Acquainted With Raisinhood - Excerpt from Chapter 1 and 2

At first I didn’t see what was happening or understand why Lennox looked so terrified until I glimpsed through the cracks of the crowd and saw two boys fighting in the middle. I felt myself immediately get excited because, as unfortunate as they were, a fist-fight was probably the best kind of entertainment a kid can get in school. However, as I looked closer, I felt my heart drop and a wave of nervousness overcome my body when I recognized one of the boys to be Ryan. Lennox and I sprinted towards the chanting crowd, shoving our way through to get to our friends. For some reason it wasn’t a surprise to me to see Dylan there too as he was wrestling with a boy wearing a leather jacket while Ryan was punching and pushing who I realized was Leo, the freshman from the rally.

Lennox immediately made her way to Dylan as I rushed towards Ryan whose head was currently locked under Leo’s thick arm. I knew that I should’ve acted like Lennox and tried to break up the fight as peacefully as possible but seeing my friends being mistreated like that made me instinctively punch Leo square in the jaw. When I heard a faint crack I hoped that it was the sound of Leo’s jaw and not my wrist when my fist made contact with his face. I thought I heard Lennox cry out for me to stop but I didn’t get a chance to glance back at her as Leo kneed my abdomen and shoved me away from him causing me to fall on the ground with a thud.

I panicked a little when it looked like Leo was going to kneel next to me and continue to smash my face with his abnormally large hand. I would never admit it aloud but the sight terrified me to death. I don’t know what I was thinking picking a fight with someone who looked like he ate a dozen raw eggs and could shred cheese with his 12-pack abs but it was probably going to be the last thing I’ll ever see. At least that’s what I thought until Ryan pulled Leo’s broad shoulders back and shoved him away from me. I pushed myself off the ground and heard Lennox scream. I turned around to see Dylan being straddled by the dark-haired boy in a leather jacket. Dylan tried his best to block his face from the boy’s violent strikes but was grunting in pain from the blows on his stomach. Lennox screamed for the boy to get off Dylan and threw punches of her own.

That was when a girl with colorful hair pulled Lennox away from Leather Boy and shoved her roughly aside which eventually ignited another fist-fight. I quickly made my way towards them trying to pull the girls apart but was interrupted when Ryan slammed into me and from there it was all a blur. I was hitting and shoving people I couldn’t see, my hair was being pulled, my skin was being scratched, and so many people were yelling. There was so much going on that I didn’t even notice two other girls and my friends Ben and Chase joining in. I could only imagine what we all looked like though. I wondered if it was like watching those fights you see in the cartoons. The ones where a group of people start beating the shit out of each other but all you can see if a cloud of smoke and the occasional stars and “Pow!” or “Bang!”

It felt like we were fighting for hours but it didn’t occur to me that all of this transpired in the span of about five minutes. At the screeching sound of a whistle, I looked up to see Mr. Oriega with a face as red as the tie he was wearing. Moriarty, one of the security guys at the school, was behind him sporting his signature trucker’s hat and a baggy shirt with the school’s logo on it. Moriarty separated Lennox and the other girl with ease as Mr. Oriega attempted to separate Dylan from Leather Boy. Ryan had released his grip on Leo and the two random girls froze from their positions on Ben’s and Chase’s backs while I stood there awkwardly disheveled.

But as the rest of us stopped our fighting, Leather Boy and Dylan were still going at it. All of us watched Leather Boy continue to slug Dylan with such ferocity and speed that Dylan was having a really hard time protecting himself, desperately gasping for air as the boy’s weight crushed him. Leather Boy ignored Mr. Oriega’s orders to stop and merely pushed the assistant principal aside every time he tried to pry him off Dylan. The kid was completely animalistic.

“I said that’s enough!” Mr. Oriega growled, gripping Leather Boy’s bicep and yanking him roughly away from Dylan who was panting heavily and glaring daggers at the violent boy in front of him. Leather Boy squirmed in Oriega’s grip but eventually stopped when the administrator’s hold tightened around his arm. Still holding on to the delinquent boy, Mr. Oriega pointed at Dylan with a chubby finger. “You. You need to go to the nurse?”

Dylan shook his head but his eyes were still glaring at Leather Boy. To be honest, Dylan looked like he could’ve used a trip to the nurse. His face was starting to swell and bruise and there was no doubt that the rest of his body was pretty messed up too. Ryan didn’t look too bad but his hand was rubbing the side of his stomach and his hands were red and swollen. Lennox looked a little roughened up too but she didn’t look like she had any bruises just a really messy nest of crimson hair and smudged makeup.

