Karissa

Pressure

Lavender pushed her shoulders back, her glossed (like she would ever go without it!)  lips grim but proud. 

"I got sick of being eyeballed and handled and picked out and pinched and groped, like I was a piece of meat instead of a girl...and the way the feminine - if you could even call them that - members of the class treated me! Just because you're all sluts, pregnant, or dumpy vo-tech girls doesn't mean that I can't be an attractive specimen of womanhood just because you choose not to be...and don't think you can hinder me, either, by stealing my lip gloss, or drawing male organs - ew! - all over my magazines, or calling my boyfriend a skinny little fairy...See how devoted he is? I called and said I was in trouble and he came to help." She actually sounded fairly intelligent (I know, I know, that was mean, low, and uncalled for, but sorry), and so we all applauded a brilliant speech from our favorite bubbly blonde.

"Cher Horowitz couldn't have done it better," Rosemary joked ("I knew she'd lighten up," Dominic whispered to Karissa) and Lavender beamed.

"So we need to work on your angle," Jesse declared, sounding shockingly  lawyer-ish and pushing Rosemary out of the way before Lavender could give her a hug. Lavender looked at him curiously, her head slightly tipped to the side, and he continued.

"What? This is huge. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to expel you - and no matter what your measurements are, it looks bad if you got kicked out of high school. Seriously."

"My angle?" It was clear that Lavender was thinking geometry (a class she'd barely passed) and Jesse sighed, motioning for her to come closer.

"Yeah - the thing you use to get in less trouble than you should be getting into. Your looks and overall cutely obliviousness is usually enough, but you and Dom kind of took out an entire classroom here. They might even make you pay for that teacher's mental hospital bills. Now that they've seen how much of a ninja princess you really are, I'm not sure if the old standby is going to work any longer. Are you following me, La-la? Like, Dominic's angle is that he gets kind of Incredible Hulk-ish when people are messing with him, and he really underestimates his own strength - a total lie, but they don't know that...."

"What's yours?"

Jesse blushed.

"Trade secret - sometimes I have been known to use my dysfunctionalness to avoid serious school punishment. No lie. Due to everything that's happened to me, the administrative office isn't sure that I'm entirely stable, so most of the time when I get in trouble, Zane and I just have a conversation about it and try to make sure that Mom doesn't find out, because then I'm screwed."

"That is so cheap!" I burst out, way  less furious than I would have been if things had not been different between us, and Jesse shrugged.

"Sometimes I feel guilty about it, but then I realize that they're just trying to help me, and that's a really nice thing, so I try not to take advantage of it....Where did everybody go?" Looking around, the gruesome (ok, so that was stretching it) scene of mass injury was just a memory - all the victims had managed to limp or crawl out of the room. I saw Jesse's eyes light up, and he spread his hands out wide.

"Where's your evidence, then? Perfect."

'Their evidence', as it turned out, was down at the nurse's office, moaning and groaning and tattletailing the whole story...and we still hadn't established Lavender's angle!

"They kicked us out of Fiddler!" she said with a wail, running at Jesse so fast that she almost ran him over.

Jesse gasped.