Dear Terrorists,

Chapter 2

"I hate you," uttered a raspy female voice.

Jennie did not know whom it was directed towards or who may have directed it.

"Why don't you just grow up and mind your own business," retorted the recipient of her scorning.

Jennie tried her hardest not to intervene. She bit her tongue and resisted the temptation to look in the direction of the conflict, keeping Principal Jones's words in her mind. She ignored the incident and kept her head down as she spun her locker combination. She heard another verbal conflict, this time directly behind her from the opposite wall of lockers.

"Dude, you're a waste of life," began the deep male voice of a teenager nearing adulthood. "Just go kill yourself."

Again, Jennie bit her tongue as she feverishly spun her combination, not stopping it at the desired numbers to open it.

"Shut up, David!" screeched a high-pitched voice in retaliation. "You can't even pass sophomore level math, and you're a senior! I'd call that a waste of life!"

Jennie heard the entertained, sarcastic laughter following the boy's retort. The boy could have said anything and it would have had the exact same result. The content of the message did not matter; rather, it was the mouth by which the content was spoken that really mattered. If the two boys would have traded dialogues, the laughter would have remained the same and toward the same target.

Jennie sympathized with the boy but chose not to intervene or stick up for the bullying victim, keeping her promise to Principal Jones.

She heard a slam, then the fumbling of books landing on the floor as the pages fluttered and closed with another loud thud. Without looking she understood that the bully had knocked the books out of the victim's hands.

Again, a fading flock of laughter followed this act as the small group dispersed.

Jennie turned around when the laughter had left the group. She witnessed the boy, squatting to the ground and picking up his scattered books and crumpled papers. Jennie took one step towards him, then redirected her tracks and walked away from him to head to her last class of the day.

Finally, the school bell rang throughout the hallways. Jennie allowed her peers to rush out of the narrow classroom door first, then she followed suit. She made one stop at her locker and packed her bag with her books and notebooks for the night. As she walked out of the school, she noticed a small crowd near her car in the parking lot.

She wondered what the huddle was about.

Not wishing to find out and desiring to get home safely, she put her head down and unlocked her car door. She quickly sat inside her car and tossed her bag into the passenger seat.

She instantly began to sweat from the stifling, trapped heat her car had absorbed during the long school day. She rolled her window down and turned the key in the ignition.

Before backing up out of her parking space, she looked in the rearview mirror, then the two side mirrors. Her radio was playing midway through "Bicycle" by Queen. Unintentionally, she noticed the small huddle next to her car had grown slightly larger, as more and more students joined in the group.

As she shifted her car into reverse, she viewed flashes of fast, circling people in the middle of the human barricade. Still pressing on the breaks, she turned her car radio off to better hear the strange occurrence one parking space to the left.

"Hit him, David! Why don't you hit him!" encouraged a boy's voice poorly infusing counterfeit feminism. "Come on, David, take a swing at him!"

Laughter filled the circle of interested bystanders as they watched the boy with the deep voice push David down each time he tried to stand up.

Jennie's right leg began to cramp as she had been pressing the car brake down with all her might. She shifted back into neutral and rubbed her right leg out to loosen it up.

When Jennie looked out her window again, Principal Jones was running across the parking lot towards the huddle, his contorted tie slithering over his shoulder in the process.

"Hey, leave him alone!" he shouted in his loud, masculine voice.

Quickly, the huddle dispersed to reveal David lying on the pavement in the fetal position, clutching his book bag to his chest.

"David, how long are you going to let these guys pick on you?" asked Principal Jones.

David pushed himself up from the pavement, slung his bag around one shoulder and dusted off his pants and shirt.

"David, did you hear me?" reiterated Principal Jones.

"Yes, sir," responded David.

"Then what? What are you doing to do?" he pressed further.

"I don't know if there's anything I can do," admitted David in defeat, his head hung so low it looked uncomfortable.

"There's always something you can do," reassured Principal Jones. "Always. And you've got to do something. You can't let those guys pick on you every day of your life."

David lifted his head from the ground and looked up at Principal Jones, who was significantly taller and larger than David's awkward, wiry frame.

"Look at me," requested David. "Look at them. One of them could physically beat me down, and there's over ten of them. If I try to resist it, they just push me harder. It's easier to just collapse and let them hover above me."

"Let's get you cleaned up and get some ice on your arm," said Principal Jones as he put his arm around David's shoulder.

Still staring out of her window, Jennie shifted her car back into reverse. Principal Jones's head twitched towards her. He looked at her as if filled with regret, but quickly looked away with a stern, determined look as he led David back inside the school.

Jennie's heart raced as she reversed out of her parking space. She felt as though she could have helped David, yet she watched on like the rest of the students as others pushed him down to the hot blacktop.

She noticed a small lime green notebook, no larger than a hand, lying on the ground in her side mirror. She couldn't resist it—she shifted her car back into park and kicked open her car door. She quickly looked around to see who was looking, stopped, and picked up grubby notebook from the pavement.

BEEP! BEEP!

"Come on, let's move it girl!" shouted a voice young man's from behind her.

She had reversed into a line of waiting cars filled with students eager to leave the school. Her retrieval of the notebook delayed everyone's plans.

She jogged back towards her car. She leapt inside and shut the door with dexterity. Not taking the time to read the notebook's contents, she shifted her car into drive and sped off to exit the school's parking lot.

Rules are so much different when we leave this place. People act so much different in school than they do elsewhere, she pondered.