A Tiger's Stripes

Chapter 2

I walked into the school, and I noticed that everyone was staring at me in shock. I gave them a confused look and turned around. 

BOOM!  

Something had crashed into my face. Damn, it hurt so bad! I could feel the blood streaming out of my nose like a waterfall. Tears flew out of my eyes, and I hit the floor like a ton of bricks. 

"That's what you get, loser!" a guy shouted.  

I could hear people laughing and cheering while this guy just keeps pounding my face in. I don't even know what I did to deserve this abuse.  

"Hey, get off of her!" I heard another guy shout.  

"Awe, c'mon Drew! This loser deserves it!" 

This guy that is supposedly "Drew" pulls my attacker off of me.  

"No one deserves this, Keenan!" Drew yells in Keenan's face. 

I notice that everyone has been quiet ever since Drew arrived. I place my hand around my nose to try to stop the bleeding, but it seems to be infinite. Drew reaches his hand out to me and lifts me up off of the floor. He places his hand on my back and leads me to the nurse's office. The nurse trusts him with me and he takes me into the back room with bandages and gauze.  

"Lift your head back and pinch your nose." he instructs me.  

I do as he says, and he places tons of tissues in my hand so I can get the blood off of me. He was quite kind to me. 

"I'm Drew Cole." he introduced himself. 

"Carson." I murmured back to him.  

He seemed to be thinking for a few seconds. 

"What's your full name, Carson?"  

"Carson Grey Stone.."  

"That's a nice name." he smiled. 

"Thanks. Yours is too." I smiled back at him.  

Drew seemed to grimace, but then he smiled again. He placed a tissue to my lips and when he brought it back it was covered in the color red.  

"Oh, I'm sorry." I said habitually, placing my fingertips to my gushing lip. I grimaced as well from the pain. Drew brought the tissue to my lip again, dabbing so it wouldn't be so painful.  

" I'm really sorry about Keenan."  

I look away from him and pull my sleeves down, feeling self conscious.  

"It's fine. I'm used to it." I tell him, which was probably a mistake.  

"This happens to you often?" he asked, obviously furious.  

"Well, yea." I shot at him, "I mean, who wouldn't want to beat up a loser like me?"  

"I wouldn't." he told me, completely serious, "What did you do to get beat up anyway?"  

I noticed that he had grabbed my hands. I pulled them away and rubbed my head, "I don't even know." 

Drew stood up, "Well, I promise it won't happen again." 

"You shouldn't make promises that you can't keep." I informed him.  

Drew sighed and stood me up as well.  

"Well, I need to get to class. Let's exchange numbers so we can keep in contact." Drew said. 

"K." I mumbled. 

We exchanged numbers and parted ways, secretly hoping that we would see each other again.