Kinetics - By Andrew Peed Page 0,1

sometimes I even wondered about that. “What’s up?” he asked between bites.

“Nothing.” I tried to mask my irritation, but it wasn’t long before he picked up on my tone, and he knew my tones.

“Grace, what’s wrong?” he put his sandwich down.

“Don’t worry about it.” before I could stop myself I had glanced over to the table of jerks, who were all laughing it up having a great lunch.

“What happened, I swear if they laid a hand on you, I’ll kill ‘em.” He stood fork in hand. We weren't usually given knives for lunch.

“No, just verbal abuse, sit down.” I pulled on his arm, “What, are you going to fork them to death with a plastic utensil? Enjoy your lunch.” I grinned at the thought of him doing just that.

He sat uneasy and picked up his sandwich; he took a bite and then a big, forceful, gulp of his drink. He didn’t say anything until he couldn’t keep quiet anymore, “Why can’t they just leave you alone? They never mess with me and I don’t think that Kenny, or Sandy ever get this kind of treatment.”

Kenny and Sandy were two other orphans in Hillside; somehow they actually fit in with the “so called” social groups. I didn’t know how Kenny did it; he joked around a lot. Sandy was gorgeous, at least compared to most of the girls in the school. They usually had friends around if any of the bullies started in on them.

“I don’t know Ronnie and to be honest I really don’t care. I don’t think that they are ever going to stop. So I’m not going to worry about it.” I threw my fork down and officially gave up on the crappy food, chugged what I could of my drink, and stood up taking my tray in my hands.

“Well, those clowns need to be taught a lesson.” He took a rather forceful bite out of a helpless apple.

“You think?" I lathered on the sarcasm, "But not by you.” I put my foot down.

“And why not?”

“Maybe because they're bigger than you, or maybe because they have you out numbered six to one, and I highly doubt that they are going to fight far.” I rolled my eyes.

He got up from the table picking up his tray, “Yeah well, we’ll see.” He stormed off towards the trash cans.

I left the lunch room before the class bell rang so that I could be one of the first people back into the classroom. The teacher was boring, no ifs, ands, or buts’ about it. On top of that it was history class so sleep was on the top of most people’s to-do lists.

I didn’t sleep; I didn’t pay much attention to the lecture either. I preferred to use my time more for me. We were given e-book readers at the beginning of the year for our text books. I hacked mine so that I could load my own novels, which I read instead of the textbook. A book about humans colonizing the deepest reaches of the galaxy, it was interesting enough, it kept me from being bored to tears anyway.

The teacher droned on about the finer details about World War II, the same things that we have been taught several times over the past few years. Most of the students in the class could have taken the tests without even studying.

Before I could finish the chapter that I was reading, the bell signaling the end of classes rang. I finished the line that I was on and stuffed all of my things into my bag. I slowly shuffled from the classroom, and into the river of students leaving the school, then made my way down to the student parking lot.

Out of all of us from the orphanage, Ronnie had gotten a job so that he could get a car. He was gracious enough to give me and the other orphans, Kenny and Sandy, a ride to and from school every day.

I made my way across the parking lot to where his car was parked. A large group of students were circled around an empty spot next to Ronnie’s car and I knew instantly what was going down.

They were all chanting in unison, "fight", and I knew that this was not going to end well. Once I was close enough to the crowd, I saw Josh land a punch across Ronnie’s face sending his head smashing into the driver’s side window of his car. The window cracked and blood remained as he