“Hey, Annie.”
I stopped walking, turning around to meet Annabelle and Kayla as they stood and sneered at me. “Hi.”
Kayla crooked an eyebrow, acting as intimidating as an eleven-year-old could be. “Isn’t it your birthday?”
My throat tightened. I stared hard at the ground. “Yes.”
“Wow. Try not to make too big a deal out of it,” she joked. It was harmless, really, but her words stabbed me in the chest.
“Why do you care?” I muttered.
“It’s just . . . people are starting to talk, you know?”
“About what?”
“Your home-life. I heard the teachers talking, and they’re thinking of pulling you out.”
That piqued my attention. “I don’t need to be pulled out,” I growled. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Mind your own business.”
I started walking away, but she wasn’t that ready to rip her claws out of me yet. “Are you abused, Annie? That’s the rumor going around.”
I licked my lip, tasting the dried crusting blood. “I fell.”
“Into what? A fist?”
“A counter,” I fired back, the practiced words coming fast and automatic. “Mind your own fucking business.”
Kayla’s eyes widened. Back in middle school, I might as well have killed somebody having dropped the F-bomb. “You’re a nasty girl,” she tsked, cruel eyes narrowing. “And nasty girls deserve nasty lives.”
Even then, I wondered how somebody could be so heartless. I thought people could always tell how broken I was. My family sucked, my life sucked, and sometimes my parents got swingy. So? Everybody had a sob story and I wasn’t interested in sharing mine. “Leave me alone.”
“You probably deserve it,” she continued, oblivious to the ticking bomb inside of me. “Slut.”
I should have let it go, because she had probably just picked the word up from her older sister and had no idea what it meant, but I didn’t. Because I’d heard my father scream it to my mom, and I’d asked a neighbor.
It wasn’t a nice word.
“Leave me alone,” I demanded.
She walked up behind me, looking absolutely ridiculous. She was one of those girls that tried way too hard to be five years older than they were. Her face was still pudgy and innocent; she didn’t need to cake it with makeup. “Or what? You’ll go crying to Daddy? But, wait. Daddy will just beat you up, won’t he?”
“Leave me alone, Kayla,” I whispered. “I’ll only say it one more time.”
“Or what?”
“Kayla . . .”
“Or what, Annie?”
So I clocked her. Square in the face. She went down hard and fast, tears streaming her cheeks and acting every bit the drama queen she was as she screamed for help. All I could do was stare at my bruising fists and run away.
I was suspended from school for two weeks.
I never liked my birthday.
~*~
YOU ARE READING
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Teen Fiction(TH#7)"Life could be too much like fire. Unpredictable, scorching, and roaring out of your control faster than you could believe." Life isn't perfect. In fact, most of the time, it's far from it. Annie Davis knows this, which is why she's thoroughly...
