It had been three days since I decided the new seating arrangements in the bus. In the course of those three days, at least five people had shyly come up to me and asked if we could be friends. When I confusedly said yes, they'd thank me and run away.

Whenever I asked Bonnie about it, she simply shrugged. However, when the last girl went skipping away during lunch period, I turned and ranted to Henry.

"I have the most friends now than I ever have before." I told him straight off. "What's going on? Ever since I stepped on Parker and Drew, suddenly..."

"It's simple." Henry interrupted calmly, having finished his applesauce. "You pose a threat to Parker and Drew. If a kid has your word of protection, they won't touch a hair on that kids head."

Now I understood. They were just using me!

"Don't worry." Henry told me comfortingly. "It gives you all kinds of street cred."

"I don't want street cred!" I told him. "I want to be a normal kid!"

"Well, that's not happening." He told me plainly. "Embrace the awesomeness."

We ate in silence. Some more kids joined our table, unfortunately, so no private conversations could happen. Also unfortunate: Bonnie didn't have the same lunch period as Henry and I. Right now, she was in Algebra.

"So..." I trailed off, trying find some easy of conversation. "Do you like burgers?"

"Man, you know I'm a vegetarian." Henry rolled his eyes. "Do I look like a meat eater?"

We got a laugh out of that for really no reason at all, then quickly lapsed again into silence. This was an uncomfortable seat to be silent in, because I could see Drew in the table across from us, just glaring at me. I can assure you, that is not a pleasant position to be in.

Have I ever described how creepy Parker and Drew actually are?

If you were thinking that they were the usual, stuck-up, girl loving, sort-of-buff-but-not-really football jocks, then you were mistaken.

Parker was, oddly enough, the buffer of the two. Even though this was middle school, he did have pretty developed muscles, and a death grip - or so I've heard. He has a soft face, which I know only by punching him. He has an Asian complexion (no offense... I don't know how else to explain it, I'm not good at people) and a tenor voice that's really gutteral and will definitely not drop to a bass anytime soon, if ever. He should not be a singer.

Drew, on the other hand, was skinny and really tall. He definitely had muscles, but they weren't very noticeable unless you were close. His body itself was pretty un-scary, but now... We have arrived at his eyes. His eyes themselves were weapons, as cutting and sharp as a knife. They seemed to look into your eyes, sear through the flesh and bone, and look at all of your secrets as if they were written on paper in front of him. At least, that was my opinion.

In short? That dude was downright scary. Parker I wasn't scared of. But Drew...

I realized I had been staring into my empty soup bowl while addressing these annoying people in my mind. Henry was shaking me, and with a particularly hard shake I snapped out of my daze. "What?"

"You've gone off again." He said exasperatedly. "Scarlet, first bell just went off."

I shot out of my chair. "Crap, we're going to miss Algebra!"

We grabbed our trays and bags, threw our trays on the counter, and half-walked, half-ran through the hallways. In the crowd I lost Henry, walking in his weird way a bit in front of me, and tried to hurry to keep up with him. In doing so I lost track of who I was around, and smacked right into - guess who? Yep.

"Watch where you're going, kid." Drew growled, stepping away. The other kids, as usual, edged away - just as they always did. Even I took a hair's width of of a step back before making a face at him.

"I don't want to be late for class, loser." I snapped. "Now, could you move out of the way?"

"Ooh's" and "burn" echoed behind me. Drew, obviously a bit taken aback, found that he could do nothing. To back down would be a sign of weakness, and to fight back would only prompt further humiliation.

So he did the only thing he could really do - revert to his normal voice and threaten me. "Look, kid, I know you're new here, but you've got to understand something if you wanna live through second year middle school. Parker and I rule, and some new girl's not going to ruin it. Understand?"

I closed my eyes the minute he started talking and just listened to his voice. I knew better than to look at a bass or bass-in-training. They were... Extremely stuck-up and a nuisance. Not exactly boring... They were... Uh... Something worse than boring.

Yeah.

Anyway... "I understand perfectly. I understand that you're scared. I understand that you're immature and incapable. I understand a lot of things you'd never dream of, Drew." With that, I opened my eyes and looked at his nose, as I always did when pretending to look him in the eyes. I knew better than to do that.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Said a menacing voice behind me that I immediately named as Parker.

Scared out of my wits, my mind exploded as I took off like a lightning strike, barreling past Drew with a determined expression, leaving behind a smirking Parker.

Even though I was scared, I did keep my wits about me. I paused for a while before running and didn't let on just how scared I actually was.

Truth was, I was embarrassed. The great Scarlet, scared by a simple sneak-up-on-her prank? Unthinkable! I had planned it all out so I didn't look like I was scared, but I had been and that's what had mattered. What could I do so that would never happen again? I was going to high school next year and chances were, we wouldn't be going to the same one. New school, new friends, new enemies, new scares. I needed to make sure that this never happened again, that I was never again scared in Linden Middle School.

So, during Algebra, I began to think.