I’ve been trying my best to get through everything. I just need to get up in the morning and put everything out of my mind long enough to get through each school day.

My world geography class just ended. I only have to focus for two more class periods… and then marching band…

My silver lining for today is, I was actually able to make all-region jazz band! Auditions happened last weekend, and I managed to get the second alto saxophone position in the second band. Ashley did even better, she made third trumpet in the first band and is actually getting to move on to all-area. She was quite pleased, naturally. That said, there was one thing that annoyed her: Mason also made the first band, which means that she’s going to have to deal with him when it comes time for the concert. In addition, because he made second chair, he tried to claim to her that he “beat her…” despite the fact that there are three tenor trombones and five trumpets in the first band, so if anything, they tied. Anyways, next weekend is Homecoming Dance. I probably won’t be able to attend it, unfortunately. Without easy access to my wardrobe, what would I wear?

I’m almost to my biology class, when I accidentally bump into someone. It seems that I got lost in thought once again.

“Oops, excuse me,” I say softly.

However, the other person; a tall brunette with straight hair; turns towards me and puts her hands on her hips angrily. “Don’t you dare touch me again,” she scolds me.

“Oh… I’m sorry… it was just…”

“I know who you are. Don’t you dare try and fool me, you pervert.”

She pushes me backwards, and my backside slams against the lockers behind me and I fall to the ground. And I feel like I could cry and my butt hurts and everyone’s staring at me and I put my face in my arms trying to make everything stop…

“That’ll teach… AARGH!” I hear something slam loudly against one of the lockers.

I look up from my arms. The girl who pushed me is now bleeding profusely from the nose and is bawling. Ashley is suddenly standing near me, cold fury etched into her face.

“Come on, Zo. Get up.” She extends a hand towards me, which I take, and she pulls me to my feet.

“Let’s get to class. Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah,” I say. We walk the rest of the way to my biology class, Ashley’s arm around my waist.

However, as we get to the door, Coach Everheart pokes his head outside the door.

“What’s going on out here? I heard a noise,” he says, in his normal slightly awkward tone. When he sees what happened to the other girl, a look of shock comes over his face.

“What happened to Taryn?” he asks us.

“I slammed her into a locker,” Ashley explains, as if it was no big deal.

Coach Everheart’s look of shock turns into utter bafflement, and he turns towards Ashley and stares at her. “You did this?”

“I did,” Ashley replies.

“Okay… Ashley, I’m going to have to ask you to go explain this to a counselor.”

“Okay, I will. Have a good class, Zoe,” she says. She turns and goes back down the hallway. Though she is being disciplined, she still walks with the same confidence as always, like she’s still somehow in charge. Coach Everheart then makes his way over to the girl, who is still crying hysterically. I can’t find it in me to feel bad for her right now.

The school counselor I end up getting set up with is a woman named Sydney Snyder. Yeah, I had to do a double take when I saw the name on the desk. She has blonde hair, but it looks like it was dyed. Her eyes are constantly open just a little bit too wide for some reason, and she speaks with a thick, southern accent. She has a husband and a son; I can see a vacation picture pinned behind her of the three of them at Yosemite… which is not far from where I used to live. What a small world it is.

The door opens behind me.

“Thank you for being here, Misses…”

“Cooper. I’m Ashley’s mom. Her father could not be here today.”

My mom takes a seat next to me. I knew that Dad couldn’t make it, as he has a rare Monday afternoon gig.

“That’s okay. Okay, Ashley, how about you explain to your mother why you are here?”

“Okay.” I let out a small sigh before explaining. “I walked out of my biology class, and I saw someone bullying Zoe. She shouted insults at her, and then pushed her into a locker. I took this girl’s head and slammed it into a different locker. It apparently broke her nose, so I’ve heard. Coach Everheart told me to come here. Now, I’ve missed almost all of my speech class.”

“Okay… I see.” My mom says.

