She stomps down the hallway, each of her steps gaining momentum as she thundered towards him. She was pretty; red hair pinned up with two green barrettes, revealing a small scar near the top of her forehead. Her earrings swung violently back and forth, the hoops tangling in her hair. The boy she approached was small with muddy brown hair and an acne-covered face. He wore a cashmere sweater which fit him awkwardly: too tight around the hips and too loose in the arms. His face lit up with terror when he recognized her. It all happened very quickly. She stopped right before him and swung her metal water bottle at his face. The blow sent him reeling backward into the lockers. For a moment, the hallway was filled with only the clang of the water bottle. It seemed like time had been pulled and stretched like taffy, stretching for what seemed like an eternity. Suddenly, the students began whispering and shuffling their feet. Teachers came out of the classrooms in a rush, dropping their whiteboard erasers and protractors. The boy had begun to scream as blood ran down his skull, staining his scrawny attempt at a beard. His shouts echoed through the hallway. The girl kept her eyes locked on the boy, a smirk forming on her pale face. The police were called, the girl was expelled, and the boy was sent to the hospital. The day was over.
The girl’s name was Milla. The boy’s Jacob. She was the girl who broke the dress code two times a week and flirted with everyone’s boyfriend. He was the pretentious kid who always asked questions in history that he knew the answer to so he could answer it himself and seem smarter than everyone else. No one liked either of them.
It all began during the junior year track season. Milla joined because her mother was forcing her to do extracurriculars to get her into USC. USC was her mother’s dream school, and since she couldn’t seem to get in, no matter how many times she applied, she had decided that instead, her daughter was going to go. Milla didn’t care where she went, she just wanted to be out of high school. Jacob joined because he was under the impression that he would gain a better sense of community. He thought he would make friends. Of which he had none. The first day of track, the coach decided to assign running partners to everyone on the team so they would have someone to pace with. Milla and Jacob were put together. Jacob liked the way she looked when she ran, her curly red hair bobbing up and down. He liked her a lot. Milla, on the other hand, did not like him. If you asked her, she would tell you, “There was this one time that he stepped on my foot in track spikes and didn’t even apologize!” But really she just didn’t like the way he looked. Their relationship consisted of strained conversations about literature papers and lab reports for most of the season. A couple of days before finals, he groped her. If you asked him, it was an accident. He would never do that to anyone (especially in this harsh political climate)! If you asked her, she’d slap you. At finals, she won the mile and the eight-hundred-yard dash. The next day she went to school and hit him with a water bottle. Two days later, he died. She cried.
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