BAM!
I come to an abrupt halt against an enormous backpack. The corridor is blocked by a large group of students, which is extremely unusual since the school rules forbid us from congregating in large groups. Naturally my curiosity is immediately piqued. I need to know what’s happening.
After wrestling my way to the front of the mob, I find that the other end of the corridor is also blocked, leaving a rather small space open. On the opposite side, Wilma Flintstone looks at something on the floor. But when I follow her gaze, I don’t see anything.
“Can’t you look out, you little flat nose?” she shrieks. Something shifts in the light, and only then do I see the girl that Gnat has dubbed Shadow, curled up on the floor as if she’s been hit in her stomach. When she speaks, however, her voice is unafraid.
“I didn’t bump into you. You bumped into me.” Wow, that’s a lot braver than I expected, I think. Kudos to Shadow.
“Well, well, well,” Wilma scoffs, though she can’t hide her surprise completely. “Cheeky girl, eh? It’s about time that we teach you and your kind a lesson.” The girl on the ground doesn’t blink or look away.
“My kind and I don’t need a lesson, and certainly not from you.” More kudos to Shadow! But the smile I feel coming on never reaches my lips. It turns out that Wilma is not alone.
“Lilian! Look what I’ve found,” she calls. The students at the opposite end of the corridor make room for the girl I once dubbed Betty Rubble. Is her real name Lilian? Lilian suggests grace and refinement; this girl, however, is a mountain. Everything about her is big: her hands, her head, her arms, her legs, her feet. In some twisted way, she looks like the female version of Fred, but with fluorescent pink nail polish and two ridiculous tiny pigtails. Her voice is a low-pitched growl.
“What is this? A piece of chocolate wrapper on the floor? We can’t have that, can we? Let’s clean it up. Did you bring a trash picker?”
“NO!” Someone shouts. ‘Bravo,’ I think, finally someone standing up against these bullies. I look around to see who it was, but every face is turned towards me.
“No…” I say again, but with much less conviction now. “You will let her go, or else….”
“Or else what?! Maggot! Are you going to stop us? You and whose army? You can’t have a problem with us keeping the corridor clean, can you? Littering is prohibited.”
“I d-d-don’t need an army,” I stutter. “I can take you on with only my left arm.”
“Is that right?” Instantly, all amusement vanishes from Betsy’s voice. “Give me that left arm of yours, and I will wrench it from your body, you piece of bird shit.”
“Yes, Lil, her arm, her arm!” shrieks Wilma in encouragement.
Obviously, both think this will be enough to blow me off, but they don’t know me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want anything more than to get myself out of harm’s way, but I just lack the instinct for self-preservation normal people have. For me, flight or fight is not a choice. Gran has used many proverbs over the years to address my hard headed self-destructiveness, but she also uses this one: He who bends like the grass will never break through a wall, Tinderstick. She’s right. I will not bend, no matter how afraid I am.
“Let her go,” I say, almost without stuttering. A laugh like a seagull’s death scream escapes Wilma’s throat as she starts rubbing her hands in anticipation. Betty, on the other hand, is not much of a talker; she’s more of a doer. Without another word, she lifts her enormous foot with the sole intention of bringing it down with devastating force on Shadow’s leg. “Let’s see what this little twig sounds like when it snaps,” she mumbles, as if it’s her personal little science experiment.
Before I realize it, I throw myself forward, and drill myself into Betty’s stomach, or rather... I bounce back from her ridiculously hard abs, like a pebble off a wall. Yet, it throws her just enough off balance that she misses Shadow’s leg by only millimeters, giving her just enough time to scramble up from the floor and join me.
So, there we stand, two skimpy girls facing two much larger students who are at least two years older. Even Wilma is bigger than we are, and she's only one-third the size of Betty.
“You can have that dark smudge, but that little snowflake is mine,” Betty grins maliciously.
Very ladylike," I reply in a desperate attempt to sound brave, but I know we are hopelessly lost. Not only do we stand no chance in a direct confrontation, but we also have no way out. Behind us, the corridor is blocked by our fellow students, who don’t seem to get much pleasure from this spectacle but are too cowardly to help. No surprise there. The fact that there’s no teacher to be seen is, on the other hand, downright baffling for a school where you’ll get caught for throwing a paper wrapper on the floor.
I’m about to fall back on the only “strategy” I know: storm forward with eyes closed and hope for the best when I hear Shadow whisper in my ear. “Max. On the count of three. You to the right, me to the left.”
“What?”
“One… two…”
“What do you mean?”
“Three!”
Abruptly, all light is gone. Not just dimmed, but completely disappeared; even the daylight. I literally can’t see a hand in front of my face. Everyone begins to move in blind panic, bumping into each other, falling over each other, fighting each other, trying to find a way out. It’s complete chaos.
“To the right, Max!” Shadow whispers in my ear. Finally I move, but I make little progress in the maelstrom of moving bodies swirling around us. I get knocked to the floor once, twice, but then I feel Shadow’s hand, helping me up. Without hesitation, she leads me through the wrestling mob to the end of the corridor. When we finally turn the corner, the light is back again. Without any warning, it’s like a slap in the face. Not a gradual change from dark to light, but a razor-sharp division, like the water in an aquarium separated from air by the glass.
I look back at the impenetrable wall of darkness we just escaped when it bursts like a soap bubble. Poof, and it’s gone. The noise of students falling over each other around the corner reaches a new crescendo. I turn back to Shadow. “Who… what… are you?” But she’s already gone.