Chapter 1 – Snitches and Stitches – Holly Hayfield

Before my expulsion from the public school system I was the epitome of a picture perfect popular girl. As the rising star of the track team I had no shortage of friends, fans, and admirers. I never imagined back then that I’d be cast down into the abyss. Back then everything came easily. On most days back then I spent my waking hours in a euphoric dreamlike haze of such ease that my memories of those days blurred together.

On the days of notability I was out having fun with my friends. I was winning awards in sports. I was accepting accolades of distinguished academic performance. I felt invincible, for a time. I felt like nothing could knock me down from where I was.

At the climax of my high school life I was the girl that every high school girl wanted to be. I was the girl that every high school guy wanted to be with. I was an angel that everyone admired. Never did I imagine what would happen next. In a cruel twist of fate my school life came crashing down in a violent and bloody end.

Once the dust had settled and all accounts were taken in, a final judgment was given to me. My punishment… My atonement would bypass purgatory altogether. It’d send me to a place not of redemption, but a place of further despair. It’d send me straight to hell. This is the story of my struggle to survive it.

‘Hell’ might seem an overdramatic hyperbole for describing a school. To me it was an understatement, inadequate for expressing my ongoing situation. It never occurred to me that I’d one day be on the lowest rung of the social ladder. People stepped all over me as an everyday occurrence. The lowlife bullies that harassed me day-to-day fed off my misery. This was the first time I had ever dreaded attending school. The thought of facing my tormentors was tormenting within itself.

The difference between the public school system and the alternative school system was night and day. My new school was called ‘Meredith’s School for Troubled Girls’. Every student there I had met so far lived up to the ‘Troubled Girl’ part. They all had some major malfunction that landed them a VIP spot at this school for broken individuals. The thing that drove these girls mad, the thing they originally bullied me for, was the fact that they couldn’t figure out mine.

By the end of the first week my place as the classroom sandbag had been cemented. I mostly kept quietly to myself. My lovely peers, on the other hand, regularly thumped their chests like wild animals in tribal-esque displays of strength. My isolation made me an easy target. This was my first year at Meredith’s School for Troubled Girls and I didn’t understand what was happening around me when everyone started choosing a faction. Some of my classmates had been there since the first day of their freshmen year and so they, unlike me, knew the protocol.

We were seniors now and so my first year at this school would be my last, one way or another. My fellow students made groups quickly, some of those groups being holdovers from the years before. Those without one of these groups, i.e. me, would be subject to harsher treatment than those with a clique to back them up. The pressure to join one of these factions was real. Few of them wanted me because, well, I was the very image of a ‘picture perfect popular girl’. I was the type of person these delinquents hated most.

During the second week of school on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon I was facing my usual trial for this time of day. Where could I eat my lunch without being disturbed? The question sounded laughably pathetic upfront. This was a question for some loner, not for a standout girl like me. Yet the reality of this question would determine one of two things. Would I get to eat lunch today? Or would it be thrown on the ground in front of me as per usual?

That being the case, I put some serious effort into finding a hiding spot where no one would bother me. Most of the school was like desecrated ground. The founder, for whom the school was named for, placed her heart into creating a school in which troubled girls could be healed in a place of safety. That dream went unrealized. Safety was in short supply at this school.

This day was going to be special however. This was going to be the day that I made a safe place of my own within the school’s perimeters. The place I found was a quaint little open air spot between the main school building and the gymnasium. The windows of the gymnasium were high and this part of the school building didn’t have any windows to peer into this little alcove. The area itself was a cube-shaped structure with one side open.

To the left of where I was sitting there was the gymnasium wall. Immediately behind me was the gym storage building that had no windows and was joined into the gymnasium building. To the right of me was the main school building. The whole area was nearly the size of a classroom. It went unused because it was so far out of the way that no one bothered with it. Furthermore, there was a faster way to the gymnasium and so there would be no reason at all to come this way unless you were specifically looking for someone.

