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Small and so vulnerable my fists clinched again thinking about it. She was the first best friend I’d ever had only. I knew her real last name to everyone else. She was a smith like me three months ago, I’d been jane smith, no name, no family. No hope that anyone would adopt a girl with a record of anger management issues, but Sarah didn’t care that I had been born a fighter into an unfair world that made me use my fists and punished me for using them.

At the same time. Maybe she even liked it a little. My hot anger was the opposite of Sarah’s icy grief. Our friendship had been instant we’d pinky sworn our sisterhood at midnight by the glow of a superhero nightlight. Sarah had given me the name Mel the very next day, and I had run with it feeling more like a meal than I ever had a jane Sarah’s trapped in the top of the monkey bars. Jason is posting upskirt shots online, a girl shouted at me As I exited the building and started to look around wendy Solomon sounded more pleased than upset as if recess was much more fun with a little torture and sexual harassment going on.

Most of the students had abandoned whatever they’d been doing, to gather in a ring around the monkey bars where the biggest kid in school, even bigger than me, had cornered. Sarah was quiet and peaceful and way too old for playground equipment, but she could never lay low and the sun was high and the playground was open. Something about the outdoors drew her as if every scrubby blade of grass was a miracle. Sarah never seemed to notice the noise of traffic or the pollution haze across the sky or the bullies that stalked her, because they liked her rounded shoulders and hollow eyes. I didn’t pause, I didn’t even consider walking to the other side of the playground where an empty bench might help me stay out of it.

I wouldn’t leave Sarah to the small huddle of teachers near the basketball court, where a weed clogged fence gave them cover to smoke, not even when butting in would further wreck my file, but I didn’t run. I walked as carefully as I could across the playground. No one paid much attention. Rumors were one thing, personal experience, another I’d never scrapped at recess. Here, I’d avoided bullies and pretended to be chill only Sarah knew better, and right now only Sarah watched me head in her direction.

I can imagine how it had all gone down. The spring day was warm and clear. Butterflies floated over the dandelions that poorly paid landscapers hadn’t even bothered to poison and kill Sarah had eagerly run outside. While I was dragging my feet, she’d scrambled up to the top of the monkey bars to get even closer to the white cottony clouds. She left to watch and Jason’s muse had been right behind her.

I should have rushed outside. I should have been there to guard the ladder and to protect my friend from pervs. I was close enough now to see Sarah’s red eyes and flushed cheeks. I could see her white-knuckled grip on the rusty metal bars and the sheen of tears on her face and the hot hard knot of anger that always wrapped around my insides, squeezing my lungs and holding me back broke loose and set me free. I ran, I ran at Jason and slammed into him with the force and fury of ten thousand times when I’d wanted to, but hadn’t he been knocked off his feet and his cell phone flew from his fingers.

It fell in the mulch beneath Sarah and my foot came down on the screen hard once then twice while Jason caught his breath. Male Sarah said her voice trembled, but it sounded hopeful and relieved. I needed to warn her that this wasn’t going to end well. The system didn’t favor heroes. Victims were better quieter, and more easily managed, but before I could put the complicated lesson into words, Jason swung out a long leg and kicked me off my feet.

I went down with a thud into the mulch that was so thinly, spread hard-packed earth showed in a bunch of places. My chin found one of the bare spots and pain exploded in bright flashes behind my eyes I tasted blood and gasped its sickly metallic flavor down. My throat hated that taste, always I wouldn’t say I liked it. The taste of blood was usually followed by worse things. What you, the only one that can pick at the hillbilly’s pink lace, ankle, bracelet, Jason, asked small and so vulnerable.

My fists clenched again thinking

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