There’s only one way to deal with obnoxious high-schoolers who think they’re too cool for school. (social) Assassination.
People like to talk about love at first sight a lot. Meeting someone’s eyes across the cafeteria, that frisson of tension, that spark when two souls connect for just a moment. Or that barest of touches when returning a dropped book, skin against feverish skin. I’d had one or two such moments, in my time. But there are other moments of connection, ones that are often overlooked. Flashes of sudden inexplicable knowledge, almost a foretelling. What I experienced the first time I saw Craig Jensen walk through the door was different. A visceral reaction, true. A knowing.
But not of love.
When he stepped into the classroom, with his slicked-to-the-side fringe and too-big trainers, a cocky grin on his face and a pack of fangirls trailing in his heavily-cologned wake, I knew he was the first boy I was going to have to murder.
Oh, I’d seen prettier. Rhiannon Apsley in 11B was generally regarded as a knock-out, and in fact had been rumoured to have done just that when someone took their ‘affections’ too far. If you went for the blokes, then Darren Wu - star of the year 11 track team and dedicated car enthusiast - seemed to be the talk of the town, wrapped in whispers and admiring looks.
Was Craig Jensen cool? Undoubtedly. You could tell from the strut, the bad-boy smirk, the way he moved his hair out of his eyes with a little flick of his head. But Chloe and Hansen Burke, the terrible twins, swam amongst the thronging crowds of the school with casual ease. They were barracuda, feasting on rumour and scandal, always at the centre of every new thing, every shiny opportunity and next to them Jensen wobbled like a harpooned minnow trying to grasp at the tantalising silver scales of the cool-school-fish swimming past. He was trying too hard. It rolled off him in the stink of his overzealous cologne and the way his greedy eyes watched his hanger-ons’ every movement.
I could have handled all that. Had before, could do it again. It didn’t matter that I saw his eyes on me as soon as the door swung open, or that his lip turned up in a little sneer at the sight. Oh, he thought he was too good for all this, of course he did. I could handle all that.
But it was worse than that. He thought he was funny.
It started even before the door opened, though I hadn’t had a chance to put a name to the raucous voice that echoed down the corridor. He walked in still crowing about his exploits like a rooster surrounded by sycophants. He was the new kid, and he played it for all it was worth.
By day two, there was a spitball in my hair and snickering from behind the oversized trainers propped atop the back desk.
Intuition: score 1.
I gave it three weeks. It’s better to let them get it out of their system, see if they catch on and correct course before disaster strikes. If they don’t, then they’re sure to have given you enough rope to hang themselves with, and Jensen was paying out rope faster than an overeager abseiler.
There was the bit with the hairspray and the lighter. Contraband phones and smokes tucked into waistbands where he thought the teachers were too stupid to notice them. Notes passed with blistering speed, flung overarm and overhead, bouncing off walls, doors, and Larry Uphill’s head. A laugh that could wake the dead. Getting caught in the janitor’s closet, in another student - all in a day’s work for Craig Jensen. Just another thing to brag about to his cronies.
‘You can’t touch me,’ his smirk said as he swaggered in to class ten minutes late and twenty decibels too loud. ‘I’m too good for consequences.’
The door slammed shut behind him. Underneath the cloying scent of cheap aftershave and cologne - detectable even from the other side of the classroom - hung the rank smell of smoke. His phone was in his hand, the screen lit up with a text. He met my eyes, then looked down at the screen. He was making a point, and he knew it.
I took a deep breath.
I took his phone.
“Detention for the next week, Jensen, and you can get this back at the end of the day. Buck up your ideas if you don’t want to be seeing me at lunch for the rest of the school year.”
“But miss-“
“And if I catch you lighting up, it’ll be even worse. Don’t you know smoking kills?”
He slunk away to his seat, his friends unusually subdued. Not one titter came from the back all class.
Between me and the smokes, I think I’d done the most damage so far. Even if it wasn’t murder, it was close enough to make my point.