So imagine my surprise as I’m eating alone and I hear giggles and whispers from close by. I look up to see the faces of Black Brittney and her gang. Gang was putting it nicely. They were more like a cult. Their culture was different from the other cliques, groups, and gangs that ran this school. Black Brittney was truly the figurehead of a cult. The members of her group worshiped her like a deity. They had interpersonal struggles over who was closest to her and internal politics like that of a dictatorship.

Black Brittney herself was easy to spot as they crept up to me. She had hideously fake blonde hair that didn’t suit her dark skin. The contrast between Brittney’s wig color and skin color gave her that nickname, ‘Black Brittney’. She wore ghastly blue-eyed color contacts and gaudily overdone nails. Beside her was her favorite lieutenant and second-in-command, Candace. Going by the way she was whispering into Black Brittney’s ear it seemed like she was the one who spotted me. It usually was. Members of Brittney’s cult had to compete for her attention in such a manner.

“Well, well, look at who we have here. We didn’t see you in the cafeteria. You’re not avoiding me, are you, Holly?” Black Brittney asked sarcastically.

The devilish leer on her face was her trademark expression. It was unsettling to see as they slowly surrounded me. Naturally I stood up and began to backpedal, but my back hit the wall and my lunch tray fell out of my hands. They all laughed on cue. Their fake laughs were robotic, like something from an old laugh track. Candace reached out to me and put a hand on my shoulder. As I tried to pull away she grasped my arm like a python and held me in place.

“Oh? You’re trying to avoid us, aren’t you? How rude of you. We were only starting to get to know each other.” Candace said.

Her smile was a weak imitation of Brittney’s. In order to drive home the uncomfortable feeling of being preyed upon she stood within my personal bubble. With her superior height she stared down at me and grins in an attempt to intimidate me. I was intimidated. Anyone would feel so in my shoes. What clearly pissed her off was the fact that I wasn’t as intimidated as she wanted me to be.

Without any warning she put her other hand onto me and shoved me against the wall. The back of my head hit the brick siding of the gym storage room so hard that my vision went blank for a second. A jolt of shock went through my entire body and I let out a cry of pain. I put my hands on my head where the pain was throbbing and dropped down to my knees. Surprisingly enough, Brittney was the one to pull Candace off of me.

“You dumbass, what do you think you’re doing?” She asked.

“Her cocky attitude annoys the hell out of me. She needs to be put in her place.” Candace said.

“What are you going to do if she starts bleeding? This stupid idiot has already been talking to the teachers. What do you think will happen if she comes to them with blood all over her?” Brittney asked.

And this, lo and behold, was the extent of what their bullying was capable of. So as long as I didn’t have blood on me my complaints weren’t taken seriously. It wasn’t that my complaints were unbelievable. My complaints were something the teachers themselves didn’t want to deal with. There were hundreds of troubled girls at this troubled school and fights happened on the regular. If I wasn’t covered in blood then my complaints were superseded by those who were.

Brittney stepped forward, grabbed a fistful of my school uniform and yanked me to my feet. She came close to me, her slimy leer unchanging.

“You said something to them, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me. One of my girls saw you in the teacher’s lounge getting all friendly with the hag. If you think she’ll do anything to protect you then you’re even dumber than I thought you were.”

Most of the girls in our class regularly referred to our elderly homeroom teacher Ms. Kinsley as ‘the hag’, sometimes to her face. Her non-confrontational nature kept her from pursuing punishment for disrespectful comments, disruptive behavior, and dangerous actions. Due to this she was a horrible teacher for me. She was the perfect teacher for Black Brittney. Black Brittney, as notorious as her group was, was good at staying out of official trouble for the most part. Her home situation was unknown to me, but it was obvious how afraid she was of getting into trouble.

