My Life In Pieces (Book #1)

Chapter 31

Elle beat Ari to the punch literally.

She flew out of her seat and pounced on top of Brenna. Ari didn't even move to stop her. Nixon was trying and failing to separate the two.

Jake came in a few seconds later to see what was going on and saw the cat fight in progress. He looked at Ari who just shrugged. Being the good older brother, he proceeded to pull Elle off while Nixon helped Brenna up.

Brenna stood there for a moment trying to catch her breath and we all just glared. Nixon got the hint and took her out of the room. We heard her bedroom door shut a moment later.

Elle started massaging her swollen knuckles and went to go wash the blood off in the sink. "She's had that coming for a while."

"Still, won't your parents freak when they get home?"

"More than likely."

"I better go then. I don't want to be around when they see her."

Ari walked me home and I went upstairs to do some homework. Online that night, Brenna had already posted her battle wounds. Ari called and told me that their parents had grounded Brenna for a week for calling me names and inciting a riot with Elle and Elle was grounded for a month from social media, her phone, and most visitors, for attacking her sister.

Apparently, visitors were now only allowed in the house when an adult was home to make sure no more fights happened. Considering three out of four of their children had been in altercations because of me, I was surprised that I was allowed back at all.

I felt self-conscious as eyes seemed to be glued to me the next day at school. There appeared to be two sides people were taking. Either they were on the 'finally Brenna got her ass kicked for being a giant bitch all the time' side, or they were on the, 'Elle and Ari are psychos and Alex must be crazy too' side.

I felt terrible.

On top of that I was signed up to go to the newspaper meeting with Brenna's current boyfriend. I wanted to puke as I walked in the room after school. Everyone there seemed shocked to see me. Luckily, Brenna wasn't there. I halfway expected her to be posted outside the door to make sure I didn't go near Nixon. Nixon seemed surprised to see me as well. I sort of hung my head as I took a seat in the back.

Nixon soon called everyone's attention to the front. "So this year I want to take the Tigerian to a new place. I want to show people that we can put out quality work and stories that people want to read. Now not everyone will get assignments since we only put out an issue every two weeks. I see some new faces in the crowd and I am happy you are here. You will most likely be assigned as back up to veteran reporter and be in charge of helping them research and proofread before it hits my desk. We will make rotations to make sure everyone gets an assignment every couple of issues."

We all shook our heads yes. There were around twenty of us in the room and only seven or so stories he said. He started going through the descriptions of sports and tutor ads and I checked out.

The I watched as almost everyone in the room was given an assignment or a partner to help and then we were down to our last one. Nixon had not even looked in my direction at this point.

I paid attention though as he spoke. "This last one is kind of cool. The members of the local band Running With Scissors have granted us an interview. I am going to split this up amongst the seven of you left so that you can interview them individually. Then I am going to take what all you give me and put it into one big interview piece. Sam and Mike will you take the lead singer, Brenna? Jamal and Sebastian you can get Andy the bassist, Amy and Karen get Kyle the drummer and that leaves Alex to cover Tyler the guitarist. You okay taking that one on alone newbie?"