“Mrs. Cooper, I am giving your daughter Saturday detention for this. And I want you to understand that I am being generous. I know that you are mostly a good kid, Ashley. You have no record of disciplinary issues and extremely good grades. I understand that everyone has moments now and then in which their temper gets the better of them. But if there are any more incidents like this, you will be receiving in school suspension. Do you understand?”

“Miss Snyder… may I ask a question?” I ask her. “If you saw someone doing something like that to somebody that you care about- your spouse, or even your son- wouldn’t you have done the same thing? Wouldn’t you want to tear them apart, limb from limb?”

My mom kicks me under the desk.

“Ashley, you cannot just act violently towards people like some sort of vigilante,” Miss Snyder lectures. “There’s a system in place to deal with situations like this. If you see another student being bullied, you need to tell a teacher and let them take care of it.”

“Right. Miss Snyder, I’m going to be frank with you,” I say. “The teachers here don’t give a damn about us. This is not an isolated incident. Things like this have been happening for the past two weeks, consistently. Sometimes in the middle of class, when a teacher was sitting right there. And they haven’t done a single thing about it.”

“Ashley… how about you to get to your last class,” my mom interjects. “I’d like to talk to the counselor by myself. And after school, we’re going to have a serious talk about this as well.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say. I get up from my chair and leave the office before Miss Snyder can override her. On my way out, I make brief eye contact with my mom, and her gaze… doesn’t tell me much. Typical.

I walk into the practice room in the back, and am surprised to see that Nova is in there, on his 3DS. I guess he wanted to get a quick round in before marching band starts. He’s already in his shorts.

“Oh, hey there,” I say to him as I walk in.

“’Sup?”

“Hey Nova… can you turn around for a moment?”

“Uh, okay.” He does so.

I grab my own shorts out of my backpack, and slip into them. “Alright… see you on the field,” I tell him.

I step out the practice room and make to go outside, but I hear a voice addressing me.

“Did you really just change in a practice room?” it asks.

I turn and see that it’s Diana Coleman the flute player, who’s leaning on a pillar on her phone.

“Well, the other girls don’t like it when I change in the bathroom, now don’t they?” I explain to her.

She looks up at me with a leer. “I know about you. You’re Anja, aren’t you?”

“I sure am. I think I’ve heard of you as well. Don’t you like to sneak up on people, take videos of them when they’re doing something compromising, and then send that video to everyone in the school?”

“If you mean your girlfriend Ashley, she deserved it.”

“First of all; Ashley isn’t my girlfriend. Second; no, she most certainly did not deserve it! Nobody deserves to have their privacy compromised like that.”

“If she’s not your girlfriend, why are you sticking up for her? She is such a total… b-word all the time.”

“Trust me, I am very aware of her personal flaws. For one, however, I consider her my friend, and she has many admirable qualities. She is determined; courageous; remains in control during a scary situation; and has a strong moral compass deep down. Also, even if we assume for a moment that Ashley is this evil person who deserves punishment; is it really okay to act cruelly towards somebody because we consider them immoral? Doesn’t that make us just as bad?”

“Not if you’re just getting them back for what they’ve done to you.”

“But then… when does it end? Think about whatever it was she did to you… and then everything that has happened since. I don’t know what set you against her… but surely, justice must be more than served now, right?”

I see the gears turning. Her face seems to soften a bit. “Fine… I guess I sort of see your point.”

At that point, I am saved from this awkward conversation by Nova, who comes out of the practice room after me. “What are you doing, Anja?” he says, uncharacteristically chiding. “Practice starts in five minute! Let’s go!”

When mom comes by to pick up Zoe and I, she asks me to get into the passenger’s seat instead of sitting in the back with Zoe. This is not a good sign.

What’s also not a good sign is that once we leave, there’s about five minutes of solid silence. Finally, after we are already halfway home, my mom breaks the silence.

“Hmm… Ashley… Why did you have to break her nose.”

“I told you. She was…”

“No, hush. I meant… why did you break her nose, instead of just… giving her a bitch slap, or something like that. That would’ve been a much better move.”