Brittney stepped closer to me and put her lips up to my ear. I could feel the warmth of her breath as she brushed up against me. She pressed herself against me so hard that I was being squeezed between her and the wall behind me. This was in full view of her group who went from watching with fake smiles, to watching with interest. It was clear though that Black Brittney wanted only me to hear this. She whispered so quietly into my ear that at first I couldn’t make out the words. As she spoke her words became more stressed and she lost control over her volume.

“…and I swear to GOD Holly Hayfield, if you get me in trouble with the principal I’ll make the rest of your life a living hell. I’ll take you somewhere private after school and make you regret speaking even a single word to them. I’ll make you regret meeting me. I’ll make you regret setting foot into the school. I’ll make you regret ever being born. Do you hear me you little shit? I’ll ask you one more time before I really get mad. What. Did. You. Say?”

The girls behind her couldn’t hear what she said, but they saw her step back and wait. They all stared at me, waiting for a response, waiting for a reaction. They wanted me to grovel, for me to beg, for me to plead. I wasn’t going to give them that. I wasn’t going to give them anything. They could abuse me, to an extent. They could intimidate me, to an extent. None of that was enough to make me break. They were starting to realize this.

After waiting awkwardly for an answer that wasn’t coming, Brittney lost her composure. Her leer went away, her eyes widened, and she snapped. She dramatically drew back her hand and then whipped it across my face in a loud, painful slap. Whereas other times physical abuse would elicit laughter from her group, this time it caused gasps and whispers. Brittney was breaking her own rule. Her slap had all of her strength in it and was liable to leave an obvious bruise.

The slap hurt Brittney more than me. After putting up with bullying since the first day of school I was growing resilient. The slap forced my head to turn and I drew my hand to my cheek in pain. Her reaction was worse. She clutched her hand in pain and pulled it into her stomach as she reeled forward. Candace and another girl from her group stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. They both leaned in to see if she was okay. I quietly laughed to myself as I had never imagined these creatures to be capable of such empathy.

Brittney swiped their hands away. She glared at me murderously as she stood up straight.

“So that’s how you’re going to be, huh? Today I wanted to go easy on you. If you would’ve cooperated this could have gone differently. It’s too bad you’re such a piece of trash. I’m going to enjoy this.” She said.

Brittney looked at Candace and gave her a nod. Candace looked back and motioned for someone to come forward.

“New girl, you’re up. Let’s see you teach this bitch some manners.” Candace said.

The group of girls parted like the red sea until the newest member of their group was in plain sight. She nervously walked forward with a pained look on her face. This hurt me more than anything else they had done so far. The girl walking forward was Amber. She was a somewhat meek girl that I met on the first day of school and managed to talk to. She had stopped talking to me altogether recently and I wondered why. Now I knew why.

For me this was an ‘Et tu, Brute?’ moment. For her this was gang initiation. Brittney and Candace stepped back to give her center stage as she approached me. The look on her face was apologetic, but she couldn’t say anything. If she did they would likely turn on her. It was eat or be eaten. Join or die. For that reason I decided to look away from her. That way this would be easier for both of us. Amber hesitated to do anything.

“Go on,” Candace urged, “Punch her in the stomach. If she pukes her guts up I’ll give you 10 bucks.”

The girls behind Amber laughed maniacally. Their laugh track routine was somewhat mandatory. Like any dictatorship, someone that didn’t show high enough praise was at risk to becoming subjected to punishment themselves. Amber didn’t laugh. She wasn’t a monster. I knew at least that much about her. She was a regular girl forced to make hard decisions that led her up to this moment, another hard decision.

“Sorry,” She whispered under her breath.

It sounded like her mind was made up. I nodded back ever so slightly. With that, she had the resolve she needed to actually go through with this. She cocked back her arm and then launched it forward into my abdominal region. In truth her punch didn’t hurt. She had obviously never done this before and I had been hit far, far worse. Still, I held myself and cringed forward overdramatically. I could no longer call Amber my friend, if we ever truly were before, but I didn’t want Candace and Brittney to pounce on her instead.

“You’re going easy on her, new girl! Let me show you how it’s done.” Candace said.

