The Fight

Jessica gets into a fight with one of the students.

Things sort of stayed that way for the next few weeks. Jessica, who had never been caught for the display at the prep rally, continued to insist on hanging out with me, going from class to class and taking me to lunch each and every day. She was never absent, and neither was I. A testimony to both of our good health. Our classes were slowly moving along. I still found English to be incredibly boring, and found myself wondering how these people could claim it as their native language.

We had finally moved on to chapter two in the history books, after quite some time being spent on the first chapter. At the rate we were going, we might get about half way through the book by the end of the school year, but I was sorting to doubt we would even manage to get that far. We had finally started using the potter’s wheel in pottery class, and I was proving to be less than skilled at this task. Most of my pots were turning out to be very short and lop-sided. I couldn’t get the sides of the pots over three inches without the things toppling over, and no matter how the teacher tried to help me with fixing the problem, it seemed that I could not even hope to master the skill. Oh, well, just one more thing to add to the long list of things I’m not the least bit good at. Surely the teacher, Mr. Porter, would be willing to give me an A for effort, or at least take some pity on me and give me something resembling a passing grade.

Jessica continued to act in her usual way, which irritated her teachers to no end, I’m sure. Aside from homeroom, I had no idea what classes she attended. She never told me what she had taken, and I never walked with her to her rooms. She always insisted on taking me to mine so I never actually got to see where she went to. I could see from the books she got out from time to time to study on in homeroom that she had taken America History, Chemistry and Social Studies, but that was as much as I knew. She showed no inclination to tell me if she had any special talents, and I never saw her with any sort of art or musical items that would give me a clue to if she might be in any such classes. People usually took one or the other, just to fill up their time with things that were either enjoyable or something they thought they could get a good grade at. I guess she usually filled up her free time with her own entertainments, though, and that wasn’t hard to picture in the least. After the prep rally incident, I don’t think she had come up with any more great schemes to thrill the students. I wasn’t sure if she was out of tricks, or just biding her time, waiting for things to blow over and cool off before she attempted anything so daring again. I was personally going for the latter myself. She was a smart girl, and seemed to have some sort of instinctual knowledge of how to do such things.

I noticed that Jessica spent very little time around others, choosing to spend most, if not all, of her free time with me. If she had any actual friends, I can’t think that I ever saw any of them. It was just the two of us. If she stalked anyone else in the school, she didn’t do it to the same extent that she did with me. I had to wonder what had made her choose me, of all people, to latch onto so seriously. It seemed that she didn’t even give anyone else a chance. She ignored most of the other students, unless they addressed her directly, and then, depending on who they were, she could either be cold or down right rude towards them. If you were a jock, or someone who hung around them, she despised you. If you were of one of the other groups in school, she tolerated you, but did little more than that. It was almost saddening how she pushed others away. She was worse with social skills than I was, but when she put her mind to it, she could convince others to join in her harebrained schemes, no matter what they entailed. The prep rally was proof of that. No one had come close to identifying even half of those who had participated in that little show, and it was now believed that no one ever would.

It seemed she was completely intolerant of injustice. She stood up for any students who were being picked on, if she knew the person or not. I think she would have gotten into a fight with anyone, if she deemed them unkind to others. She would take on the largest jock as well as the tiniest cheerleader. Nothing seemed to scare her, or even put any amount of apprehension into her heart. She was in the right, and that alone would protect her and keep her from harm. I think that’s how it all started, really, her belief in justice and what was right. I think that’s what drove her to do the things she did, and commit the acts that she would commit. I think, in the end, that’s what drove her over the edge, an edge she took me over as well.

It all started shortly after the first month of school. There was this really mean jerk of a jock who would pick on anyone; boy, girl, animal. It didn’t matter. He had it in for every living thing, but because he was one of the best football players in the school at that time, he got away with anything. I had seen him on more than one occasion harass a girl just for the sheer pleasure of causing her to feel so miserable that she would cut classes just to avoid him. What was done about this? Absolutely nothing. What did it matter if a couple of girls dropped out of school as long as the football team got to keep their star player. Thankfully, I had avoided his notice up until that point, up until the day Jessica caught wind of him, and decided that something had to be done with him.

“Hey, c**k sucking jack a*s”

We were standing right behind Brian Canginham in the lunch line. I hadn’t realized what was going to happen until the words were out of Jessica’s mouth. I hadn’t even recognized the guy from the back, as most of the jocks were fairly large and wore school jackets, making them all look the same to me. He turned around to glare at Jessica with what would have been gorgeous blue eyes if it hadn’t been for how much cruelty and hatred were flashing in them, like a burning, blazing hell fire. His light blonde hair was slicked back with some sort of gel that had a rather pleasant odor to it, and I found myself thinking the guy wouldn’t be that bad of a catch, if her hadn’t been such an a*s-hole. His lips were a thin, angry line as he glared down at my friend. “What did you say, s**t?” he growled at her. Oh, that was real endearing. There went all his appeal in just one sentence.

