I didn't care that Josh's snub nose was now more crooked, nor did I care that he was bleeding through a nostril. I wanted to keep hitting him, to let all my emotions out.

Crypta was everywhere on my mind, telling me where and how I should hit him. I could hear people screaming - most of them were the tenth graders asking me to stop. Some cheered on, but none of those mattered.

All I could see was Josh.

He had revived from the shock and swung his hand to where he'd always loved hitting me: my stomach. I was quicker, angrier and strong enough to hold that hand, twist him and turn him so that his back was to me.

Lifting my knee, I hit his spine in annoyance. I watched him fall to the floor, planting his face there. I could still hear myself breathing, my heart beating, my head telling me to go on. Adrenaline or not, I did not want to stop.

When I turned him, the spot on the floor his face formerly lay was bloodstained. So was his face, but I didn't care, not now.

"You. Stay. Away. From. People!" I thundered in between punches.

Josh's hands were annoying, trying to cover his face, preventing me from letting the negative emotions out so I forced them up and held them with my right hand. It prevented me from giving him punches that had serious impact and that made me even angrier.

Even worse, something was preventing me from hitting him further, it was holding my arms and pulling me away from Josh. I think it was Emily, she was screaming at me to stop.

It made me leave Josh's hands and soon they were free. When I looked up, I saw a scared George with trembling hands and quivering eyebrows. He looked around and spotted a small knife on the tray.

"Josh!" He screamed and threw the knife in Josh's direction. Josh pushed me off him and made to grab the knife. I caught the knife before Josh did and pushed him against the leg of the table. I pushed whoever was holding me off me and pressed the sharp end of the knife to Josh.

I didn't know how scary my eyes were at the moment but Josh quivered once he realized the position he was in. "I know what a knife is." I pressed the knife further in. "And I'm not afraid to use it."

George yelled my name and I felt him hold me and pull me to him, trying to keep me as far away from Josh as possible. That only fuelled my anger. Why couldn't they let me finish up with Josh? Weren't my actions enough messages that none of them mattered other than Joshua Watson?

I shifted my hips to the side and gave George the hardest groin slaps I had ever given someone. He screamed in shock and let go of me, but struggled to get the knife out of my hand. Vainly, though. I punched him to the floor and went back to my main target.

"Emerald Prudence Scother!" I heard a male voice call me. An authoritative male voice that made me throw the knife away and stare up.

The slicked-back brown toffee hair of Mr Lucky McMahon and his pair of round brown eyes were staring at me. Beside him was a dark-skinned lanky tenth grader who had once gotten a student expelled with his running mouth. I think his surname was Roy. I glanced at his afro hair before turning back to the principal.

Mr McMahon the Principal walked toward Josh and me, Mr Steve behind him with a disappointed expression, and the lanky teenager with a straight face, pretty much. He stared at Josh and when I looked at Josh, he was lying helpless, his back against the foot of the table, his hands on his side. Blood dripped down his neck and down past his shoulder blade.

I raised my hand as I bent my head to look at them. My knuckles were stained in blood, from the first to the tenth. Now that I wasn't fighting, my head was pounding, my breathing was decreasing, and my legs were losing strength. I held on to our table. Emily and Griffin were beside me looking at me with uncertainty, scared I would attack again. Griffin still held my arm and wrapped his other arm around my waist. It wasn't just for support, I knew, he was scared I would attack again.

I didn't plan to, truly. Not when my senses were coming back, not when the blood on Josh's face didn't seem worth the suspension I would be getting any time soon.

Suspension. Did I not want that?

My lips were hurting from when Josh had managed to give me a single punch. The one punch that had made me lose the last bit of sense I had and begin to attack him as though the future of Neba depended on it. I raised my hand touched the swollen spot on my lips.

"Scother, how do you care to explain this?" Mr McMahon asked just as the automatic bell rang.

"She was trying to he-"

"Your opinion was not sought for, Greenwood... Scother, I asked a question."

"Principal, I..."

"Rose-Gold High has zero-tolerance for any form of physical abuse!" He reminded me. He sent the teenager to call the Vice Principal, Ms Jones.

Everyone was staring, so eager, some happy that I had got into trouble. No one left the cafeteria, even though break time was now over. They eyes were focused on the scene before them. Some students even had their phones out. I couldn't satisfy their evil minds. I had to say something. I held on to the table tighter, my legs wobbling in tiredness.

"Zero tolerance?" I finally let out, my voice came out quieter than it sounded in my head. "This school has zero-tolerance for any form of physical abuse? Mr McMahon, are you going to tell me that you will not bother to know the cause of the fight?"

"Watson could have been killed if I had come here one minute later-" Mr McMahon started.

"Well, none of this would have happened if the school were acting on their words of the so-called zero-tolerance policy."

"Emery, what are you saying?" Mr Steve asked.

"Are you going to tell 'em, Mr McMahon, that you are not away that Josh derives joy in bullying people?" I asked as I wriggled my body. Griffin got the information and removed his hands from me. He stood beside me. "Or are you going to tell the entire school that you do not knowingly ignore that fact because you and his father are acquainted?"

His silence was my cue to continue. "Of course, you don't speak now. You go around, calling people by their surname, acting like you have power over them-"

"Scother-" he cut me off.

"You let me finish, Principal Lucky McMahon," I interrupted. "You don't consider Josh's case, but you note that Emery Scother 'physically abused' somebody. Because I'm not a cheerleader? Because I don't bring back basketball championship awards that increase the school's reputation?" Tears were at the corner of my eyes now, threatening to run down in beautiful drops.

"Because my mum does not own some big organization, or because you and my father are not close? We go to the same school, can't you see? They're not richer than us if they cannot afford another school where the poor aren't. And I'm sure every one of us wants to say it out loud so that y'all would quit intimidating us because of what we are not." I wished I could be louder, more convincing, like Crypta Domroyante when he first came to me.

