I needed more wins.
We both knew it, and he was kind enough to let me have it. It was one of many reasons why we fit so well together. Despite all of his flaws, his sullen moods, his tempers and rages, he showed me an enduring compassion that no one else ever had.
We were in our early teens. It was that age where the sexes had separated to a polarizing degree. Boys hung out with boys. Girls played with girls. Those were the rules. There was some general flirtatious banter, some note passing, and lots of brief, teasing interactions but other than that, there was a clear segregation of the sexes.
We didn’t care. We ignored that rule completely. We were each other’s only friends, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
We spent a good amount of time over at his gram’s house. Her huge mansion of a place was a five-minute walk up the hill from my grandma’s trailer, a walk I hadn’t known I was welcome to take before, but now, like magic, I was. She’d told me I could come over any time I wanted, and since my grandma was gone a lot, I took her up on the offer almost every day. And Dante, who lived on a huge property between, almost always met me on the way and went over with me.
Now I didn’t have to be alone so much. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
Things were so much better, in fact, that I wasn’t as angry anymore. Wasn’t fighting every kid over every insult they sent my way, and, miracle of miracles, there even seemed to be less insults these days.
No one was much intimidated by a little skinny girl like me, even a vicious one, but plenty of the kids had learned to be wary of Dante.
He fought like a demon, and word had spread that he’d pound anyone that messed with me.
It was wonderful.
But it was not absolute. Today was a case in point.
This time it’d been a boy I’d been fighting with. I’d decked the asshole right in the chin, and when he’d decked me back, I’d kicked him so hard in the balls that he’d fallen to the ground and cried like a baby.
The rest of our class had watched the whole thing with varying degrees of disgust, exasperation, and horror, but of course none of them had tried to step in or help.
I was used to all of it.
I’d always been the indisputable outcast. Other kids were very comfortable uniting against me.
Flu going around? Trashcan girl.
Lice outbreak? Trashcan girl.
Even though neither of those had been pinned on me for sure.
Lucy Hargrove, who had four brothers and two sisters and lived in a dump of a house no better than mine had started at least one of them.
Still, Lucy was sweet. Lucy had friends. Lucy didn’t make a good target because other kids liked her.
So Scarlett it was.
And today it was: Does something smell bad? Trashcan girl.
That one was maybe true in the past, but since Gram had taken me under her wing, I’d learned how important it was to bathe and how to do it properly. I didn’t smell bad now, I was sure of it, but it didn’t matter. I’d never live down the stink of the dumpster I’d been left in.
And even though the dynamic had changed and things had shifted a bit in my favor, I was still the butt of many jokes, and I still took strong exception to it. It was just that usually now kids had the sense to make the jokes behind my back.
Not today, apparently.
I’d been minding my own business, which was actually what I usually tried to do, when Tommy Mann had started in on me.
The teacher was out of the room and we were supposed to be working on an assignment.
I was not a good student by any stretch of the imagination but I had been trying to stay on task.
And here came asshole Tommy with his, “Does something smell bad?” right into my ear.
I gritted my teeth and still tried to ignore him. It hadn’t been a big enough insult to be worth dealing with my grandma if I made her angry again.
“Does anyone else in here smell something bad?” Tommy asked loudly. “Something that reminds them of garbage?”
There were some loud snickers around the room, but no one outright answered him.
Like a coward I wished, for at least the thousandth time, that Dante and I had been placed in the same class. We never were. He was across the hallway, but at moments like these, it may as well have been a world away.
“Shut up,” I muttered at him darkly.
I didn’t even see it coming. He was behind me, and though I heard some rustling, some movement, I had no idea what he was doing until the classroom’s full trashcan was being dumped over my head.
It didn’t have much other than paper in it, but it didn’t matter. It was more than enough to bring my temper out to play.
I threw the trashcan off my head, shook away all of the papers, and went after him.
I only stopped when he was a crying ball on the floor.
And of course that was when the teacher walked back into the room.
And now there I was, waiting for the vice principal to call me in.
Tommy was still in class. He hadn’t even been reprimanded.
I hated this part. It wasn’t even that I cared what they punished me with. Getting kicked out of school was a gleeful fantasy of mine on days like this.
I just didn’t want to deal with how my grandma would react.
Also, I hated verbal confrontations. I fought exclusively with my fists for one very important reason.
My voice was a coward.
Ms. Colby made me wait a good hour before she called me in. I’d known she would.