Next Door Lovers

Act 2

I looked up to see the ugly face of Bradley Mitchell. Ugh. My bully. Didn't we grow out of bullies during the 5th grade?

To describe Bradley, I would say he's about 5' 9", wide, and really dumb. Like, he mostly got C's and D's, with the occasional F. He even ate glue back in the 3rd grade; he was so dumb.

His bullying career obviously started in the ripe time called kindergarten. There, he continued his "reign" all the way until the present day. Unfortunately for me, he picked me as his target this year.

I rolled my eyes. "Bradley, can you kindly get out of my way? You're blocking the sun with your body."

He picked me up by the collar and raised a fist. "What did you say to me, punk?"
Now, I'm not the most intimidating guy, okay? I'm 5' 5", had glasses, and had an overall skinny but fit build. It was nothing compared to Bradley.

I was guessing he was about to punch me when the bell rang. He then let me go and glared at me. I just rolled my eyes again while Joe came toward me.

"I just saw that. Are you okay?" he asked with a concerned look on his face.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, dusting myself off. "He didn't hurt me or anything, he just grabbed me."

"Bradley's honestly a piece of shit."

"Yeah. That's not the word I would have used, but yeah. He is."

After getting our stuff from our lockers, we went our separate ways, as we had different first periods. I had to go to geometry, and he had to go to some other weird class. He told me all about it one time, but it was so boring to me that I fell asleep while he was explaining it. All I remember was him telling me it was journalism.

I walked into Mrs. Ritori's classroom and greeted her.

"Hello, Mrs. Ritori!" I said with a smile.

She looked up from whatever she was doing and said hi back. I was always known as the teacher's pet, which probably is why I got bullied a lot.

First, I went over to talk to my other friend, Micah. Micah was a kind and clever girl, and she always greeted everyone with a smile. The thing is, people see her as a goth girl, which is why not many people talk to her. Her makeup and wardrobe mostly consisted of dark colors, and she had black hair with pink highlights, so I guess I could see why people thought that. Also, she's shorter than me, just to point that out.

We met just this year. We were doing something in gym (something about dancing), and we had to pick partners. We were the only two left to be picked, so we had to go together. At first, I hated it, because I didn't really know her. However, we warmed up to each other after we started joking about the assignment, and we've been friends ever since.

"Hey, Micah! How's your day been?" I asked.

"It hasn't even started yet. Wait a bit before asking."

We both laughed. Classic Micah, always being super sassy.

"Nothing much. The same old thing, every day. What about you?"
"Ugh, Bradley attacked me again. So annoying."

"Don't you ever want to stand up for yourself? You know, give him a black eye or something?"

"I would probably get in trouble, and I'm not even strong enough to give anyone a black eye."

"Yeah, I guess."

After a moment of silence, she asked me, "So how's tennis? Did you win your last game?"
"No. 0-7."

"Yeesh. Either they're really good or you're really bad."

"It's not just me. Joe lost too, 0-5."
"So they're really good."

"Nah, we're just really bad."

She just shrugged. It was almost time for class to start, so I went back to my seat and started daydreaming about Joe.

"Man, he's probably having so much fun in Journalism, whatever that is."