Pursued (Completed) ✔️

Chapter 9 Her confrontational side

By Monday I'd had plenty of time to review my conversation with Mr McKellar. And I also had plenty of time to get angry about it. They were meddling. Before, well they protected me but they never meddled like this. If they really cared about me they would have worried about what happened to me when the weren't around a long long time ago. They had no right to start now.

I realized that it was what I'd said to Camille that had set this in motion but it shouldn't have. They always stuck to their own. I was always fine. I was capable of dealing with whatever Susan and her friends dished out. I made sure to watch my own back and other than some minor bruises from a shove here or there, I'd always been fine. They never noticed anything before so why suddenly care now.

But the thing that made me most angry was how they were suddenly, bluntly trying to be friends outside of school. They would be there. I would get used to them around, to having friends around outside school. I would start to care about their company if it didn't stay compartmentalized to school...and then...then school would end. I wasn't from their side of town, from their rich little corner of the world. They would probably go to some posh school, make new friends and forget and I'd be left behind. I'd be left behind with a memory of what could have been while now that was still only a fantasy.
They had no right.

My brother gave me an extra long hug before he grabbed the bike to go to Rosie's place because her dad was on drop off. He could read my moods like the abc but he also knew when I didn't want to talk about what bothered me and really...most of the time it was just something to do with baking gone wrong or customers being nasty or just something as simple as a bad morning.

The car made me feel happy while I got in and the engine hummed to life but then I remembered who owned it and what the reason was that I had it and the smile was replaced with a fury I hadn't felt for a long time. It was a lot like how I felt about my mother but that was something I had learned to put behind me.

This was fresh and burning hot as the reasons for everything flashed through my head during my ride to school.

By the time I parked I was ready to kill someone. I slammed the door to the car and pressed the button to the remote lock harder than needed as I stomped of to the entrance. I blatantly ignored my name as Camille called out to me from their usual spot near the trees. For her sake she would be better off to leave me the hell alone.

If she, or any of them followed, they didn't do so in a rush because I made it to my locker without them catching up. Susan started after me when I passed her, I heard her heels and the slap of sneakers behind me but I ignored it all as I sorted my books into my bag rather roughly.

"Have a fight with them?" She asked tauntingly in a loud voice as she parked herself next to my locker.

"No, but I'm ready for a good fight. Are you offering?" I snapped.

Her boyfriend hit the back of my head and I hit the edge of my locker, hard,  while Susan snickered a nasty 'oops'. I didn't think, I was beyond that. For years I had just let everything happen and it had piled up somewhere in my head. I had ignored it for too long. My, as Camille called it, 'inner snarky side' had an inner fighter to complete the package. As I felt the blood run from a gash on my temple I turned and raised my knee, hard and fast. He dropped even faster and harder.

"Oops!" I said. "Didn't realize you were that close behind me." I said coldly as he lay at my feet. There were several people standing around and yet you could hear a pin drop.

I turned to Susan. "You were saying?"
"You_ You just! How? You.."

"Susan, you are stuttering and thanks to your boyfriend I am bleeding from my head. I understand that it's hard for you to form full sentences but I really don't feel like patiently listening to your nasty shade of stupidity right now. So...toodles."