Chapter 8
The next moment, all three of them were tangled in a fight, knocking over classroom chairs and desks until everything was askew. I jumped back in shock.
“Alexander, let go! I’m calling the police!”
Keith walked in through the back door, his expression completely unmoved. “They need an emotional outlet.”
Fury surged through me as I grabbed a mop from near the back door. “Let go! Henry!”
Surprisingly, even before I intervened, Frederick was holding his own pretty well against both of them. My mop caught Alexander across the left side of his face, causing him to spin around and start pummeling Frederick’s right
side with his fists.
Henry’s eyes went wide. “Isabella, you’re helping him instead of us?”
Frederick’s fist connected with Henry’s eye socket in the next second. Keith frowned and shouted, “Stop fighting!” ust as my mop swept across his shirt. Unfortunately, he dodged in time–I’d been aiming for his face.
A girl shrieked, “Isn’t that mop from the bathroom? What’s it doing in our classroom?!”
That stopped the fight cold. Henry started dry–heaving while Keith’s face turned green, and Alexander ran out with
1 disgusted expression to wash up.
I turned to Frederick. “Are you okay? How bad is it?”
He suddenly smiled, then immediately switched to looking pitiful as he touched his scraped lip with a pained hiss. ‘It hurts, but I can’t tell where exactly… feels like my whole body aches…”
The scene felt strangely familiar, but before I could think about it, I noticed Frederick limping and quickly moved to
upport him. Layer after layer of anger built up inside me.
‘First you hurt me, then you hurt my friend–do you guys think I’m a pushover?! You want to throw punches? I’m calling the police right now!”
Alexander had just finished cleaning up and stood in the doorway, staring at me in disbelief. Henry protested, ‘Isabella, we came here to make up with you!”
Only Keith managed to stay calm. “Think this through–we’ve been friends for over ten years. You can’t just throw that away.”
I found it laughable. “Didn’t you three throw away those ten years first?”
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Chapter 8
In the end, I didn’t call the police. Frederick hadn’t really gotten the worst of it–the other two were more banged up. Going through legal procedures would’ve resulted in mutual assault charges, and with college applications looming, none of us needed that kind of trouble.
While applying antiseptic to Frederick’s wounds, I caught him smiling and showing his dimple. “What are you grinning about?”
He said, “You don’t know how much I used to envy this kind of treatment.”
I called him crazy–who envies getting hurt just to have someone tend to their wounds?
He suddenly grew serious. “Isabella, I was wrong.” It didn’t need to be so formal, but he continued, “I thought those three would really take good care of you, so when I tried to join your group and couldn’t fit in, I gave up. I shouldn’t
have left.”
There seemed to be some answer in his eyes, ready to spill out. I looked away. “I never would’ve guessed you could
take on two guys at once.”
Frederick’s gaze followed the iodine in my hand, looking somewhat deflated. “Yeah… when we were kids, they’d gang up on me all the time. After we moved away, I learned how to fight back, but I’m still not that good at it…”
I was confused. “They ganged up on you?”
“Yeah, they wouldn’t let me get close to you–not even once.”
I fell silent for a long time, but he just smiled softly. “It’s okay, it’s all in the past.”
The classroom breeze carried the smell of spicy snacks, creating an atmosphere I couldn’t quite describe–stuffy somehow, yet Frederick seemed to have a point.
That night, Keith knocked on my front door. The housekeeper came to get me, and when I went downstairs, I found him looking troubled.
‘Isabella,” he said, “I don’t know what gave you the wrong impression, but even though they’ve been nicer to Bessie, their feelings for you have never changed.”
I caught the slip in his words. “They’ve been good to Bessie? What about you?”
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