Of Misdemeanors and ***

“Ms. Crawford,” a crisp voice tore through my thought process. Oh. God. Why?

I tilted my head to the side slightly, raising an eyebrow in the woman’s direction. “Yes, Mrs. Lilany?” I inquired lazily, watching as my inability to focus on her words set her temper aflame.

“Three days at Shadowstep Academy and you’ve already begun to wear my patience thin,” she told me, completely ignoring the rest of the class which was looking at me with raised brows.

I shrugged. “Sorry? I’m not even trying, damn I’m good,” I supplied as an answer. Now that I look back at it, I should have thought the consequences through a bit more clearly before I answered.

My words were just the flint that lit the fire of anger in her eyes. Speaking of her eyes, they were a weird green color which contrasted surprisingly well with her wavy blonde hair. Even though she was only about thirty-five or something like that, she had the no-nonsense personality of an old woman. Which ultimately sucked for every single student at Shadowstep Academy.

The next words out of Mrs. Lilany’s mouth were supposed to form a witty sentence that informed me of my punishment while simultaneously informing me of my offense to receive said punishment. However, that apparently wasn’t her style. All she said was, “Library duty, Ms. Crawford.” And then she turned away from me to continue her lesson on the importance of perfect posture.

She’s evil, mark my words.

Oh well, library wasn’t too bad, at least not as bad as she made it seem, plus it was totally worth it to push her buttons. Library duty was basically time for me to do homework, or, I could take a nap. It wasn’t like anyone would go into the library and check on me.

Class was dismissed with the ring of a bell and the students leapt up as Mrs. Lilany rolled her eyes at our eagerness to escape her claw-like clutches. Also, even better than being able to escape Mrs. Lilany, was the fact that her class was our last class of the day. Etiquette was a pretty easy class, for me anyway--be nice, be proper, know your manners and be able to regurgitate any facts that the teacher spat at you. Another little detail about Etiquette class, was that it was like PE in high school, in the sense that the girls and guys didn’t generally learn it together. Which made sense, because if the guys were learning how to curtsey that would just be downright hilarious. Or, at least I would enjoy seeing some of the larger, more muscled out guys looking like pretty princesses.

I snickered at the thought as I walked down the hall, making my way toward my dorm room. Someone called my name abruptly and I turned around, continuing to walk backwards as I sought out who had called for my attention. I caught a glimpse of a girl with a soft looking expression on her delicate face, encasing eyes that were a dark shade of brown. Framing those eyes were long, curled auburn locks. She smiled at me and I waved in a friendly gesture, but as I opened my mouth to speak, my back hit something hard and I stumbled to a halt.

Walking backwards in a crowded hallway…not one of my better ideas. I regained my balance and swiveled around to see what (or who) I had collided with. My insides froze instantly at the sight of a large boy blocking my path. He had jet black hair that was cut relatively short, but still fell into his eyes, which were a pretty blue color with yellow flecks around the pupils. I didn’t look at him long though, and yeah, I suppose he would be what one would consider “hot”, perhaps even gorgeous. But he was nothing to me. He was Derek Fairborn, and he was a colossal asshole.

A smirk tugged onto his lips as he looked me up and down. I resisted the urge to punch him in the face. “Hey Babe, you’re that new girl, right?” he asked, the confidence in his voice overwhelming. He obviously knew that he could use his looks as an advantage.

And, it might have worked. Had I not known him as a boy first, and as a boy, this kid had tortured me, cornered me and beat the living shit out of me while I attended Shadowstep Academy.

However, to him, I was the new girl. Raven Crawford, with a clean slate and apparently, a pleasant enough face to catch his attention. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t want any of his attention. “Back off creep,” I said coldly, looking him up and down and rolling my eyes to show my disinterest.

Derek frowned at that response, clearly not amused that I didn’t get all hot and bothered the moment I saw him. Several slow healing bruises had seen to that impossibility months ago. That didn’t seem to put him off though, he replaced his frown with a smirk and took a few daunting steps toward me. I, in turn, took a few steps back, unable to stop myself from moving away from him. He was a threat in my mind, and I didn’t like being around him in the least, even in a crowded hallway.

My back hit a wall, and I realized he’d backed me into a corner. Great. I scowled inwardly at my inattentiveness to where I was going, but focused on Derek instead. He was too big to be disregarded. “Let’s try that again, Babe,” he spoke with a silky voice, almost seductive if it hadn’t belonged to him. “What’s your name?”

