Lisa ran the school like a duck commands a wolf pack, assuming ducks would want to command wolf packs and assuming said ducks carried AR-15 semi-automatic rifles or comparable weaponry and had the dexterity to be able to use them, as well as hold them high enough to shoot something other than a misbehaving wolf’s foot.
She was only a sophomore, but already the teachers and upperclass students had learned she was not one to be trifled with. She hadn’t actually ever done anything to anyone–unless you count a teacher by the name of Bo who had not been seen again after having scolded her one day about her science homework–but she had an aura about her that gave everyone the clear impression that she would hurt them so badly their great grandchildren who had yet to be born would feel it.
She strolled down the hallway with her gang of sycophants in tow. They did her homework, they polished her shoes, and they even wiped for her after she used the restroom. She had them wrapped around her fingers like ivy around the ivy on a fencepost, intertwining so tightly that nothing short of setting fire to the pole would ever clear the ivy.
That or a hot summer where the ivy withered and died.
She sat down in her English class during fourth period. Her assigned English class was second period, but she spent second period in the lunchroom, long before anyone else had lunch, giving her the choice of the best stuff before anyone else, sans the lunch ladies, had a chance to even breathe on it. And the lunch ladies wore face masks. They didn’t used to do so, not until Lisa was a freshman there.
She never formally requested that her lunch periods and English periods be swapped. She just switched them on her own, and the school administration and teachers were too timid to object.
However, everything was subject to change when Leslie moved into town and started going to Lisa’s school.
Leslie was from a tough city and students like Lisa were nothing to her. She ate them for breakfast–not literally, of course, since the nation’s schools did still have some standards.
When Lisa walked down the hall, she was used to students jumping out of her way, sometimes even falling down stairwells or out windows, which were both deemed as more acceptable injuries than to mess with Lisa.
Leslie, however, did not get out of the way.
Consequently, Lisa walked right into Leslie. Without a single “Hey!” or “Watch out!”, she just stopped and glared at Leslie. Usually, that was enough to intimidate a fellow student into submission.
Leslie just stared back, not saying a word.
Other students stopped, flabbergasted. How could someone not know to stay away from Lisa?
Four minutes passed and the class period bells rang, yet they stood and stared. A crowd of students and teachers had grown around them. No one headed to class.
Ten minutes passed and nothing had changed.
After thirty minutes, the school principal charged down the hall, angry that so few students and teachers had returned to class. He wondered what was going on. He almost started yelling until he saw Lisa and Leslie locked in a never-blinking eyelock. He too stopped to watch, fearful of interfering yet also curious as to what would happen. He worried about Leslie’s safety, but not so much as to risk his own by interrupting.
Forty-five minutes passed with Lisa and Leslie locked in their staredown. No one had said a word. No one had moved. No one dared.
An hour. Two hours. Three.
The school buses came and went, sparsely filled with students not privy to what was going on in one small hallway in the school. Either that, or they wanted to get as far away as possible from whatever might occur.
No one had seen anyone not bend to Lisa’s will. No one had ever challenged her. No one had stood up to her.
They became bored with the endless staring, but no one dared leave. No one dared say anything. They simply watched.
Then something strange happened. Everyone was so still and so quiet that they could have literally heard a pin drop. But no pin dropped. Instead, they saw a hair just ping off of Lisa’s head and fall on her shoulder. For a moment, everyone’s attention, including that of Lisa and Leslie, was drawn away from their staring eyes to the hair curled up on Lisa’s left shoulder.
Then–ping!–another fell. And another.
Dozens began pinging off her head and onto her shoulders, her back, her chest and the floor. In a short time, the floor was covered with hundreds of her hairs.
At last, someone broke the silence. “O. M. G.!” they exclaimed. “Lisa’s hair is falling out because Leslie is awesome!”
Tears began to well in Lisa’s eyes. She grabbed her books and ran off.
The crowd applauded Leslie for Lisa’s reign of terror had finally come to an end.