The Sacrificial Daughter (24 page)

"Though she looked for a while...She never got a boy who would smile,"
Ronny went on. "I have a dog you can use." He pointed to his own crotch.

"Ronny, back to your own table please," Ms Weldon said tersely. As the boy skulked away, Jesse looked to her teacher. There was definitely something about her that was different, a change in attitude that was subtle. The teacher refused to catch her eye. It was almost as if she expected...

"Damn it!" a boy's voice roared from the storage closet. Though she had been hoping for just that very thing, Jesse was as startled as everyone else by the sudden commotion. She recovered quickly however, as the majority of the class, including Felicity, streamed toward the closet.

Jesse went as well, only she detoured to her right and snatched the cell phone from its black case, stuffing it into her rear packet. She kept to the back of the little crowd, remaining obvious, especially to Felicity, but not drawing too close. There were still dangerous...or at least unpredictable elements in the classroom.

"It's just paint people," Ms Weldon said with a raised voice. "Get back to your projects. You are all on a time crunch."

Jesse didn't go back to work, instead she went to the closet and looked at the great red mess; it was surprisingly gory looking for just paint.

"Ms Weldon? Can I go to the bathroom, please?"

The teacher shot her a hard look. "You are supposed to go during passing periods."

"Yes, ma'am. I didn't though and I really have to go now."

In frustration over the mess, the art teacher waved her away. "Fine, take the hall pass and go."

Keeping her face carefully composed, Jesse hurried out and then sped to the nearest bathroom, once again settling herself into a stall. Her first inclination was to crush the cell phone, yet she couldn't bring herself to do it. She didn't know what Felicity's family was like. They could be dirt poor for all she knew and cell phones were expensive. So instead she touched the screen and saw to her delight the menu pop up.

"Not too bright," Jesse chuckled. The girl should've had her phone password protected. Now all Jesse had to do was open up the saved video file and delete the incriminating evidence of one of the worst moments of her life. Just thinking about it made her neck tense.

"There should be a law against teachers acting like..."

A thunderbolt of an idea stopped Jesse in mid-sentence. There
were
laws against this sort of thing and she had the incriminating evidence right there in her hand. She could go to the police with the video...except that she had stolen the phone...and except that the police in Ashton were likely on the side of the teachers. What about the FBI?

Don't be stupid.

Right. The FBI had far better things to do. Going to the media was out of the question, she'd be taking herself down right along with Mrs. Jerryman. And this left, what?

Blackmail.

Her voice of reason was right again. Adapt and overcome. This was what her father wanted after all. With the video in hand, she could pass her English class, and maybe if she played her cards right, all her classes. Looking at the phone her stomach churned. The blackmail would only work if the video showed enough. Gritting her teeth, Jesse pressed the play tab.

In the ten seconds before the bathroom door came open and four girls trooped in, Jesse saw all that she needed to see.

"Who is that?" a girl asked in an inquisitive tone.

In a panic, Jesse hit the stop button and the squeaky voices on the video died away. "J-J-Jane," Jesse spat out. After almost spilling out her own name, Jane was the only thing that came to mind.

"Jane? Jane who?" Amanda Jorgenson asked. The girl's voice, as enemy number one, was imprinted in Jesse's mind and there was no mistaking it.

Her day had gone from bad to worse. Trapped in the bathroom with the odds against her at four to one, the first thing Jesse did was to reach for her lock and chain. It was instinctive mood that resulted in nothing. She'd taken off her coat in the art room to protect it against "accidental" spills and the heavy weapon was still in the pocket she had put it in that morning.

The next thing she did was realize that the tables had turned with regards to incriminating evidence; she had a stolen phone right in her hands. The next few minutes presented itself to her mind in excruciating detail: the girls would want to know who this "Jane" person was. They'd quiz her some more and when Jesse couldn't give satisfactory answers they have peek over the top of the stall. Then would come a minute or so of threats and then they'd rush her and drag Jesse out. If she was very, very lucky they wouldn't notice the cell phone. Jesse wasn't that lucky. The girls would take it from her...maybe before they fought maybe after, but either way they would find out in two seconds the phone had been stolen.

Goodbye masquerade ball, hello jail, and hello Jesse splashed all over the internet as the butt of every limerick joke. Unless that is, she could erase the video in time.

"It's Jane Miller," Jesse said in a small voice as she once again pulled up the tab for recent videos.

"Jane Miller? I know Mike Miller..." Amanda said.

There was a pause and another girl said, "Yeah, Mike has a sister...but it's Danielle. Hey, are we going to smoke these or what? Mr. Johnson friggin times me every time I go to the bathroom."

"Yeah, sure," Amanda replied. Jesse highlighted the limerick video and with a quick sigh hit delete.

"You're not going to go runnin to the principal, are you Jane?" Amanda asked. There was a touch of threat to her voice.

