Excerpt from Aftermath

I stepped into the school where a sea of words dried up at my presence. Eyes fell on me without shame—some with awe and some with disgust. Who could blame them? Their hero had been slain by a popper of a man, a dangly, five-foot-ten popper without a shred of noticeable muscle. It was delightful to be a source of bane for those who had their loyalties set in conventional athleticism. Their poster-child had lost his glimmer and their core beliefs had been shaken.

I kept my smirk on and stepped through the black and white crowd toward my locker. I opened it only to have it slammed shut almost instantly. I knew who it was.

“Sander… How’s it going?” I said nonchalantly as I turned my eyes up to meet his six-foot-three gaze.

“It’s going down, like you will be.”

He wasn’t the cleverest poster-child.

“Why do you want me to go down? You know that’s not how I swing. I hear Chico Mandley likes that kind of stuff. His locker is number 1427,” I taunted.

The sounds of his cronies’ chuckles were instantly murdered by Sander’s gaze.

Sander puffed his chest out, “I don’t think you’re funny and I don’t think you’re as good as everyone thinks.”

“Well, people seem to think I’m better than you at the very least and if you say I’m not that good then that means you’re even lower than that on the preverbal totem pole.” I smiled at my own witty logic.

“You might be clever with your words, goon, but that’s not gonna save you if I decide to knock them out of your mouth,” his brandished fist punctuated the end of his sentence.