Risk and Rebel

2: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE MICKEY

I was having a hard time keeping myself awake in chemistry class, and it was mostly because of the close-to-all-nighter that Mickey and I had pulled last night. After we had the priorly insisted upon coffee and we actually started the project, we both realized that this one was not going to be as easy as we'd anticipated ... and the proper amount of chaos combined with a coffee-induced frenzy ensued.

We were up until three in the morning working on our separate projects. Thankfully, her parents and my mom both recognized this as a normal pattern of behavior, so neither were concerned with Mickey being at my house so late. (However, my mom was slightly concerned about the amount of coffee Mickey was drinking, so around midnight she came back down to the kitchen and banned coffee for the rest of the night.)

Now here we sat in chemistry, our first class of the day. I had my head propped up on a fist, and every once in a while I glanced across the room over to where Mickey was. It wasn't to make sure she wasn't falling asleep, though. In fact, it was pretty much guaranteed that that wouldn't happen once I saw her come in with her tumbler of coffee. No, I was doing sporadic check-ups because Mick's even less of a morning person than I am.

Her death glare was on full throttle. Though I recognized the look on my face wasn't too amicable either, it took me a solid thirty seconds to realize that the entire row between she and I had settled into an uncomfortable silence.

Then I made eye contact with Matthew Vicks, and my question was answered. Sitting right next to me, he hesitantly arched a brow when we made eye contact, before leaning slowly across the aisle. "Dude," he whispered, "you look like death."

Vicks was on the football team with me, and he was one of my teammates who didn't seem to have it out for me after I'd scored my position as quarterback. We got along pretty well, so I wasn't insulted by his observation. "Didn't sleep much last night," I muttered passively, turning my head away from him to pretend I was paying attention to whatever Mr. Sanderson was talking about.

"So you're not, like, pissed at anyone, right?" Vicks asked, his voice still low.

I turned back to him for a split second, brow furrowing. "No more than usual," I said, choosing my words carefully. "Why?"

Vicks shifted uncomfortably in his seat then, and as he struggled with what he wanted to say, I looked past him at Mickey, surprised to find she was already staring at me. We made eye contact for all of thirty seconds before she turned away and leaned down to prop her head up on her arms. Vicks spoke up then. "Just, uh," he muttered, "Walski was pretty mad after his encounter with Mickey yesterday ... I was wondering if he'd tried to talk to you 'bout it, is all."

If it was at all possible, my brows furrowed even further. I clearly remembered Mickey mentioning being annoyed with Walski, but it wasn't as though that was something unusual, so I'd passed it off when she dismissed it. Vicks knowing about it meant there was a good chance I had underestimated the magnitude of the incident. "Right," I said, remaining casual as I turned away from him again. "I wouldn't worry about it, man. It'll be fine."

In my periphery I could see Vicks nod once. And the rest of chemistry class passed as it usually did, uneventful and boring.

It was as Mickey and I walked to our algebra class that I bumped into her shoulder to draw her attention.

"What?" she asked, her voice less irritable than it had been before chemistry. Her coffee had probably kicked in.

"You told me Walski annoyed you yesterday," I got right to the point. "What happened?"

She gave me a perplexed look for a moment before hefting her backpack a little higher up her shoulder. "Why do you ask?" she asked in return.

The question alone told me whatever had happened, she still thought nothing of it. But that didn't mean a lot when it came to Mickey — she took chances and did brazen things like no one else I'd ever met in my life, and she was rarely phased by the outcomes.

"Because, Mick," I said, glancing around the hallway as we walked, "Vicks asked me about it. And usually when you get ... annoyed, my teammates don't know about it."

Mickey made a sound that was almost a laugh. "That's fair," she said. An amused smile had claimed her lips, tipping the left side higher than the right in a familiar crookedness that suggested just as much mischief as she was capable of causing. "Walski was pushing my buttons," she began casually. "Which, as you and I both know, is usually difficult to do, and even when it is done ..."

"It takes a while to get a response," I finished for her, nodding knowingly. We were both like that; usually the only people who could thoroughly get on our nerves were each other.

Mickey nodded in confirmation. "But he got onto the topic of you deserving your spot as quarterback ..." she trailed off, giving an exasperated sigh, "and somewhere in there was something about you not being able to hold your own in a fight, so I sort of— snapped."

I sucked in a deep breath at that, doing my best to hold my own cool. Not because of anything Walski had said — I'd heard it all before, and he and I both knew that if he really wanted to cross the lines in the sand, he would pay dearly. No, I was trying to calm myself because Mickey, in all of her precariousness, didn't realize how normal of a situation that was for me.

She didn't realize that I had lost my temper a long time ago when it came to Walski, and that after that altercation, everything he'd ever done was all talk and no walk, and it never would be talk again if I really cared to handle it. But this was high school, and all of our peers were petty, and if I handled every idiot who I encountered, there was a good chance I'd get expelled.

"Snapped how?" I eventually found it in myself to ask, slowing so we could finish this conversation in the hall, as opposed to in the algebra class we were quickly approaching.

Mickey shrugged one shoulder in an all-too dismissive manner, and that was how I knew that whatever she had done was definitely worse than she'd originally let on. "I told him that if he kept running his mouth like that that he wouldn't have to worry about fighting you," she glanced up at me, chin rising, jaw set. "He'd have me to worry about."

I stared at her for so long I couldn't really tell if I was still breathing. "And?"

"And his friends backed off," Mickey said, "but he thought I was just joking — and he laughed, I mean, oh my word Jason, his laugh is painful to listen to — and then he reached for my shoulder. I'm not entirely positive, but I think he was going to ask what I was going to do about it ..."

"Let me guess," I cut her off, raising a hand and giving her a pointed look, "he didn't get to ask."

Micky smirked proudly. "Of course not."

I resisted the urge to stare up at the ceiling and instead silently wished to be sucked into the floor. "Jujitsu?" I asked, searching her eyes. I was unsurprised to find nothing but great amusement.

She nodded in confirmation. "One of my favorites, so yeah. Duh." She shifted her backpack on her shoulder again, this time tipping her head in the direction of our algebra class. "Can we go into class now? The bell's going to ring any second."

Given she wasn't wrong — something that was easy to tell because there were no longer any other students in the hall — I gave an ill-disguised sigh of exasperation before nodding. "Yeah, yeah. But," I pointed a finger at her accusingly as she walked into class, "we are not done with this Walski thing."

She flashed me a cheerful smile over her shoulder. "Oh no, of course not."