“Hey! Horse’s ass!” The hallway suddenly fell silent as Jackie DeCoeur’s voice thundered over the din. Standing at her locker, the young freshman, Scar, turned around and found herself staring into the red, and furious, eyes of the senior.
Putting on a mask of bravado, Scar stuck out her chest as much as she could and tried not to sound scared. “Yeah?”
With her left hand, Jackie grabbed Scar by the shirt. With her right, she held up a broken pair of dark glasses. “You broke my sunglasses.”
Scar glanced over at the object in question. The frame was bent, and one of the lens cracked. “Suppose you just try to prove that, Red-eye.”
“You got something to say about my eyes, freshman? Let’s hear it! I’m sure it’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”
“Yeah, I do,” Scar said. She looked to the side, away from Jackie, and then pushed the red-eyed senior. DeCoeur let go of Scar’s shirt as she staggered back a step. “Your eyes look stupid!”
There was a collective gasp from the other kids. Jackie just smirked. “That the best you got, Scarface?”
“No,” the centaur girl said. “You couldn’t handle the best I got. But since I don’t want to find out if red eyes cry blood, I’ll spare you from it.”
Another round of “oohs” and gasps rippled through the halls. “Uh, Scar?” From next to the centaur, a green stone catfolk spoke, keeping her eyes on Jackie. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“You should listen to her,” Jackie said. “Your train’s comin’ in on a hard stop if you keep on this track.”
“I’m not scared of a weird-eyed senior citizen who can’t even pass Reading.”
Jackie surged forward, but suddenly there was a swarm of students in between the two, restraining them as they tried to attack each other.
Jade forced her way between the two, hoping that neither of them were so angry that they would try to punch stone. “Not here, guys. Okay?”
“She’s right,” Jackie said, staring at Scar. “We’ll do this in the back lot. Right after the final bell. You better be there, ‘cause you don’t want me coming to look for you!”
“Oh, I’ll be there!” Scar said. “But you better call your boyfriend and tell him goodbye!”
“You better call yours and tell him to start existing!”
They surged at each other again, and it took the other kids several minutes to get them to stop and to clear the hallway. News of the fight travelled like wildfire throughout the school. Everyone knew Jackie DeCoeur and how tough she was. Although none of the students there had been around in Jackie’s first year at the school, there was a rumor that she had knocked the teeth out of a would-be bully on her very first day. The rumor was made all the more impressive by stating that the bully was a shark fishfolk, and had several rows of teeth for DeCoeur to knock out.
By the time the end of the day had rolled around, just about everyone in the school was at the back lot, waiting for the fight. The students had formed a sort of circle for their peers, and the faculty had been trying, completely unsuccessfully, to disperse the crowd. The energy of the mass of people continued to build as everyone waited for Scar and Jackie to show up.
Unfortunately, they never did.
The crowd must have waited around for over an hour before they realized that neither was going to show. Some speculated that each one was afraid of the other. Others suggested that maybe they had found each other on the way and fought elsewhere. Still others thought that perhaps cooler heads had prevailed. Syl and Chardis suggested that neither of them were smart enough to find their way to the back lot in the first place. But eventually, everyone went home.
Everyone, that is, except Jackie and Scar, who were casually hanging out in an unused classroom, divvying up their loot.
“How long do you think it’ll take them to figure out we broke into their lockers?” Scar asked.
Jackie smiled and shrugged. “They’ll figure out tomorrow that someone did. Some of the more clever ones might figure out who, but I think most of them bit down hard on our little performance earlier.”
“Speaking of, I didn’t go too far, did I?” Scar asked. “I felt horrible afterward.”
“No, you were great. Hells, you could have thrown much worse at me.”
“For a minute there, I really thought you were gonna slug me.”
Jackie flashed her trademark grin. “Well, that was the point, right? Besides, if I had, you’d have taken it like a champ and given me one right back.”
Scar laughed. “Do you think the other kids’ll be mad?”
“It’s not like we stole from everyone. Just the ones who deserved it. Dorn, Dantalion, Blink, The Liar, ahh!” She held up the most expensive purse she had ever seen. “My favorites, the Rulus twins!”
Scar held up Chardis’s billfold, bulging so much from the bills inside that she doubted it could fit in his pocket. “Yeah, and they call us stupid.”
“Let ‘em,” Jackie said, grinning. “It just makes it that much easier.”
“And that much more fun!” Scar agreed.
“Alright,” Jackie said. “Everyone should be gone by now. Let’s get out of here.”
“Sure. Wanna grab something to eat?” Scar held up Chardis’s wallet again. “I’m buying!”
“Scar,” Jackie said, “You and I are going to get along just fine.”