Pride

The laugh Marissa hears to her right is loud. It wouldn’t surprise her if the whole school could hear it. The scared brown-haired girl turns her head to see who’s laughing at her misfortune and she isn’t surprised at all when she sees where it’s coming from.

A few feet away from her, Louis and his friends are leaning against the lockers. Harry, Liam and Louis are looking at Melissa with identical grins on their faces. Melissa’s only friend has abandon her in her hour of need. They think she’s now an even easier target. Well, the F4 is in for a surprise. Melissa isn’t as easy as they think she is. She’s going to fight back. The whole school may do what they want to do to her, they aren’t going to break her. She isn’t going to quit St. Bernard, no matter how much they’ll try to force her.

“Awe, is the poor girl all alone now?” Louis sneers. His lips are pulled back in an ugly smirk. He looks even more arrogant than usual. “Do you see now how cheap middle-class friendship is. ” Harry laughs at the older boy’s words.

Liam nudges Louis’s side and presses out next to his laugh, “I bet she won’t last for three weeks. What do you think?”

“I think she won’t last a week,” Louis announces. He turns to Zayn – who hasn’t said anything yet and isn’t laughing either.” What do you think, Zayn?”

“I don’t know and I don’t really care,” Zayn says, after having let out a sigh. “What doesn’t it matter? She’s just one of many. ” The dark-haired boy looks as uninterested as ever, leaning against the locker behind him and blankly staring at the wall in front of him.

Zayn’s words hurt Marissa. He just told his friends he doesn’t care what happened to her because she’s just one of many to him. She knew, of course, that she was nothing special to him, she was just a girl who goes to his school but she thought he would at least care about what happened to her. Zayn may never try to stop his friends from acting out but she has seen him trying to fix some of the damage Louis and the others made often enough. She thought he did care about the damage, but apparently, in her case, he doesn’t.

She knows she has no right to, but Melissa feels betrayed. Her cheeks burn a bright shade of red at the feeling. The hurt she’s feeling together with the anger make her ball her fists. She would love to smack the four boys who are still looking at her across the head but she knows it’ll only make things even worse for her.

So, instead, she turns around, takes a hold of the red tag and rips it off. She can hear shouts of protest coming from her right. They are followed by, “Hey, you can’t do that” and “Don’t think that changes anything.”

Melissa ignores their calls and stalks away. She dumps the red tag in one of the trashcans as she walks to her first class. Her self-confidence, however, evaporates when she stands in front of the classroom.

What if her fellow students know about the red tag? Nobody but Ashley knows about the small piece of paper, but what if she told their classmates? It would mean she couldn’t have one last peaceful school day before the rest of the students will be out for her blood – there is no doubt there’ll be a new red tag in her locker tomorrow and the rest of the school are going to see it.

Melissa takes a deep breath before entering the class – they have already started because Melissa overslept today. All of the eyes in the room are on the brunette as she excuses herself to the teacher and walks towards one of the empty chairs. They don’t jeer at her or throw things at her, however, so apparently, they don’t know about the red tag. Melissa relaxes as she sits down on one of them. She doesn’t search for Ashley’s face, who she has this class with. Instead, her eyes are firmly fixed on the teacher as he continues talking.

When Melissa comes back home seven hours later, she has never been more relieved for a school day to be over. Spending hours in fear of being attacked is pure torture. It’s horrible she’s going to spend the rest of her school career like that. And only because she stood up for someone she thought was her friend.

That night, at dinner Melissa eats much more than she usually does. She receives weird looks from her brother and parents as she stuffs spoonful after spoonful of potato mash into her mouth.

“What are you doing?” her brother asks as he watches her with an open mouth.

“I want to build up strength, so I’m eating a lot,” Melissa tells her sibling.

She’s going to show the school tomorrow what she’s made off. Melissa is going to take on the whole school and she needs a lot of energy to do that. As from tomorrow, she’s a weed, something that’s impossible to get rid of. It doesn’t matter how many times you try to destroy it, it keeps on coming back. Melissa is going to be the same.