I went to move away from the wall, but Derek stuck his arm in my way, pressing his palm against the wall beside my head, forcing me to stay where I was. “Where you going, Babe?” he asked quietly, his voice only irritating me instead of intimidating me. I growled slightly at the inconvenience. I couldn’t get away from this kid. I was a guy and he kicked my ass, now I was a girl and he was gunning for me. Go figure.

I took a deep breath. The “be silent and leave” approach wasn’t working. Therefore, I was going to have to get unpleasant. Sucked for him. “I’m going, to kick you in your balls if you don’t get the fuck out of my way,” I spat acidly, meeting his blue gaze with my hazel one. Luckily, I had the personality of an angst filled teenage boy, so the sentence wasn’t too hard to conjure up from my imagination. On the downside, dating was certainly going to be interesting when I decided to pick up that hobby. My lady-like charm seemed to be MIA for the past...eighteen years. Probably best to announce it as dead on the field, lest I get my hopes up of it being a possible POW.

Some of the other students caught wind of our little quarrel and paused to watch. Typical. I caught a slight glance of the auburn-haired girl in the gathering, looking worriedly at me, but unsure of how to react. That was Laura Harding, quiet and polite, gorgeous and sought after by most of the guys in Shadowstep Academy. We were friends when I was a boy, and now that I was a girl, I hardly knew her. Technically though, I had only known her for three days, and we’d only spoken on a few odd occasions.

Derek fed off of the attention and smirked down at me, his cologne wafting into my face. It didn’t smell bad really, but knowing that the smell came from him made me scowl in distaste. “Feisty little new girl, aren’t you?” he practically purred.

I was starting to go from irritated to flat out pissed off. Now the real question was, would Derek hit a girl in front of so many witnesses? Scratch that, the real question was, did I give a shit? The answer?

Hell no.

I braced myself against the wall I was leaning against and then reeled back my leg and full on “Sparta” kicked Derek. Although it wasn’t particularly powerful coming from me, and I was too short to kick him in the chest, I did get to hit him in the stomach, which shocked him and sent him stumbling backwards, though he didn’t hit the ground. Damn, where was a bottomless pit when you needed one?

“I don’t need to deal with you just because you feel the need to push yourself on girls due to your lack of confidence in your small dick. So, please do me a favor and kindly fuck off,” I said in a rush of words and stalked over to where Laura was. “Hey Laura,” I said pleasantly as if I hadn’t just cussed out the boy catching his breath in the middle of the hallway.

Laura threw an awkward smile my way, keeping more attention on Derek behind me. “Hi, Raven, umm, are you all right?” she asked tentatively, considering I had been being harassed by one of the larger boys in the school only moments ago.

“Huh?” I stole a glance back at Derek who was glaring at me, obviously considering whether or not he should continue the skirmish. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, I put up with assholes like him all the time where I’m from,” I replied amiably with a shrug of my shoulders.

“Hey,” Derek said from behind me and I stiffened. He really would have been better off if he had just walked away. Unfortunately, boys had the slight altercation in their anatomy that set them apart from girls. This part of their body was also the part of them that told them to do stupid things when their brains tell them to do otherwise.

I turned slowly, eyebrows raised curiously as if I hadn’t injured him recently. “What?” I challenged.

Derek Fairborn opened his mouth to say something, and then his eyes flicked behind me and he seemed to change his mind. His scowl turned into a poisonous smile as he said, “I’ll see you around, Babe.” He turned and walked away without another word, disappearing into the crowd as the students began to go on their merry ways again.

I turned to see that Mr. Jager was making his way down the hall, although he was looking at book so he obviously hadn’t seen the conflict. And apparently Derek wanted to keep it that way. “What a douche,” I muttered and rolled my eyes, then turned my attention back to Laura. “Did you need something?” I questioned calmly.

“Oh, yeah, I was wondering if you could give Hayden this for me,” she said as she held out a book for me to take. “It’s his Anatomy book, he let me borrow it,” she explained briefly and then started to turn. “Thanks, Raven.”

“No problem,” I replied, tucking the book under my arm and disregarding that she hadn’t even waited for my answer. I didn’t particularly like running errands for people, even nice people like Laura. But, I did it anyway, since all I had to do was chuck the book at Hayden’s head and see how his reflexes were doing. Entertainment and helping someone all in one, not a bad deal.

So, I tucked the book under my arm and started off in the direction of our dorm room, where Hayden would most likely be. If he wasn’t there though, he would probably be in Damion and Leon’s room, naturally. More often than not though, Hayden and I had the rendezvous dorm room. It was where we did all of our plotting to break school rules and wreak havoc on whichever poor soul we chose. Well that, and our maniacal plans for world domination. Still trying to keep that on the down low though. Liability and legal issues and all that.

