Morris slipped, stumbled, and hit the sixth-grade lockers hard.
Harsh laughter filled the air.
Morris groaned and slowly sat up.
Reese towered over him, laughing and slapping the backs of Lee and Roy as they celebrated their trick.
Morris fought the urge to cry. He glanced back down the hall and saw a huge puddle seeping out from the nearest water fountain. Someone left the water fountain running just enough to make this puddle happen. Morris was running late for his bus and not looking where he was going, which made him the perfect target.
“Nice job walking, spaz!” Reese said in between peals of oily laughter. “Where are you going, spaz? I want to talk to you.”Lee and Roy continued to laugh and stare, and behind them, Morris could see a crowd of students starting to gather.
A few of them looked concerned about Morris sitting defenseless on the floor. Unfortunately, most of the students were either laughing already or had an expectant look on their faces, clearly showing up to watch the spectacle.
Reese turned his back on Morris to laugh with his cronies and enjoy the feeling of power that only comes from making someone else feel worse.
Morris felt hot and sick, caught between the urge to cry or to fling himself right at Reese’s pockmarked face. These feelings boiled over into sheer embarrassment and fury as he felt fat tears sneak out of his eyes, streaking down his cheeks and obscuring his vision.
As he fought to regain composure and find some way out of this mess, he saw a streak of deep crimson flash in front of his eyes.
It wasn’t his tear-filled eyes or his distorted vision. The color was deep and vibrant. He’d never seen anything like it in his life. It hovered at the edges of his perception for a moment then vanished.
In its place, he felt a similarly powerful force that seemed to fill his mind. This force could tell he was angry and wanted to attack Reese. Then Morris felt rather than heard a voice in his mind
“TOO MUCH, HE'S NOT WORTH IT,” the voice intoned.
“WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO?”
The only thing that shocked Morris more than the voice was how comfortable and normal it felt. Before he realized it, he had responded to the voice like he was talking to a good friend.
“Reese thinks he’s so great,” Morris thought, “Someone should trip HIM and see how he likes it.”
“MUCH BETTER.” The voice said.
A gust of air rushed past Morris’s face like a gale-force wind. The wind crossed the hall and cut Reese’s feet out from under him.
Reese has just enough time to look shocked before he tumbled off of his feet and smacked his head on the wet floor.
Morris stumbled to his feet. He was on the verge of smiling when he heard Reese moan and saw him start to get to his feet as well.
Morris grabbed his backpack and ran as fast as he could towards the buses. As he ran, a fat blue math textbook tumbled out of the open flap on his backpack and hit the floor with a thud. In his haste, Morris didn’t even notice.
Meanwhile, the crowd of students began to leave in waves. The show they came for was over sooner than expected so they wandered off.
Sadly, Darryl didn’t get the memo. He was one of Morris’s only friends at Calvin Middle. Darryl didn’t see what had just happened.
He was unable to push through the throng of students in time, but he did see the book fall out of Morris’s backpack and he rushed forward to grab it without thinking about what he was running into.
At the same time, Reese growled, cursed, and lurched to his feet. His back was turned when the wind hit him so he had no clue what had happened. As far as he knew, some punk kid had pushed him when his back was turned.
Reese whipped his head around just in time to see Darryl staring at him in shock, the blue math textbook gripped in his hands as he got back to his feet.
“You’re dead meat, loser!” Reese said through clenched teeth. Without warning, he lunged for Darryl, but he slipped in the puddle and narrowly missed him.
That was the break Darryl needed. He grabbed the book, pulled it tight against him, and RAN.
He made it to the open area in the hallway between 6th and 7th grade and panicked.
He’d never been in the seventh-grade hall, so he wasn’t sure where to go. Just then, he heard heavy footsteps behind him. More than one set of footsteps. Reese must have grabbed his goons for the chase.
That settled it. Darryl ran around the corner, pressed flat against the wall, and prayed that somehow they wouldn’t find him or that it would at least be over quickly.