Drowning

Do You Wanna Build A... Volcano?

Monday was boring as heck for Finley, at least until lunch. At lunch she saw Nate for the first time, and she asked a question she wished she had never asked.

"What happened to you?"

His left eye had a lovely shiner around it, along with a cut running the length of his eyebrow. On the bottom right of his chin was a large scab, and there was also a small cut on the bridge of his nose. Every movement seemed to cause him pain, so she had no idea the extent of his injuries that his clothes were hiding. In all honesty, it reminded her of how Hawk had looked after the school fight. Which, it turns out, was ironically, very fitting.

"Cobra Kai." The hatred in Nate's voice was palpable. "Hawk and his goons stole the money from the car wash and kicked the crap out of me."

What? Why would they... Her eyes darted around the table and no one else looked surprised. This was what Cobra Kai was, and Finley was finally beginning to see it. In no way did that mean that she actually understood why they did what they did, but then again, there probably wasn't an explanation outside of the fact that they were being manipulated by a dinosaur of a psychopathic war veteran.

"Why would they steal the money?"

"Because they're a bunch of bullies." Sam spoke up, crossing her arms.

Nate nodded his head. "They said some bullcrap about how Miguel is Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do didn't have the right to use him as our poster child."

"But you were raising money for him." Finley was becoming more annoyed the more she thought about it. "You were just trying to help Miguel, why does where the money came from matter?"

Demetri looked at the girl beside him. As far as he could remember, this was the first time she had ever questioned anything that Cobra Kai had done, and more specifically what Hawk had done. In all honesty, he had thought that Finley could excuse just about anything the boy did. He couldn't entirely blame her, he knew firsthand just how powerful a crush could be in excusing horrible behavior, but maybe there was some hope for her yet.

Nate shrugged. "I don't think they have a reason for anything they do other than proving their control."

Finley's eyes fell down to study her lunch. They had beat up a freshman. They had stolen money that was raised for Miguel...

"Did Ms. Diaz still get the money?"

Her eyes darted around the table, searching for anyone who knew, but no one could give her an affirmative answer. Her eyes landed on Demetri, but the boy couldn't offer anything more than a clueless shrug. Finley's brow furrowed, her anger at Cobra Kai was now overflowing into anger at the Miyagi-Dos.

"So Nate tells you guys that he got beat up and the money got stolen, and you did... what?"

"We decided it was for the best to start up Miyagi-Do. If Cobra Kai is gonna attack us, then we need to be prepared to fight back."

Finley's jaw ticked and she sucked in her bottom lip. This was as pissed off at any of them as she had ever been. Their stupid rivalry was more important than Miguel and she was ready to rip into every single one of them. She suddenly felt sick to her stomach. There were still 10 minutes left of lunch, but she got to her feet and walked out, ignoring the looks she got from her table. She couldn't deal with them anymore. Once she was out in the hallway she pulled out her phone and called Miguel.

"Finley?"

Finley took a deep breath, feeling herself relax slightly at the sound of his voice. "Hey Miguel."

"Miguel?" He raised his eyebrows, she rarely called him by his actual name. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I just... I wanted to talk to you."