Counting Down

Chapter 2 - My Hero

Tenth grade

"Hey, babe!" I chuckled into the nape of my girlfriend's neck. She ruffled her now pink streaked curls and smiled at me, her goofy grin crooked with coy. A few kids pushed past us and muttered under their breath. I flashed her a hopeful smile while I said, "We're almost out of here, two more years."

She sighed loudly and said, "I know, I just have a bad feeling about something."

"Hey, hey, don't worry. It's fine, Riley," I whispered as I placed a small kiss on her lips before watching her skip down the hallway. I smothered my smile with my hand and made my way to the various classes awaiting me. My multiple binders tumbled out of my arms as the boy with shaggy blond hair slapped them away. I collapsed to the floor to pick them up, but not before I screamed a profanity at him. At that, he spun around and started coming my way again, this time with his face red as a beet. His meaty hands curled into fists and, before I could react, it connected with my chin, spinning me on my feet as if I was a ballerina.

As I fell to the floor for a second time, I spat some blood out of my mouth and wiped it with the back of my hand. "What the hell do you want?"

He merely chuckled and started at me again, this time with a gleam in his eye that sent the sickening thought of him wanting to finish what he started. I braced myself for the final blow, but it never came. Riley, my poodle-haired heroine, came dashing down the hall with her thickest textbook and cracked it down on the bully's thick skull. I winced at the noise it made but smothered my laughter as a teacher noticed the commotion. I grabbed onto Riley's hand, which were still shaking with anger, and ran out the front doors of our senior high school. After about a block was between us and that hellish place, I heaved out a sigh of relief.

"Why'd you do that?" I asked.

She shrugged and said, "I couldn't just let him hurt you. You get enough from everyone else." Her breathing was still deep and shaky, but the anger that contorted her face was fading away. I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her cheek.

"My hero," I giggled. She let out a laugh before taking my hand and walking us down the sidewalk.

"Let's go to my house, okay? I don't want to go back to school quite yet," she sighed. "Hell, I don't want to go to school in general."

I nodded in agreement. On a scale of from one to ten, we hated our school at a strong eight. The teachers were amazing and the classes were challenging and fun. The other students were a different story. We were half way through the year and already I had been threatened with suspension three times for getting into fights. Riley stood beside me though it all. She protected me since we started kindergarten in all honesty. She was always stronger than me and more of a logical thinker than I was. I threw punches before she even came to a conclusion about the situation.

We finally got to her small house in town where it was incredibly vacant of human life. Her mom worked nonstop and her dad wasn't around. While she had two younger brothers, Aaron and Paul, they were off at the middle school. I grabbed an energy bar from Riley's pantry and followed her thin silhouette up the creaking staircase. Down the hall on the left was her bedroom. Her bed was still a twin, plain black and white cotton sheets were messily strewn across it and posters of our favorite bands, artists, and pictures of us were found across the walls. I smiled at one from fifth grade on our field trip to the Da Vinci center when we snuck off to the bathroom to have our first kiss. Romantic? Not exactly considering we tried to swallow each others' mouths.

I sat down on her bed and patted the empty space beside me. She shook her head and motioned for me to stand up, which I did. She placed her delicate hands on my waist and I wrapped mine around the nape of her neck. She wiggled her eyebrows at me and caused me to break into laughter. I stuck my tongue out and she said, "Put that thing to good use."