Her brother just shakes his head and continues eating. Her parents don’t ask either what she needs to build her strength up for but that’s nothing unusual. Her parents have stopped asking about her weird behavior ages ago.

The next morning Melissa walks up to the F4 with steady steps. All of the students standing around in the corridor look at her as she makes her way to the group of four boys that rule the school. When she’s reached them she walks up to Louis and plants a red tag on his surprised face. She does the same to Liam, who’s standing next to him.

Melissa takes a step back to admire her work. She’s proud of the stunned looks that are still adorning their faces. They’re not used to people defying them.

“I declare war on you and all you stand for,” Melissa announces. She juts out her chin and looks down her nose.

Without waiting, for their reaction, she storms off again. Her heart is beating painfully rapid inside her chest as she walks passed all the stunned students. Nobody lifts a finger at her even though now everyone knows she’s the enemy of the F4. The voice in the back of her mind isn’t happy with what she’s just done. She has made it even more difficult for herself now. Louis now has, even more, reasons to want to hurt her. Well, she tells herself as she comes to the end of the corridor and has reached the classroom she’s going to spend the first period, it’s too late to go back now. She has made a stand and now she’s going to have to pay the price.
The first two periods pass uneventfully. Everybody is looking at her, but nobody attackers her. That changes however during the third period. When Melissa enters the classroom, she immediately notices that her desk is gone. With a heart that seems to be trying to crawl out of her chest, she looks at the teacher as a silent question. What she’s to do now? He doesn’t look at her when he stammers, “Melissa, sit down please.”
“But my desk is gone.” Melissa hates how small her voice sounds.

Suddenly something hard collides with her head. She can hear whatever it is crack and suddenly there is something wet running down her face. There’s no mistaking what has been thrown at her head. Someone has just thrown an egg at her.

Melissa can feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, much to her own embarrassment. Now everybody is going to see her cry.

But, she really doesn’t want that to happen – crying is a sign of weakness and they can’t think she’s weak – so she turns around and walks out of the classroom. The teacher does nothing to stop her.

While tears are running down her cheeks, she runs down the corridor towards the fire escape. Luckily there are no students on the way there to see her cry.

The cold spring air hits Melissa in the face as she runs onto the metal stairs. She grabs the metal railing in front of her as lets out a wail. All of her frustration is put into the scream.

“You’ve got something in your hair.”

Melissa abruptly stops screaming and her tears stop flowing as her heart experiences something that feels like a small heart attack. She immediately looks behind her, where the voice came from. She is shocked to see Zayn Malik sitting on the stairs leading to the lower floor, a book in his hands.

“Someone from my class threw an egg at me. Are you happy now?” Melissa can’t keep the anger out of her voice.

Zayn just laughs and asks “Are you that girl that was yelling yesterday?” Melissa has never seen the fit boy laugh. It makes him seems carefree and happy; it looks good on him.

Melissa can feel her cheeks heat up in embarrassment. Nobody was supposed to find out she yells to let out her frustration, least of all Zayn. Because despite feeling betrayed by the dark boy yesterday, she still cares about what he thinks of her.

The carefree look vanishes from Zayn’s face after he’s done laughing. He looks at her with his eyes that are the color of caramels, making Melissa feel weak in the knees. “You know, it’s better if you leave the school. It’ll save you a lot of trouble.”

“But I can’t,” Melissa protests. “My parents have already paid for a whole year. They can’t afford to throw money away like that.”

“Well, suit yourself. I don’t care.” Zayn shrugs his shoulders before he turns his back to Melissa. The young girl can feel anger build inside of her as he continues reading.

Zayn’s attitude reminds Melissa once again that he is no different than the other members of the F4. Just like them, he only cares about himself.

“Well, good day to you then,” Melissa throws at Zayn before stomping back through the door she emerged from.

Notes

Let the asskicking begin.

Let me know what you thought of this chapter.