The Eyes of a Fighter: A Serial Novel

Chapter 1

The end of the school day was always bittersweet for Principal Edward Carter. In one sense it came as a tremendous relief that the day was done. The end of the day also meant that he would now reckon with the day's events and decide how to proceed. He was not looking forward to reviewing today's events.

Ed stretched as he walked the halls in silence. Rolling his neck and rotating his shoulders, he felt the stress of the day begin to fade. His upper body still held some of the muscle he'd built during his athletic younger days, but years of office work had softened him.

He put his left hand on a wall and stretched his legs, alternating between left and right, breathing deeply as he did so. His legs, at one time tight with muscles, were now perpetually sore. A dull ache had begun to creep into his lower back on a daily basis.

His six foot two frame was still tall enough to keep him a full head over most of his teachers and the students at school. His big hands meant trouble typing on tiny laptops, a constant frustration. Sometimes he felt just plain too big for this job. But a certain amount of intimidation was useful in his job.

These days though, it seemed his size was absolutely nothing in the face of the violence that had been slowly taking over the school.

With the hallways empty his shoes made an echo each time his heel met the floor. A set of windows behind him made his shadow stretch out down the hallway. The final bell had rung two hours ago and, as was his custom, he did a lap around the school and all of it's hallways. The meetings were done and even the most industrious of his teachers had left for the day.

He soaked up the quiet. He closed his eyes as he walked the hall and breathed in a few deep breaths. Lockers lined the hallway to his left and right. Blue, yellow, and white squares of linoleum made a checkered pattern on the floor. He smelled the cleaning spray that the custodians used. As he passed a boys' bathroom he heard the low rumble of the plumbing equipment they used to fix the daily clogged toilets.

Some of the students had started to jam entire rolls of toilet paper into the toilets and jammed them full, creating a clogged toilet and hours of work for his team. The students preferred sticking their arms into toilet and clogging them to being in class, apparently. He shook his head as he walked past, grateful that the toilets were not his immediate job responsibility.

To his left something caught his eye. It was a large black graffiti tag on one of the lockers. A few indecipherable loops and straight dashes were scrawled under the numbers of locker 2158. The black marker was thick and permanent on top of the blue locker with scratches and rust. He shook his head knowingly. His trained eyes could decipher the tag of the Franklin East Crew easily now. He'd started to see them more and more over the past few weeks.

He dragged his thumb across it in some hope that he could wipe it clean, but the black tag was thick and resistant under his touch. He'd need to call this one in. It was definitely a gang tag. It could be seen as a threat. Staff and the Dean would need to be told. He'd need to find out who this locker belonged to. Call them in also.

"Do they know the amount of work I have to do now?" he wondered to himself. "Five seconds of scribbling on a wall means five hours of extra calls and meetings." He took his phone from his pocket and snapped a picture, sighed, and walked on.

Back in his office he packed up to head home. His office was his second home. Extra shirts, jackets and ties hung from the coat rack beside the door. Papers were strewn across his desk and he had to scatter them away to get at the laptop hidden underneath. He stuffed it into his backpack and reached for his phone. He unlocked it and took one last look at the locker that had been defaced with a the gang's graffiti symbols. His eye noticed something odd at the bottom near the floor.