White Knight Syndrome

1 • White Knight Syndrome

My save-dar, as my best friend Jay Mcallister had so creatively coined my attentiveness to people who needed help, zoned in on a girl with mousy brown hair shuffling away from a pack of jeering sophomore girls.

"And then she was like-" I held up a finger to cut off Jay as he blabbed on about his third conquest of the week. Some would be disgusted by how many garages he'd parked his car in, but as his best friend for ten years, accepting his manwhorish ways was number one in the job description.

I could feel the heat of Jay's exasperated glare on the side of my face, but by now I have already started my "transformation from a teenage boy to a middle-aged mom", as Jay so eloquently put it.

The shuffling feet, hunched shoulders, and hair hanging limply over her face was a big indication of the girl feeling like she wanted to be anywhere but here. Also, the posse of girls yelling things like "I'll put you in your place, don't think I won't!" was definitely a big neon sign exclaiming that the brown-haired girl was being bullied. Good work, Sherlock, I thought to myself.

Jay had started talking again, and I vaguely heard him whining at me to hurry up and get this over with because we were going to be late for Home Ec. Of course he wasn't rushing me because he couldn't wait to improve his domestic skills. He just wanted to go in early so he could flirt with Delilah Prince, the hottest girl in our school. Hell, the hottest girl in our entire city and maybe even in the entire state of New York.

Either way, I didn't feel like watching Jay throw himself at my little sister's best friend today, so I tuned him out. I marched towards the bullied girl and the bullies, feeling my confidence rise as the girls stopped mid-sentence to stare at me when I stopped right next to the brown-haired girl.

I wracked my brain for the girl's name. She was in my PE class last year, and I was pretty sure she was a sophomore. She'd stepped on a soccer ball once and the thing had completed deflated, and the whole class had started laughing and calling her dumb nicknames like Elephant... or was it Ellie-phant?

Yes, it was.

Feeling proud of my detective work, I slapped a smile on my face.

"Hey, Ellie, there's a party at my place tonight. You should come." I said casually with my most charming smile. From the corner of my eyes, I saw the jaws of the sophomore girls drop wide open.

Jay was popular, my little sister Mckenzie was popular, and her best friend Delilah was popular. Having so many popular people in my ring of friends made me have influence too, and it didn't hurt to use that influence to my bidding at times like these.

Ellie looked up at me with wide brown eyes, and her own jaw was hanging open like the other girls'. I raised an eyebrow, telling her to just go with it, and she snapped back to reality.

She looked at the other girls, who were also quickly recovering. "Uh-um, yeah," she stuttered, glancing back at me again. "Yeah, definitely."

The bell rang and the girls started dispersing, muttering under their breaths. I smiled victoriously. "Great, I'll see you there. You can ask Mckenzie for the details." I started walking backwards, but I continued to smile at her so she knew I was for real.

Ellie blinked at me, probably expecting me to tell her I was joking or something, but honestly, the whole school knew it was in my blood to help out wherever and whoever I can, so this shouldn't shock Ellie that much. Or maybe she was in shock because no one had been nice to her since the Ellie-phant incident.

"Right, okay. I'll, um, I'll see you... there." she mumbled before quickly turning around and darting away.

I watched after her for a few seconds before Jay smacked the back of my head and dragged me down the quickly emptying hallways to our classroom.