When I reached the spot where the room was I slowed to a halt, taking note that the door wasn’t closed like it should have been. My brow furrowed as I stepped cautiously forward into the room. “Hayden…?” I called warily, taking in the sight of the two queen sized beds, two closets and one bathroom that broke off of the room. It was as much as a home that I could have hoped for.

Hayden popped up from the floor on the other side of his bed, an iPod held carefully between his lips, earphones poking out of his ears.

“What are you doing?” I inquired, my eyebrows raised in questioning.

“Uhh, hiding porn under my bed?” he offered, sounding unconvincing.

“Uh-huh, and the point of hiding it if you’re gonna tell me its there?” I asked, a sarcastic smirk twisting onto my lips.

Hayden shrugged and stood up. “Principle?” he said, dusting off his hands from when he was crawling around on the floor like a weirdo.

“Right, well I’ll just snoop around when you aren’t here and figure out what you were doing. Until then, here.” I tossed the book at him. Even with my gentle toss he seemed startled by the flying object, barely getting his hands up in time to catch the hardbound book and almost fumbling it into a nearby pile of laundry.

Hayden swore at me and dropped the book onto his bed with an irritated huff. Okay…so maybe my “gentle toss” was more like me hurtling the book at his head. I was testing his reflexes, honestly, making sure he wasn’t getting rusty or anything like that. It had nothing to do with the fact that I liked annoying him when I could. And it most certainly didn’t have anything to do with two days before when he had tripped me and sent me flying into a group of girls in front of me and then proceeded to howl with laughter amongst Damion and Leon. Totally unrelated events, seriously. As far as he knew, I was just prone to random acts of violence. Little did he know I kept grudges in my mind over the tiniest things that miffed me.

“That’s from Laura, she said thanks for letting her borrow it,” I explained in response to his glaring.

“Oh, thanks. And I guess it was her request to launch it into my face if at all possible?” he asked bitterly, scowling at me.

“You guessed it. I think she also told me to tell you to ‘burn in hell’ and then muttered some satanic spells as she ambled away on her peg leg.”

Hayden raised his eyebrows at me.

“Oh wait, that might have been the hobo living near the Safeway in town, my bad,” I corrected with a would-be apologetic smile on my lips.

“You’re a freak,” Hayden told me, although he was smiling when he said it.

“Granted, but I’m your freak,” I pointed out to him and kicked the door shut with the heel of my foot, only to hear it bounce off of something and feel it hit me in the ass. I yelped in surprise and whirled around to see the cause of the assault.

Leon stood in the doorway, grinning at me in a way that said: Yeah, I just hit you in the ass with your own door, what’re you gonna do about it? Just over his shoulder I caught sight of Damion lurking in the distance, a passive expression on his features.

“Don’t make a show of claiming her,” Leon warned as he entered the room, shortly followed by Damion who closed the door behind him, “next thing you know she’ll go getting into a fight then you’ll have to take her to the vet and get a cone put on her head, God knows she’ll chew up her stitches otherwise.” He shook his head dramatically and rolled his eyes at the image of the situation.

Damion snickered quietly while Hayden laughed wildly, almost blotting out Damion’s response. “Ha, ha. That was so funny I almost forgot to laugh,” I deadpanned, though I found myself smiling at the jab at me.

“Don’t worry, important thing is that you remembered, we’ll get you a helmet one day dearest Ray, one with a nice Dora the Explora sticker on it. Then you won’t have to worry about running into doors anymore,” Leon informed me, trying to look at me with a serious expression and failing.

“You’re an ass,” I told him with a laugh then said more seriously, “and that door thing only happened once and I swear the thing said ‘push’!”

“Right, God help you if you ever have to go through a revolving door, even if it did tell you to ‘push’ I don’t think you’d get inside the building, I don’t think there’s a sign that says ‘stop’, sadly. You’d be walking in circles for hours,” Leon said with a bark of laughter. If he wasn’t so large I might have tried to take him down and punch him in the jaw.

I thought about that for a moment and then decided to leap at him, keeping my head low and ramming my shoulder into his stomach. A rush of air slid from his lungs at the attack, but he only stumbled backwards slightly, not quite hitting the ground as I had envisioned. My assaults didn’t seem to work too well when they were expecting me to react with violence. Keeping that in mind, I braced my feet against the ground and gave Leon a final shove, trying to knock him backward. A bark of laughter left him at the attempt, telling me I had failed just as I felt his arms circle around my stomach. That certainly wasn’t good.

