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After looking them over, I shot my eyes back at Pierre and waited.
I wouldn’t say anything. Not until he acknowledged what happened.
“She’s feisty, isn’t she,” the other guy, Derrick, whispered loudly, holding up a hand to his mouth as he raised his eyebrows at Pierre. “Thought you’d be more of an indie shy-girl type.”
The sexism couldn’t get any more blatant. I wanted to throw up on Pierre just as badly as I wanted to take the knife that had spawned in my duffel and shove it up these guys’ asses.
Pierre must’ve felt the rage boiling within me because he finally spoke up.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” he said, no—practically whispered. “She’s right in front of you, man. Come on.”
Derrick took a step closer to Pierre, hooking his thumbs over his pockets. “What’s the matter, P?” he replied, drawing his eyebrows together in mock confusion. “We’re just joking around is all.”
I watched as Pierre’s face started to heat up. He was out of his element, for sure.
And I was in awe.
“That was no joke,” he responded flatly. “Don’t you dare touch her like that.”
“Or else what?” Tommy jumped in, stepping forward beside his fellow crony. But instead of staying there, all of a sudden, I felt his arm loop around my back to pull me in toward him.
That’s when Pierre snapped.
Before I knew what was happening, I heard a sharp smack. Tommy staggered backward with a bloody nose, and his boy Derrick threw himself toward us.
“Bloody hell, man! What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tommy yelled, straightening himself up just in time to see Pierre get pummeled to the ground.
For a moment, I was frozen—the whole world moved in slow motion as Derrick raised his fist, and brought it down to Pierre’s already-bruised face. Still, as he lay with his back to the ground, his eyes moved from the sky to meet mine.
And he smiled.
“Pierre!” I shrieked, lunging onto Derrick. My attempt to wrestle him off of Pierre was futile, and he simply pushed me to the ground. With my lack of exercise, I was stupid to even think I could take him on.
But Pierre?
He must’ve lost his goddamn mind.
As I scrambled to my feet, I heard the gasps of a crowd of students forming around us, closing in like they were an audience to a bullfight, no—something closer to home, more disturbing. It reminded me of so many times Elliot and his boys had pulled some idiotic stunt on me and Pierre only to have us laughed at in the eyes of a hundred kids our age, as if getting humiliated was their true source of amusement.
Everyone else blurred out around me and I could only focus on Pierre. He’d somehow managed to wiggle out from under Derrick. His nose was streaming with blood. Just as he was about to pull back his arm for another punch, Tommy was already behind him, and knocked Pierre to the ground as if he were made of nothing.
Around us, the crowd thickened. I knew they were enjoying this. And for a moment, their eyes became the eyes of our high school classmates, people who I had once thought were nice, bystanders to our own humiliation. And they did nothing. They just stood there, just laughed.
I looked up to find Pierre curled up into a ball on the ground, arms folded over his head to block another blow. But, for a split second, no matter how hard I blinked, it wasn’t Derrick that had him pinned to the ground.
It was Elliot.
And it wasn’t the laughter of a hundred strangers that surrounded us. It was Vivian’s, just her voice.
Looks can be deceiving.
Before I knew what I was doing, my hands were on Derrick’s neck. My whole body felt on fire, like I was going to explode if I didn’t get Pierre away from them. Away from him.
Elliot.
Maybe he had never physically assaulted us, but he damn right might as well have. There was no difference between guys like him and guys like these.
I shouldn’t have ever forgotten that.