She tossed her hair out of her face, and said, “You heard me. I called out a c**k sucking jack a*s.”

“It’s not nice to call people what you are,” he said, a wicked grin on his face. “If you want my services, why don’t you just ask.”

“I’d rather f**k a donkey.”

His eyes blazed with rage, and he caught hold of her by the hair, pulling her head back so far that her mouth opened. I could only stare on in horror as I thought that he was going to snap her neck. It sure looked that way.

Jessica started to laugh, of all things, and all I could think of was how crazy she seemed at that moment. Didn’t she know what he could do to her? Didn’t she see that she was pushing him over the edge?

“What are you laughing at, b***h?” he spat at her face, twisting the handful of hair he had even tighter. I could hear some of the strands being pulled out by the roots, and winced in sympathetic pain that she didn‘t seem to be feeling at all. How crazy was she? I felt my stomach lurch into my throat as the first tendrils of blood dribbled over his fingers that were twined into her golden hair.

“What on earth is going on here?”

I turned to see the principal standing off to one side of us, looking on in bewilderment at the scene going on before him. You would have thought it would have been obvious that one of the students was trying to kill another one, but I guess the guy just didn’t have very good comprehension skills. And he was a principal?

Brian let go of Jessica’s hair, and she swung her head forward, gasping for air and rubbing at her neck. “He-he tried to kill me,” she rasped out. “They all saw it. Everyone here can testify to that. This…this monster tried to snap my neck. You saw it, didn’t you?”

The question was directed at me, and all I could do was say, through numbed lips, “Yeah. Yeah, he tried to snap her neck.”

“Well, what did she do?” the principal asked, as if the whole thing had been Jessica’s fault. Not the brightest thing in the world he could have done.

A girl behind us, who had seen the whole thing, broke into the conversation with in a wild, angry voice, “What the hell does it matter what she did? He tried to hurt her. Maybe she said some things, but none of it warranted how he behaved. It wasn’t her fault, and you’re crazy if you think it was. What sort of school is this were the teachers will let maniacs like that do whatever they want to poor, defenseless girls like us? I don’t even feel safe here, anymore, if this is how you’re going to treat this. This is just sickening.” She stormed out of the cafeteria, leaving a bunch of befuddled people to stare gapped mouth in her wake.

“She has a point,” Jessica had no trouble saying, as she rubbed at her neck some more. She was really laying it on. I don’t think her neck was hurting her half as much as she was letting on, but it was all for the show, and that was what was important, wasn’t it. The show.

The principal just glared at Jessica, and I knew then and there who he blamed for the incident. “Brian, can I talk to you for a moment?” he asked, just before pulling the football player away. He was probably going to comfort the guy for the mean and evil girl who had said such horrible things to him. I could just see it now. Turning to Jessica after the two were well out of ear shot, I said, “And what did that accomplish? You know nothing’s going to come of that except for the guy having a grudge against you, and considering what he just tried to do, I don’t think that was the best idea you’ve ever had, do you?”

She just grinned wickedly at me, and said, “Just wait and see.”

Well, I didn’t have too wait long. The girl who had been standing in line behind us had gone home and told her parents about what had happened. Actually, there had been a lot of girls who had seen what had happened that day who had gone home that evening to tell their parents about the incident. Some of the parents, those who were really into football or who didn’t really care about their daughters in the least, brushed it off, but there were a few, quite a few, who were more concerned about their daughter’s well being and safety then keeping that particular player on the football team who took the issue up with the school. Enough parents protested Brian’s behavior and demanded that he be reprimanded in some fashion that he had to be let go from the football team. This became especially obvious when a large number of people boycotted the first game of the season to show their distain for how the principal was handling the situation. After that, it was just a matter of time before the guy was booted, and a new jock took his place. Maybe the guy wasn’t as good with the ball, but they really had no choice in the matter anymore. They had lost too much money from the first game to even consider keeping Brian on.

The day after I found this out, I couldn’t help but thinking that this was going to lead to no good. Jessica sat down in her usual spot in homeroom, and I immediately asked her, “Do you think that was such a grand idea? Now the guy is really going to be out for blood.”

Jessica just shrugged her shoulders in an airy sort of way, and said, “Yeah, but he got what he deserved. Now, no one is looking up to him. No one is following him around like a lost, little puppy, and no one wants him. It all went just as I had planned.”

“I’m not sure you’re thinking this through very well. The guy almost killed you just for insulting him. I can just imagine what he wants to do to you now.”

Jessica actually laughed at that. “Let him try to do whatever he wants. He’s nothing now.”

I could only stare at her in wonder, trying to figure out if she was just stupid or crazy. That, I would figure out later.

Author's Note

First Draft