Ferocious

5. Mess with Me

**** I would like to dedicate this chapter to my son who was a victim of bullying this week. If you or someone you know is a victim, please speak out. If you are a bully, please seek support to stop the violence. ********

The guy in front of me in the lunch line had a thick neck spotted with acne and buzzed hair. Football guy. He was joking with another guy about some house he had TPed over summer vacation and they jostled one another a couple of times.

The line inched forward and we were almost at the salad bar. I was starving. I had eaten early this morning to be on time for the counselor's appointment, and I was in the last lunch period, too. We moved forward a couple more spaces and the lunch room came into view from behind a wall.

Alicia was already sitting alone at our table in the corner near the end of the lunch line. She was staring off into the middle distance, sandwich in hand. The blond top half of her hair was still teased out bigger than a lead singer's of an eighties rock band and the darker under part snaked over her shoulders and on the table. Her face was hard and her lips curled in a snarl. I had to admit that with her expression and heavy makeup, especially her dark eyeliner, she was not someone to cross in a deserted street.

The school had rules about how much makeup was appropriate and I was fairly certain that if any of the teachers cared to apply those rules to Alicia, her parents would get a phone call about it. Rules didn't seem to stick to her like to the rest of us, though. She was always perched uncomfortably just outside of the group. Not necessarily a bad thing, I wasn't exactly a conformist myself with my Goth flair. But with Alicia, it was more a question of not understanding what was normal than choosing to follow her own ideas. She had no clue how other people thought or functioned, so she watched us from the outside like a scientist with a notepad. Or maybe like a paranoid maniac with a butcher knife. Even before she had been found beat up in the thorn bushes, her hold on reality had been tenuous.

"Ah, man, check her out! They never should have let her out of the looney-bin," the football guy said. He chuckled, nudging his friend. "Look over there. Should have locked her up for good, man."

"That is just freaky, dude. She was like in my history class last year. She sat like right next to me. It sucked."

I was already on edge, but hearing them make fun of Alicia was busting wide open the dam that held back my fears and anger from the morning. I clenched my fists and pressed my arms to my side.

"You know she had a major breakdown and stayed for like six months in the psycho ward? Yeah, and-"

I shoved football guy - not hard, but enough to get his attention. He caught himself and turned, red faced.

"What the-"

"You wanna mess with a girl who's smaller than you, then you mess with me," I said. He was twice my size and had a friend with him, but at that moment I didn't care. I didn't care about anything. I wanted a fight. I wanted to hit someone who was real and if I got hit back, at least other people would see that a real person had fought with me.

"Whoa, no we're cool. Hey, Brooklyn," the friend said, holding football guy. They were seniors. "We didn't, uh, see you standing there." He shoulder bumped football guy.

Football guy got up in my face. "Push me again, and I don't care whether or not you're a girl. My fist is gonna land in your face." He was still red and breathing hard, and several guys in the line snickered. Others shook their heads, though. In this town, guys didn't hit girls in public and get away with it.

"Talk about my friend again, and I'll do more than just push you," I said. It may have sounded overblown or like an empty promise, but I had been getting into fights for Alicia for the last five years, and as the boys got taller and heavier than me, I got smarter. My self-defense instructor loved and hated me for it.