“I don’t know, Mom. If you define ‘better’ by how much pain the other person feels, it wouldn’t have been.”

Mom shakes her head. “Ashley. I know that you’re having a hard time with everything. But you’re going to have to grow up a little.”

I feel my anger flare up again. I need to grow up? That’s rich.

“Mom, you would’ve done the same thing in my place. Don’t lie.”

She pauses for a while. Then, she exhales and says, “You’re right. When I was your age, I would’ve done the same thing. In fact, I probably would’ve done something worse.”

Wow. I wasn’t expecting her to actually reply honestly.

“I don’t want you to do what I would’ve done,” she explains. “I was always the impulsive one. In this case, you should really act more like your father. He thinks everything through- sometimes to the point of being exhaustive. But because of that, he always comes back down to earth with great ideas.”

“I wasn’t acting impulsively,” I say in my defense. “It was all premeditated. Like I told that counselor, this has been happening for weeks. We’ve been sneered at, and intimidated, and called all sorts of names.”

“And you think that’s just going to stop now, huh?”

“Yes. I’ve shown what happens when people mess with us. They’d better leave us alone now.”

Mom shakes her head, visibly frustrated. I can’t help but to notice that the car is getting steadily faster.

“No, Ashley. In the grown-up world, being the ‘big tough guy’ doesn’t really work. I mean, honestly. George W. Bush wanted to be a big tough guy, and look how well that… Damn it!”

I turn around and look out the back window to see that a police car is following us and flashing lights. I also catch a glimpse of Zoe, since she hasn’t made a peep this whole ride home. She’s intently staring out the window, her leg twitching slightly.

Anyways, Mom pulls over into a nearby parking lot.

The officer walks up to our side window. He’s a bit slimmer than your average police officer, but otherwise looks like your typical white guy. That said… I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen him before.

“Good afternoon ma’am, I’m Officer Caleb Snyder, I pulled you over because you were driving 47 miles per hours in a 35 mile per hour zone,” the officer says in a hurry.

“Oh, no… I’m sorry, officer. I’m having a bad day. I promise that it won’t happen again,” my mom says stiffly.

“Well, I understand, but I’m still gonna have to…”

“Did you say that your name is Officer Snyder?” Zoe asks unexpectedly.

Officer Snyder pauses for a bit, startled. “Um… yes ma’am.”

“Do you have a wife who works at the school?” Zoe asks.

“Why yes, I do,” he says. Suddenly, it occurs to me where I’ve seen him; that Yosemite vacation picture in the back of the counselor’s office. It’s a small world, but it’s an even smaller town.

“Well, what a coincidence!” my mom chimes in. “It must have been your wife we were just talking to earlier today.”

“Oh, is that so?” he asks.

“Yes sir. Unfortunately we didn’t meet in the best of circumstances; disciplinary issue with this one,” she explains, gesturing at me.

“Ah, troublemaker, are you?” he asks me, leaning through the window and grinning at me.

I’m about to say “no,” but then I remember that I recently viciously attack a local politician with a sword. “In a sense,” I say.

“Well, I’d better remember to keep an eye on you,” he says, but his tone is joking. “As I was saying, I’m still gonna have to give a warning. This won’t be on your record, it’s just a written note explaining why I pulled you over.”

“Okay. Thank you, officer,” my mom says.

He spends an agonizingly long time writing up the note, and then hands it to my mom. “You have a good day, ma’am.”

“You as well, officer.”

After he drives away, we set back out on the road.

“Anyways, Ashley… I think that you’re going to find yourself paying dearly for this in the coming days,” my mom continues.

“What, the fact that you got pulled over?”

“You know what I mean, smart mouth.”

There’s a pause. Then, my mom just has to get one last word in.

“I know that this is probably the last thing you want to hear right now, but… ‘If somebody slaps you on one cheek, turn the other to them as well. If they want to sue you for your shirt, give them your coat as well. And if you are forced to walk a mile by this person, walk two.’”

She’s right. That is the last thing I want to hear right now.