Karissa

Broken

The longer Karissa dated Paulie, the more I disliked him. I couldn't pinpoint a specific reason besides the way he'd treated her on the day that Jesse came back to school, and also jealousy. I wanted to be able to be nice to him, because that was how I was supposed to act now that I was a Christian (and everyone had some good in them, somewhere), not to mention the fact that he was dating someone very, very close to me, but I just couldn't! I thought it might have just been me - ignoring the fact that he snubbed the Jesse Beaumont crowd, too, so they could obviously see it - until that day when I was slightly more enlightened.

Karissa was new, and she thought nothing was weird that no one else, spare a few freshmen (and me, though she wouldn't have known that because we were never there at the same time, usually), used the shortcut she'd found to get to her art class. I didn't even know she'd used that hallway until after what happened (which had me kicking myself that I hadn't warned her anyway). The secret passageway hallway near the art rooms was where the scary heroin addicts hung out. There were three of them, and apparently they were seniors, but no one could really tell, just like no one was sure why or how they hadn't gotten kicked out of school by now. All they did was get high and sleep, but that wasn't why everyone avoided that hallway now. It was more serious than that. Everyone expected that they were total perverts off of heroin, but high they were even nastier. They groped the girls, and catcalled the boys...unless you were Jesse Beaumont. Once, some of my old friends purposely chased him through that hallway, and he'd come into our history class crying and crying. Their ringleader had grabbed him so hard there were bruise-colored handprints wrapped around his hips.The gang hadn't dropped that one for weeks, accusing Jesse of being a tease. Apparently he didn't know she used that hallway, or else I knew Jesse would have told his story.

I was debating whether to risk uncoolness by running as fast as I could through it  when I heard Karissa say,

"Don't you dare touch me. I've got a boyfriend."

The leader snickered.

"No. You're way too pretty and - he took his time looking her up and down, never making eye contact - virginal to be dating."

"Anyway," cut in the blonde guy who was pretty much always asleep... when he didn't have a needle in the crook of his elbow, that is, "how can we trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn't die?" Karissa looked personally slighted, and she was also kind of terrified. I knew I had to save her.

They all groaned in unison when I stepped out of the shadows.

"And of course you show up just as things get fun with the freshmeat. You always do." They knew me only as the savior of freshman girls - that was why I took this route, admittedly. Being at the bottom of the high school heap sucked enough. They didn't need to be manhandled by drug-abusing senior perverts as well. The way it went was like this: if I saw them clumped around a freshman - or a group of the giggly girls; the underclassmen were known to travel in packs - I would swoop in and break things up, then walk the girl or girls back to class. You had to skip out on the principal's office because everyone was too terrified to tell (maybe that explains why they're still here. Even the teachers didn't know what to do.)

"Wait. He looks like boyfriend material to me. You two together?"

"Yes," I lied, just to get Karissa out of there as fast as possible (she'd already been tainted enough and they hadn't even touched her), but they weren't going to let us go that easy. I prayed a silent prayer that this would never get back to Paulie, especially if they were going to make us kiss to prove it (which totally sounded like something they would do).

Blonde Scary Heroin Addict rubbed his eyes with bony knuckles.

"I think I've seen you around," he drawled to Karissa, blowing smoke rings with a cigarette that came out of nowhere. "Doesn't she hang around with that short guy?"