boy into going to prom with them, or going out with them and she's actually going to go to prom with a boyfriend who goes to this school and is actually one of the better-looking, nicer guys. She didn't have to make any real effort, they've been going out for over a year.  I made a joke and sort of swing back in my chair from the little huddle we'd made and to my shock crashed into Emilio.  A full body crash, mind you.  It appeared that Emilio had sort of been trying to listen in and had steadily been getting closer and closer to us as we whispered.  His chair was touching mine, and when i had swung backward my head had hit his.  This was a little bit startling.  We all sort of fell into conversation and ended up not doing any work at all.  It wasn't until later that I thought about what Linh had told me.  PJ had talked to me because in his mind, he'd connected what was happening to Linh right now with what had happened to me last spring.  Oddly enough, this isn't the first time that something like this has happened.  I have been approached a total of five different times from people I didn't know so well or didn't know at all to tell me about bullying going on in all different areas of the school.  It all sort of gives me an off feeling, like why are these people coming to me? They don't know about each other, so why does it seem like I am the common denominator?