"No...never," Jesse replied still trying to sound meek. She was hoping to come across as a freshman. She glanced back down at the phone and her eyes went wide in puzzlement. The screen read: Please Enter E-mail Address.

What?

"Hey, Jane what grade are you in?" one of the girls asked.

Jesse almost didn't answer. She was too preoccupied trying to figure out what was going on with the phone. "Uh...I'm a freshman."

"Oh yeah? That's cool. Who do you have for homeroom?"

Again Jesse was slow to respond. She had accidentally hit Send as Attachment, instead of delete. Now the phone was asking for an email address. As quick as she could she typed in her own. "I'm in Mrs. Anderson's class." Jesse had no idea if there was a Mrs. Anderson in the school; she had just pulled a name at random.

"Who?" Amanda asked.

Here we go, Jesse thought. Now they would look over the top of the stall and see the one person they hated more than any other. Jesse stood up eyeing the phone—it was taking its sweet time sending the e-mail.

"Holy crap! It's that friggin' bitch!" Amanda Jorgen's ugly blonde friend had her head over the stall and was looking down on Jesse. A second later Amanda joined her.

"You!" she snarled at Jesse.

"Yeah, hold on one second," Jesse answered as if they mattered very little to her. Her eyes were on the phone and the little status bar showing her how much longer the e-mail would take to send. Just about there...

"Let's give her a swirly!" the blonde exclaimed.

There! The e-mail was sent. "You'll regret this day for the rest of your life if you even try," Jesse said in a voice that was far calmer than it had any right to be. The reason for the calmness was that she was still concentrating on the phone. She was now trying to delete the video and her sparring words were coming out of her almost as if she were reading from a script.

"Right," a voice on her right said. "It's four against one. Tina, go stand by the door." Just as Jesse looked up, the blonde girl ducked away.

"Oh, surrounded in the bathroom. It doesn't look good," Amanda said with a grin in her voice. Jesse didn't know if there was a grin on her face to match it. She hadn't looked up again. She was waiting...waiting...there! File deleted. Now Jesse looked up and she wore a grin of her own—a wolf's grin. Chances were she would lose this fight, but there was an even better chance that she would draw blood in the process. Maybe even a lot of blood and after the past few days of hell on earth she had endured she was looking forward to it.

"Too afraid to face me alone Amanda?" Jesse said rolling her head on her shoulders, loosening up.

"Just get out here, or we'll go in after you."

The smart move was to wait and try to fight them in the confines of the stall, where the restricted movement could work to her advantage, but Jesse was actually afraid of the very idea of a swirly. She had been held under water before and the terror that moment had produced was etched on her soul. She would fight them right outside the stall and they would have to drag her kicking and screaming back in.

"Stand back," Jesse warned. There was a girl right outside the stall door...she should have stood back.

The bathroom stall opened inward and the girl on the other side, a mousy looking brunette, stepped forward with it. Framed as she was, she made an easy target and took Jesse's jungle boot square in the stomach.

Air exploded out of her, while the force of the blow sent her reeling backwards. Jesse followed her out.

"Oh, you bitch," Amanda cursed. She seemed surprised, which struck Jesse as odd. Weren't they just threatening her? Did they expect her not to fight back?

This moment of surprise was all Jesse had time for before Amanda nodded her head at someone to Jesse's right. Just as she turned, Jesse caught sight of movement...a fist was coming in at her. It was expected. Jesse was already in the process of ducking when she felt something jar up against the top of her head. It didn't hurt, nor was it anyway stunning. In fact the blow was feeble.

Like everything else in life, punching took practice. It also took the right mind set. There was a mental balance within each person during a fight. On one hand there was the desire to inflict harm and on the other hand was the universal need to avoid pain. If one's fear of pain outweighed one's desire to cause it, then that person was going to lose.

Jesse had seen it time and again: a girl punching at the same time she was leaning back. There was never any power behind a blow like that, but there was plenty of fear.

This mental aspect was also the reason why girls were foolish ever to fight boys if they could avoid it. Boys were certainly not mentally superior, but they were attitudinally superior. It was in their genes. On a fundamentally sexist level boys
knew
they were stronger than girls and thus their mental balance weighed against fear and towards harm. While girls were generally not born fighters and so they were weighted toward avoiding pain rather than causing it.

Just then in the bathroom at Ashton High, Jesse was glad for this inequity. It allowed her to shrug off the blow and charge her opponent. Jesse smashed into the girl and threw her bodily against the line of sinks. The girl went to the ground. Instead of attacking her, Jesse spun around quick...probably far quicker than Amanda expected. The tall blonde was just in the process of rushing at Jesse, but stopped.

Now there came a pause where the five girls stared at each other in silence. It was wasted seconds for Jesse. Instinctually she knew she should kick the girl closest to her in the face. In a fight where it was four against one that's what you did, but Jesse held back the blow that would have sent the girl to the dentist.