Leon lifted me clean off my feet, twisted me upside down and held me like that, my feet kicking wildly through the air. “Free shots anyone?” he offered turning me left and right to face Hayden and then Damion.

“Put me down,” I objected, trying to land a kick into the side of his head.

“You started this,” Leon reminded me, a smile sounding in his voice.

“Damion…do you have a Sharpie, by chance?” Hayden asked casually, putting a thoughtful finger to his chin, as if contemplating some master plan.

Something aside from civil politeness crossed Damion’s features. It was a devilish smile, one that I hadn’t seen in quite awhile. “Why, yes Hayden, I actually do,” he said in a condescending tone. After fishing around in his jacket pocket for a moment, he produced a black Sharpie and passed it over to Hayden. Why he had a Sharpie tucked away while he walked around, I will never know.

“Don’t worry Raven this’ll only take a second,” Hayden assured me, dislodging the cap from the pen and squatting down in front of me. He paused with the pen halfway to my face and then said, “only takes a second I guess, but it’ll probably last a few days.” A grin crawled onto his expression at the appalled look on my face.

“The back of my head is in Leon’s crotch! I want down now!” I informed them loudly, waving my arms around in front of my face so that it was harder to access. This attempt at protecting myself was quickly thwarted, however, when Damion proceeded to restrain my arms. Maybe I should have seen something like this coming out of an assault on a larger male of my species with two vindictive friends, and yet…

Hayden leaned forward and pressed the marker to my upper lip and scribbled quickly, pushing a hand against my chin and clamping my mouth shut when I resisted. A second passed and he pulled the marker away, grinning at his success.

“What the fuck did you just do?” I asked in a harsh tone.

“I added a little spice to your face. You should thank me, everyone will be looking at you now,” Hayden said knowledgably and then began to laugh hysterically at his work.

“I wanna see!” Leon whined and flipped me over again, letting my feet touch the ground before he let me go and swiveled me around to scrutinize Hayden’s work. There was a tense pause where I scowled hatefully in his direction and he examined the addition to my face. Then, Leon slapped a hand over his mouth to try and stifle a chortle of laughter, however, he failed miserably and gave up, bursting into howling laughter along with Damion, who caught sight of me as well.

I made a loud noise resembling a growl of aggravation and a snort of disbelief. Without bothering to inquire further about what Hayden had done, I marched into the bathroom and flicked on the light, peering into the mirror for a status report. My mouth dropped open when I saw what sort of damage the Sharpie had done. It was a tiny little patch of black on my upper lip, but it was just enough to make me look like Adolph Hitler. Minus the boobs and long blonde hair, that is.

“You gave me a Hitler moustache!?” I roared from the bathroom, not even back into the room to portray my rage properly. My sentence only seemed to make them laugh harder, my anguish leading to an all time high on hilarity.

“You…wear it proudly,” Damion managed to stammer out between fits of laughter.

“You’re the worst people on the planet,” I huffed at them, trying futilely to scrub the black marking off with my fingers. As was the point of a permanent marker, it didn’t even smear.

“What if there’s Jewish kids around school!” I moaned the sentence at them, barely a notch above a whine.

“Oh my God…” Hayden said slowly, his face lighting up in realization. “You’re right! Melvin must be warned!” he exclaimed with a look of mock horror on his face and then continued with another bout of laughing.

Realizing the futility of the argument, since none of them seemed to feel any remorse at making me look like a walking embarrassment, I decided to dig a washcloth out of a drawer and ran water over it. Then, I went to work at scrubbing my upper lip raw, as long as I could at least get the marker to fade a little bit, it would be worth it. A full minute of scrubbing and I had a faded Hitler moustache out of the deal. Which was better than a full on in-your-face Hitler moustache replica.

With an aggravated grunt, I dropped the washcloth and gave up on erasing the mark from my face. I marched out into the room and turned a fierce glare on the three evil boys that I had so foolishly called my “friends”. “I hope you’re all happy. My next class is in the morning with the new teacher, and I’m gonna look like the retard who has Hitler as her idol.”

Damion and Leon had taken refuge on my bed to undergo their laughter fits and Hayden was on his own bed, leaning back casually with a contented grin on his face. Obviously, my marker moustache made me rather difficult to take seriously, since the anger on my face only succeeded in making me look even more like an angry German. Which, of course, sent them into howling laughter yet again. I let out an aggravated noise and yelled, “You all suck dick!” And then turned toward the dorm room door, opened it, stormed out and closed it behind me.