It was quiet at first, but then they were murmurings, then hushed approvals, a few sounds of acknowledgement and soon, the entire cafeteria was clapping. Griffin too, because I knew this was something he'd always wished to say.

I mean, it was the reason he considered the Senior Prefect position so that he could speak on the stage during assembly and address the issue of bullying and discrimination.

"Everyone leave!" He ordered. Some students scurried out. Some stayed by the door, those who wished to have the full details of this drama. A few daring students, however, didn't move. "Emerald Scother," Mr McMahon called. "Come with me."

"Why? So that you can talk in the absence of the students? So that you can pass an unfair judgement..." I scoffed. "Dare me."

Mr Steve narrowed his eyebrows. "Emery!"

"You not only fought a student, but you're also justifying it and you're wrongly accusing the student authority. You should be given an indefinite suspension."

I said the very first thing that crossed my mind, "Go ahead. My stepmom's a lawyer," and I shocked myself with it. Because not only did I take advantage of the power that I was here preaching against, I had admitted, though indirectly, that I had accepted Giada Scother as my stepmother.

Rowan would hate me if he was here. He would scoff and never talk to me again.

Even if I could rewind time, even if I wasn't in this situation, I would never want to take back those words I said. And I guess, that was just the problem.

***

I was seated on the chair of the Principal's grey office, facing his large mahogany table, with a wet cloth that I held close to my lips, where Josh had punched me. Sure, they had called my mother, but because she was with Clark and Giada when they called, the three of them were now standing here, looking at me.

They had been talking, dad, Giada and Mr McMahon mostly. I didn't want to know what they were saying.

Somehow, I felt stupid. I had always complained to mum how much I wanted to go to a new school. I should've been happy when Mr McMahon brought up the concept of expulsion. I should not have tried to defend myself.

But I did the exact opposite of everything I had ever truly wanted before.

"My child, how could you fight someone?" Mum walked to me and bent to meet me. "Didn't I tell you that violence was never the answer?"

She made to touch my cut lips, but I pushed her hand away, more instinctively than consciously.

"Mum, please! I don't want to have to argue with you or remind you how much I have tried to convince you to have me enrolled in a better bully-free school!"

The thoughts were rushing in again. It was hard to keep my mouth shut now. Not when I had a lot to say, not when I didn't want to sound weak. I stood up immediately. "But of course, you wouldn't listen. Violence was never the answer. But can't you see? Now, he would never have the courage to come toward me, call me, or lay as much a finger on me."

"Emery, you are not to speak to your mother that way!" Dad barked, his stern brown eyes reminding me of my manners. I pressed my lips, just like I always did whenever it was dad scolding me for coming back home with a poor result.

I glanced at mum. Her eyes were teary, I knew she was holding back the pain. I turned away as I felt a sharp claw gnawing at my chest.

"Sorry," I shut my eyes and quickly muttered.

I always hated it when he looked at me with disappointment, I never wanted to get him upset, always wanted to do things to please him, to make him happy. Even now that he had done what I thought I would never forgive, I still wanted to make him proud. I hated it. I hated the position he was putting mum in, the pain he was having her go through. Mum was a reserved person, a peacemaker, very selfless to a fault. She'd rather you smile even if it meant see had to cry on the inside.

I pressed the cloth closer to my lips. It provided a soothing comfort to the pain, made me feel like I was healing.

"Emery, I understand how you feel," Giada sympathized. I held the urge to scoff. "I used to be a fragile one, always unnoticed. I used to watch people being bullied."

Her voice cracked. Tears welled up in her eyes. She was probably remembering something, something she had been trying hard to forget. "And because I used to be so weak, I couldn't do anything about it. I watched boys, girls, hit young vulnerable people like me, who couldn't fight for themselves."

She ran her hand along my hair, trying to calm me down. Because we were both standing, she took me out of the principal's office and shut the door. "Emery, I had a boyfriend in the university, a boy, like this Griffin you'd fought, and I admired his humour and culinary skills. But he was a nervous one because he'd come from a family who bullied him every day."

The thing here was, Griffin was not my boyfriend. Who exactly was I fighting for? Was I defending Griffin? Was I paying Josh back for everything now because I could, because I now knew how to fight? Was I defying an ethic I held strongly?

She pulled me into a hug and I just accepted it. Somehow, I was crying too. I could feel this woman's pain- it reflected mine. "I was going to visit one day and as I stepped in, his foster mother hit him and called him worthless. I guess it was all too much because right there, he fainted and died later, in the hospital."

"Wha-"

"According to the doctor, he had way too many injuries from previous hits and that was just the last straw that finally broke his back. No matter what people tell me, I know that it was my fault because I never dared to speak up for myself or him." She hugged me tighter like I was that boy and this was the last time she'd ever be close to him. "From that day, I knew that what I wanted to do was to speak for people, to support them, defend them from the unjust world and-"

"Was that why you decided to be a lawyer?"

She nodded and smiled, her blue eyes shone but the pain was visible. "I'm sorry for how much my presence hurt you, or how much the presence of your step-siblings affect you. You may not be able to forgive me... but I hope you forgive your dad."

I pulled back and stared at her pleading electric blue eyes that were blurred by tears. This woman, Giada, was someone I could relate to. Someone who could understand me. I didn't want to let her go.

I wanted to ask her questions. Why did she do it? It sounded so disrespectful in my head. Slowly, I returned the hug and hid my face in her neck, getting as much comfort as a hug would provide.

The truth was, I loved this woman, as much as it hurt me. But wasn't that the case? Wasn't it a known fact, almost cliché even, that love hurts?

.

A/N

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