Paige Rawl Remains 'Positive' While Living With HIV

Growing up in Indiana, Paige Rawl was a good student, played soccer, and entered the occasional beauty pageant. She was also HIV positive: her mother got the diagnosis when Rawl was a toddler.

But despite her daily medication regimen, she was a pretty typical kid.

Until middle school, when Rawl told her best friend about her HIV status. The word spread and a bullying campaign began: Rawl was dubbed "PAIDS" by her schoolmates, received anonymous notes and was dropped by all of her friends. School administrators were unresponsive and the stress grew to such a point that Rawl began developing physical symptoms.

Excerpted from the book POSITIVE by Paige Rawl with Ali Benjamin. Copyright © 2014 by Ali Benjamin. Reprinted with permission of HarperCollins.