“Get to class!” Oriega ordered, sending pointed glares at the crowd of students who were trying to hang on to the very last second to see how it would all end for us. They were no doubt going to start spreading the word about the full-out “mini-war” to all their friends. Knowledge is power, I guess.

I didn’t even realize that the bell rang until I noticed the sea of students heading to their fifth period classrooms. Some of us started to do the same and went to grab our backpacks when Oriega stopped us. He didn’t say anything, only snapped his chubby fingers and pointed to his abnormally small feet expecting us to walk over to him like trained dogs. We exchanged glances at each other but obeyed, refusing to make contact with his dark eyes. I’ve heard a lot of rumors about Oriega when I first came here. Out of three assistant principals, Oriega was apparently the most lenient but I never interacted with him enough to see if that rumor was true.

“This is the first month of school so I’m going to make this easy for all of us,” he said once we all stood around him. He still had his grip on Leather Boy, who had ceased his struggle to escape the short man’s hold, and Moriarty stood menacingly behind Lennox and a girl with curly bleached blonde hair and strings of neon pink and blue highlights. Everyone was panting heavily and looking at each other with caution, as if one of us were going to start another round of ass-whoopin’.

“All of you are going to get to class, get some ice if you need to, and forget this ever happened,” Oriega explained but I doubt anyone was really listening. “And this will never happen again. You don’t want to be friends? Fine by me, just don’t start any fights in my school.”

That surprised me and seemed a bit unrealistic. I mean, a fight breaks out in school and he was just going to let it go? I know that if this happened at my middle school, we’d all be suspended and get letters sent home to our parents. Still, I didn’t complain and considered myself lucky. Mom would have a heart attack if she found out that her youngest kid, her “baby,” had gotten in a small Hunger Games match at school.

The assistant principal was met with silence but the tension was undeniably present. Dylan and the boy in the leather jacket never broke eye contact and the longer they stared at each other the angrier they seemed to become.

“We good?” Oriega asked, his arms outstretched as if to prevent them from jumping on each other again. No one nodded or explicitly agreed, fully aware that he was talking more to the two boys glaring daggers at each other. Oriega was met with silence once again.

“I said, are we goo-”

The two boys lunged towards each other with fire in their eyes and loud battle cries escaping their lips.

And chaos returned after that.

Chapter 2: 

Growing up in a strict Christian school from kindergarten to middle school, the principal’s office never seemed to be a place that a student would want to avoid at all costs. Granted, it was different when your name would be called over the PA but other than that you were considered the chosen one when asked for an audience in the prestige mystery room. I’ve only been in there a handful of times. It wasn’t much. Really crowded, stocked with random papers that seemed to be important, the smell of a recent reheat from a cheap microwave, and the occasional coffee smell. The only thing terrifying about the room was the school’s secretary Mrs. Benjamin. The sixty-five year old woman had teeth as yellow as the stack of tardy slips on her clutter of a desk, fake nails and hair, and the most outdated pair of neon glasses.

The principal’s office of Killman High School, however, had its own daunting atmosphere that left me feeling uneasy. Sitting down in an uncomfortable chair surrounded by a bunch of your friends and some random students that apparently have experience in bar fights is definitely not the best position to be in. I still don’t know how Mr. Oriega managed to bring in eleven students into a small office without them killing each other. We all sat divided with our respected sides. Dylan, Ben, Chase, Ryan, Lennox and I sat to the right of Principal Hank while Leo, Leather Boy, and the three other girls sat to her left. I was the only one sitting in a chair in front of Principal Hank’s desk on my side while a pretty girl in a zebra print dress sat in the other chair.

As seemingly peaceful the process was to move us all in the principal’s office, the minute we all got into our seats everyone burst in a chorus of angry slurs towards the opposite side. Some were even screaming at poor Principal Hank who sat in shock at the fiasco taking place in front of her.

The girl that was sitting next to me was even yelling in another language. So far, I’ve only had a few weeks of Spanish class but I somehow managed to understand every word. And boy, was she a fiery one.

“Estas pinches putas de madre son pendejos y se cagaron con mis amigos. ¿Y sabes lo que pasa cuando la gente joden con mis amigos? ¡Cosas malas!”

Which basically translated to something about assholes fucking with her friends and her not being happy about it. To be honest, I was a little distracted by how pretty she was. She couldn’t have been a freshman. At most she was a junior. I tried not to stare at her long black hair and how oddly attractive she looked when she was possibly cussing out Principal Hank in Spanish. It wasn’t until Principal Hanks let out a throaty yell that the room became dead silent.