She had never hurt someone in such a defenseless position. The girl had hit the sinks and had fallen to her knees. It would have been nothing for Jesse to send a driving side kick into her face.

"Stay down!" Jesse growled at her. The girl didn't listen. She started to climb to her feet and the room erupted in a one-second spasm of motion. Just like the game red-light green-light everyone moved, but only by a few feet.

The mousy girl Jesse had first kicked took two steps forward; she was still clutching her stomach and grimacing. Tina also took two steps; she left her post guarding the door. Amanda rushed at the girl in black and actually had a hand on Jesse's out stretched left arm, when she stopped. As for Jesse, she couldn't kick a person when they were down, but she could sure kick someone when they were on their feet again. As the girl got up. Jesse shifted her stance, tilting her body slightly left, while bringing her right leg up and in. From that position she was a half a second from uncoiling a side kick into her opponent's ribs.

But like everyone else, she stopped as the bathroom door came open. A skinny twig of a freshman came in and was halfway to the first stall before she saw everyone frozen in place and staring at her. Time and motion seemed strangely out of whack. At the odd sight confronting the skinny girl, she stopped in her tracks and stared right back at them. However, at the same instant that she did this all the older kids started moving once more.

Only they did so in opposite directions from which they had been going. Amanda turned away from Jesse and went to the nearest sink. Tina turned to the door and then turned back again not knowing what to with herself. The mousy girl went into a stall to hide. She wasn't the only one, they all acted like they had something to hide, they were ashamed and rightfully so.

All except for Jesse, who righted herself and walked brazenly to the door. The door represented something strange to her. The margin of her safety lay in the width of one rather thin piece of wood. On one side, were books and learning, and on the other, fists and fighting. The human world could be bizarre at times.

Jesse turned in the doorway. "Face me alone, coward," she challenged Amanda. The blonde stared for a moment and then slid a cigarette from behind her ear. She said nothing to Jesse's dare and pretended to ignore her.

"Lily, if it gets back to my mom that I'm smoking, I'll kick your ass," Amanda warned the skinny girl.

"I don't know, Amanda," Jesse said before shutting the door. "She looks pretty big. Maybe you should get your friends to help." Jesse didn't wait for a response, instead she left.

Breathing hard and beginning to shake, she headed back to Art class, but then stopped, wondering what to do with the cell phone. There weren't many choices left to her, since she felt responsible for its safety. Jesse decided to drop it off in the lost and found bin at the office...she just wished that it was a further walk.

Even with her little tiff with Amanda, Jesse had barely been out of class for two minutes and wasn't looking forward to the next forty-five minutes of it.

The school was sometimes just too small. Within thirty seconds of leaving Amanda and her 'wild bunch', Jesse was at the front office. It was blessedly empty. She didn't know if she could take a dose of Mrs. Daly on top of everything else she'd had to endure that day.

"Probably off, hunting me down," Jesse whispered as she dropped the cell phone into the lost and found bin. "Probably trying to bust me smoking..."

An idea popped into her head. In a wink, Jesse grabbed a piece of paper from Mrs. Daly's desk and wrote:
Jesse Clarke is smoking in the second floor girl's bathroom!

She then put the piece of paper where it would be easily seen and zipped out of the office. Hurrying until she got to the stairwell Jesse then dallied with a smile on her face. If Mrs. Daly found that note in the next couple of minutes...

Below her, the first floor access door banged open and someone—Jesse's mind filled in the image of plump little Mrs. Daly—came huffing up the stairs.
Holy Crap
, her mind screamed. Who'd thought the woman was so gung-ho on catching her?

You did,
her voice of reason said
.

Right. The girl in black had no option but to run up the stairs to the roof access ladder and hope that the woman was so single minded that she wouldn't look up the little flight of steps. At the top there was absolutely no cover, or any place to hide. Jesse just froze against the wall, knowing that movement drew the eye.

As Jesse had guessed, it was Mrs. Daly, and she didn't look up. Her eyes were watching the blur of her feet on the stairs. In three seconds she was out the door, while Jesse was flying down the stairs to the first floor. There was no sense hanging around to get trapped a second time.

It took all her will, not to scream out 'revenge!' in the echoey stairwell. Jesse had to settle for a little whisper.

"Revenge."

She took the long way around to the Art class.

"You took long enough," Ms Weldon said the moment Jesse walked in. Jesse blinked a few times, wondering what do you say to something like that?

Do you mention how you were forced to steal a phone to save what dignity you had, and that you then had to fight off four girls, before turning the tables on them? Or did you just mention something about a bad burrito? In the end, Jesse only shrugged and went back to her desk, trying not to smile when her eyes strayed to Felicity. All in all it had been one of the most successful bathroom breaks she'd ever had, except for one minor detail.

She had to pee.