Candace had been waiting for this. She always volunteered herself like this to try to impress the others. She hit me below the ribs and laughed as I held myself reflexively.

“We’re not done here yet.” Candace said.

With both hands she grabbed my hair and pulled me closer to her. Once I was close enough she threw me down to the ground, keeping hold of me only enough to ensure I didn’t hit the ground head first. She glanced up at Black Brittney who nodded in approval. She hovered over me menacingly before letting go of me. She looked down on me with a smug air of superiority.

As I tried to get up Candace put her foot on me to force me back down. This, I could see, gave her a great deal of genuine satisfaction. Her smile just now was authentic. This was enjoyable for her more than anyone else in her group. I could understand Amber’s reasoning from a purely human perspective. Candace though, there was no way to justify her cruelty in my mind. She probably did this because she got off on it.

“Come on, give her a kick.” Candace said.

She waved the rest of the girls over to signal that this was an open invitation. Brittney pulled out a cigarette and lit it. She took a long drag on it and then looked down at me with her ugly leer.

“Be careful of her face. Don’t leave any evidence.” Brittney said.

My natural response was to curl up into a fetal position and defend as much as myself as possible. It was hard to do. They couldn’t afford to kick me normally and risk leaving bruises. Instead, they circled around me and stepped on me one after another. For the most part they held back in accordance with Brittney’s wishes. It was only Candace, I assumed, who was dishing out serious kicks.

“Hey!” A voice called out to the girls from a distance, “Hasn’t she had enough?” She asked.

All the girls turned back to look. Candace turned with a dirty look on her face as though she was sickened at the thought of being interrupted. Black Brittney winced when she saw who it was. It was Val. Valentina Ivanovich was the one person Black Brittney and her gang feared the most. This wasn’t exactly relieving for me. Black Brittney was a common thug with a cult of personality. Valentina was a unique monster of an entirely different grade. Black Brittney wasn’t the main reason I was hiding at lunch. Val was. Upon seeing her through the legs of the girls standing around me I began to shake.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Candace said haughtily.

Candace made a showy maneuver of kicking me one last time before walking towards Val. Black Brittney and her group reluctantly backed Candace up. Val matched Candace’s pace unflinchingly. Despite being outnumbered, Val was marching forward with no sense of concern. It was like watching two trains prepare to collide in slow motion.

On one side, Candace swaggered over towards Val like a pirate. She wanted to look tough. Brittney backed her up by handing her cigarette to Candace. Meanwhile, Val held her hands together in front of her innocently. Her casual, friendly smile was warm and almost inviting. Candace took one long drag on the cigarette before handing it back to Brittney. She exhaled the cloud of smoke directly into Val’s face. Val didn’t flinch.

“Smoking is against the school rules.” Val said.

“Do I look like I give a shit?” Candace asked.

Candace reached out for Val, the same way she grabbed me earlier. That was a stupid mistake. Perhaps Candace hadn’t had enough personal run-ins with Val to see beyond the surface, but I knew what was coming. Val’s counter attack happened after an immediate deflection of Candace’s grab. Before she knew what was happening, Candace was on the ground in a sleeper hold, gasping for air.

As Brittney and her gang began to step up to help, Val tightened her hold and looked up. Candace slapped Val’s arm to try loosening Val’s death grip. Brittney and her group were frozen solid as they were unsure how to help Candace. Candace’s resistance waned as she began to pass out. Val kept Candace propped up as her body went limp.

“You see, this is why smoking is so bad for you. Normally this would take much longer.” Val said casually.

“Let her go!” Brittney shouted.

“I’ll let her go.” Val said.

She released Candace from the choke hold, letting her face-plant into the cold, hard ground. Candace came around gasping for air. I felt a certain sense of schadenfreude watching her flail around on the ground as she tried to choke down air. Val grabbed Candace by her hair and forced her to her knees. Val pointed a finger at me.

“Interested in making an exchange? I’ll trade you this girl for that one. Deal?”