UNEDITED VERSION
To break free of the stereotypical box that high school placed her in, Charlie must team up with Liam, the new soccer player on the team her dad coaches.
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Girls fall at Liam's feet - except Charlie. She...
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Bisous (noun){French}
- kisses.
~*~
Vice-Principal Samuels' pen kept scraping at the paper as he wrote an incident report. The noise went on and on and on. Scratch after scratch. I could feel the irritation descending over me like a vault, preventing all other sensations from entering at that time.
Samuels hunkered at his desk, looking about finished with life as I was. The pen in his hand continued to prick at the paper as he listened to Mattia relay what had happened. It was his turn to speak and none of us was allowed to disrupt. It was no astonishment to me that he was lying through his teeth.
"And after I managed to get Christian off of me - Liam fucking attacked me," Mattia fussed, pointing at the various bruises on his face. I watched as the older man groaned, peering down at his paper and scribbling down what Mattia had just said. He mildly admonished him for his bad language, affirming that it wouldn't be tolerated.
The four of us stood in front of his desk. Mattia stood at the far right. Liam stood on the far left with me. Jillian was permitted to go to the nurse's office because it was clear to us that she looked like she was about to pass out. Christian, who stood in the middle with an indifferent expression, twisted to his right and asked, "you kiss Jillian with that mouth?"
My eyebrow jerked and I tried my best to not lurch across Christian and smother Mattia. The edge of Liam's lip towed into a smirk as he clasped my hip, leaning forward to susurrate in my ear, "I can sense how badly you want to strangle him."
My body became even more high-strung as Mattia once again began to complain at the exact same time the older man elected to recommence his incident report. I wondered for a split second whether he was scribbling with a pen or a fucking quill. "The only reason I'm not acting on the urge is that I know Christian already strangled him," I murmured, eyes trained on the whining man-child.
Samuels didn't bother to hide his eye-roll and uttered in a moderately jaded tone, "what happened next?"
"Oh," Mattia was back at it again with his performance. He turned to Liam and me. I felt my entire body tense even further when making eye contact with Mattia. "Liam continued to punch me and Charlie cheered him on. She also called Jillian some very degrading words."
"What?!" My voice had never attained such an extraordinary frequency before, both Liam and Christian going to cover their ears. "You're lying," I upbraided. Liam didn't react because he didn't really care what Mattia had to say about him. He was just elated that he made Mattia suffer in return for hurting me.
Samuels yawned, not so subtly glimpsing at the clock for the tenth time. We'd been in his office for half an hour already. He went back to penning down the falsifications that Mattia had just spewed, the abrasive sound of the pen scratching on my last nerve. "Miss James, you do know that we do not tolerate bullying at this school. I see why Mr Johnson reacted the way he did. Of course, it was wrong of him to react so vehemently but he was defending his friend."
