Karissa

Altercation

I've realized while I'm writing this that I've portrayed Karissa as perfect, the little Christian girl who doesn't do anything wrong, ever, but she wasn't that way all of the time. We had our disagreements. The worse time was when she spent an entire dinner sitting across from me at the table, rubbing my calf with her toes, until, blushing and sputtering, I bolted from the table, unable to handle my feelings, which blinked neon and obvious across my face. She flirted with me without knowing it sometimes, and she was an awful gossip. I was pretty sure there was something in her precious Bible about that.

That girl had my heart tied up in knots. I fell for her worse every time I saw her. It made me almost jealous of Jesse and Dominic, getting to spend all that time in her company. Unfortunately, my friends didn't feel the same way. They'd taken it personally that I'd stopped their torture session with Jesse Beaumont– breaking tradition, actually; we always found time to make him a sobbing, miserable wretch on the first day of school –, that and the way I'd changed since Karissa's arrival. They blamed her, and hurt me by harassing her. It started out small, but even that unhinged her – Karissa had  previously gone to a private, all-girls, Christian school. She wasn't used to the brutal taunting she got from the boys – sometimes the other girls, too, but mostly the guys - who were rather skilled in making a girl uncomfortable. I wasn't sure what to do about it at first. They were still my friends, even if the time we spent together was uncomfortable and awkward now. I kept telling them to knock it off, sure they'd get bored with this new game and stop.

I decided to do something on a completely average morning. She'd gone to school early for Bible Study.   I noticed she'd left her piccolo behind after she'd left. When I got to school, I found her in tears, kneeling at her locker in a pile of items that were definitely not hers...or school-appropriate, for that matter. She looked up at me pathetically, green eyes moist, makeup smudged around them; she had unwrapped condoms in her hair. I was fuming as I used my gym bag to gather up the evidence, letting her wipe her eyes on my soft and faded green T-shirt and helping her up from the floor. People were staring, but I glared at them and they skittered away. She swallowed hard and leaned her head against my shoulder, but her eyes were steely and full of purpose.

"They've been harassing her for a couple of months – ever since she moved here," I told the principal, "and one of them jimmied her locker open and put...all this inside." I poured the contents out for him to see.

He was silent for a few seconds.

"This is pretty serious, but I know you're not making this up. Appropriate actions will be taken, I promise...and I apologize, young lady."

It didn't take long for the news to get out, and them to be punished: suspension from fall sports and extracurricular activities, which I relished, even though it affected the standings of many of our sports teams, some of which I was on. Surprisingly, none of them expected me – but maybe it would have been better if they'd been smart enough to see whom it really was, instead of blaming the first friend of Karissa's who came along.

I heard the hollering and walked a little faster – not like I was going to do anything about it, it was just Jesse, though I knew Karissa would be mad at me if she knew I was a witness and didn't interfere – I was just interested. The only time I thought my friends were remotely clever was when they were tormenting Jesse, and even then, it was just Brendon running the show. He had Jesse slopped over his shoulder, his hand firmly pressing that sharp-boned dark head into his muscular deltoid to muffle the shouting. It showed me something was different this time – it was more serious, and I almost became worried.

"Let him go!" Lavender chased alongside, surprisingly fast. Her Louboutin slingbacks were covered in silver glitter, and I feared she was going to slip. I readied myself to catch her until I remembered she'd been walking in heels since I met her in fourth grade. If she was going to fall, she would have already. She looked like an irate runway model in her simple, scoop-necked, short, dress of black silk with a hidden zipper.