The Cold

Nova doodles a silhouette of a bull shark on her English analysis chart. She'd finished half-assing it and was growing bored. She was good in school. She had to try to get an A, but if she just didn't care much and did it as if she had done it a hundred times before, she could usually pull off a B or an A-. She just didn't like school much. It wasn't the teachers, though a few of them are creeps, nor was it the work, it was all frustratingly easy for her.
It was the students.
Nova doesn't have many friends. The few she does have are like her. Bullied. Hated. Invisible. She had always been bullied. Her hair. Her grief. Her strange behavior. Her shrink tells her it's all PTSD, but she doesn't care for labels that make her act differently. Why she shakes sometimes. Why a fire alarm can spiral her into a panic attack. Most kids aren't too bad, sure they don't like her, but they don't hate her, either. But what can she do about the few bad ones?
Speak, or in this case, think of the devil, and he will appear.
A set of large, meaty hands slam down on Nova's desk, bringing with them a strong smell of grease and cheap cologne. Nova tries to keep her flinch at a minimum, but she still trembles.
"Hey, crazy, what'cha up to?" Issac is a sloppy piece of crap, a sorry excuse for a human being. He has two lackeys, 'Marcus' and 'Jordan'. Nova hates them all.
"Leave me alone, Issac. I'm not in the mood." Nova says softly, looking for the teacher, then remembering she had gone to pick something up from the printer. Nova can feel the eyes of her classmates on her, but she says nothing, her hands clenching and clenching as she tries to staunch the trembles in them.
"Ooh, Crazy's grown a backbone. Let's see if she talks in a straitjacket." before she can scream, Marcus, a fat, pig-faced boy grabs her my the throat and yanks her out of her chair, Jordan's lean muscle ready to scoop her up and hold her still while Issac and Marcus twist her arms painfully and tie her sweater sleeves behind her back, then loop them and tie them again at her stomach. Pain rushes through her arms as she helplessly struggles to get free.
"Let her go, Issac!" comes a familiar voice, and Nova nearly melts in relief. Her best friend, Asher, had come to the rescue. Issac laughs and two of them shove Nova over, sending her to collide painfully into her desk, the momentum cutting open her cheek and her arms to shriek with strain and the agony that runs up and down her body as she tries in vain to stand, her trapped arms keeping her from making any progress.
"Oh, look. It's a worm." Issac says at Nova, blood now pouring down her face. Ignoring Asher's cry to stop, he plants a vicious kick into Nova's side, a whimper of pain escaping her clenched teeth. About to kick again, Asher lunges, shoving Issac in the chest and throwing him off balance. Nova looks up at Asher through a thin film of red as her cut fills her eyes with blood. He's of average height, his brown skin taught with lean muscle, earned from surfing often with Nova and their other friend, Lizzie, who is in another class. He stands over Nova angrily as the tall boys surround him. One against three. There's no way he can win.
Helpless anger fills Nova's body, her veins pumping with adrenaline, and with a stifled roar of anger and exertion, she twists her arms and tears through her makeshift straitjacket, the navy sweater splitting in half down the middle to fall into pieces on the floor as she gets up quickly, blinking the worst of the blood from her eyes. About to sock Issac in the throat, the door opens and Ms. Willton enters to find... her normal classroom, Issac, Jordan, and Marcus on their phones in the corner, while Nova hides her cut with a piece of her destroyed sweater, Asher sitting next to her. She doesn't notice the way the class cannot concentrate on their work, nor the scraps of navy wool on the floor. She doesn't notice the drops of blood on the desk and the carpet, or the way Nova trembles from head to toe, her arms already sporting bruises and red marks from the bullies' rough hands.
Like too many people, she simply doesn't look for something uncomfortable to acknowledge.