Edited 4/18/13. More tweaking, mostly restructuring sentences/grammar and whatnot.
In which there are assumptions and no sympathy
She is eleven and growing and awkward. The girl is a little too strange for them, too quiet, too slow to agree to everything the others say. It doesn't help that she's taller than everyone in her grade, including the boys, and that her ears are unfortunately on the large side (according to everyone that isn't related to her). Usually she doesn't let it get to her. But Momma's been getting migraines, more than usual, and Daddy and Hyde are away again, and she's sure she flunked her Geography test.
All this is on her normally carefree mind, and she's not paying attention to what she's doing. So when she walks right into Melinda Hayes' lunch tray, she might have well have been asking for it (as the girls are sure to inform her later).
She looks up from the floor to Melinda's red face - it's not just from the tomato soup - and lets her jaw drop open. The cafeteria hubbub dims suddenly, and with a start she realizes that every eye is on the two of them. Waiting. Slag.
But, shockingly, nothing happens, except that one of Melinda's flunkies silently hand her a napkin, and without a word the girl mops herself up. When her face is clear, she looks back up at Annabelle, and it takes everything in her not to flinch back. The girl's face is neutral, but her eyes are livid.
Still...nothing. No scream of outrage, no scathing insult...but as Melinda, seemingly unwilling to retaliate, pushes past her to sit down at her bench, the girl jerks her chin up to hiss in the other's ear - "We're going to have a talk about this when the last bell rings."
And Annabelle, soldier's daughter that she is, simply grunts in acknowledgment, and makes her way to her own seat at the opposite end of the room. She never lets on that a flock of bats have taken up residence in her stomach, and they're trying to claw their way up her throat and out her mouth.
She thinks briefly about telling a teacher, but just as quickly dismisses the idea. She isn't a tattletale, and she isn't going to worry her parents - her Daddy's work is important, and Mamma's still sick. And Hyde would just think she was crazy, asking someone to take care of something she is sure she can handle herself. So she doesn't let them see her sweat, even as they surround her later on in the afternoon, out in the farthest corner of the playground. And she doesn't realize it, but it's that quality, among others, that the girls, particularly Melinda Hayes, fear. The soldier's daughter's shoulders are military-square, her stride long and sure, her mouth almost always tilted in a funny little smile, like she's in on some joke that went over everyone else's heads. Her peers see all this, and don't know what to make of it. And as Daddy and Hyde tell her, people fear the unknown, and people hate what they fear.
On Annabelle's behalf, she has no idea of the image she presents to the outside world. To her, it feels like she's wandering through a carnival of cardboard cutouts, and whenever she shuffles up behind them to peer through the holes where the heads should be, she feels ridiculous, and thinks she probably looks it, too. She's made of different stuff than them, almost like a whole other plane of existence. Her classmates, the elementary school as a whole, are quick to pick up on this. The teachers call her anti-social. The kids just call her dumb. As stated before, she normally doesn't let it get to her - she's got more interesting thing on her mind, like what Hyde's going to bring back for her when he gets back from a trip, or how she's going to replace the tub of ice-cream she devoured the night before without anyone noticing. (It involved Hyde, her mom's garden potatoes, some Play-Doh, and blackmail - that's a different story, though).
She's also a good student, which, in children's minds, is a euphemism for 'teacher's pet.' She's never gotten anything below an A- since the first grade, and always gets her work done in a goodly amount of time. She's the first to finish a test, or to find an answer not in the book. But after a while she's learned to not raise her hand till someone else does, and to try not to volunteer for anything unless the teacher stares her down, which is rare. Annabelle's own stare is an intimidating one - it can make children and adults alike take a wary step back. Daddy like to brag and say she got that from him, but secretly, she'd like to believe she learned it from Hyde, after having it bent on her one time too many.
It's this look she turns to her peers now, as they press in around her like sharks scenting blood. It makes Melinda freeze, but her ten-year-old girl's pride is fully on, and she forces herself to step into the taller girl's space. She makes a show of eying her disdainfully, starting from the top of her bright braided hair, down to her battered, off-black combat boots.
A nasty smirk crawls across her face, and it takes all of Annabelle's willpower not to smack it away. Her hands, hanging loosely down at her sides, slowly curl into small fists. She clenches them so tightly she can feel the dull edges of her bitten fingernails biting into her palm. Deep breaths, back straight, head up. Daddy's voice is in her head, and she obeys. Another deep breath, and she lets her hands fall back open, even as the smaller girl makes a comment on her somewhat oversized feet.
"No wonder you ran into me - you couldn't see past your ginormous feet. Where'd you get those boots from, Annie, your dad? They probably fit perfectly, don't they."
It was no secret that her dad was in the military - that knowledge was at once a blessing and a burden, here at school. While most of the boys thought it was pretty cool, the girls were a different story - Melinda's parents were war protesters, and never missed an opportunity to bring it up at PTA meetings.
Another girl took up the thread and ran with it. "Yeah, Annie, little soldier girl, filling up her daddy's shoes - bet your gonna shave your head and join the army too, huh? Only lesbos and rednecks go there, you know...what's that make you?"
"She's both!"
"Oooh, Mel, we better start changing in the bathroom stalls, we don't want her checking us out!"
"Eww, she knows what we look like naked!"
"Stop looking at me, freak!"
"Yeah, Lezzie Lennox, just because I'm a girl doesn't mean you can look at me like - "
"Shut. Up."
Silence.
Every girl's eye was trained on her. Melinda was furious. "Excuse me? Did you just tell me to shu - "
"You deaf? Or maybe you can't hear anything else over the little imaginary voice in your head telling you how great you are."
More silence.
Melinda isn't used to anyone back-talking her. Ever. Her parents don't back-talk her. She has to stop this nonsense, now. She moves up into the taller girl's face, watching her even as she walks a tight circle around her. "You know, you seemed like such a nice girl. So quiet, so smart...smart enough to be quiet, anyway. What happened? I thought the army was supposed to be about obedience, and discipline. You're not supposed to talk back to your superiors."
"Superior." A deadpan remark, but one that holds a wealth of sarcasm and disdain behind it. Annabelle meets the other's girls eyes, bright, steely blue clashing with golden hazel. "You actually think you're better than me."
The smaller girl sneers up at her, somehow managing to look down her nose even as she cranes her neck. "I don't think...I know."
"...Well," Annabelle finally states flatly, "what I know is, you'd better step. Off." And she leans forward, just enough to make the other girl have to move back, or risk literally butting heads.
Melinda sneers and boldly – stupidly - shoves her face back into Annabelle's. "Or what? You gonna get your daddy to beat me up?"
A pause. "No." And before anyone has time to blink, a little clenched fist impacts perfectly on the other girl's nose, sending her whole body sprawling back into the dirt.
"I can do it just fine myself."
For a long minute, there's nothing but the girl's blubbering, muffled through her hands where they're clapped around her face. Then, like a switch being thrown, someone's hands reach forward and shove Annabelle forward, hard. She's sent stumbling into the bulky girl in front her, who takes no time at all to wrap her own chubby hands around the girl's braid, and give it a vicious yank. A hard-shod foot kicks her in the ankle; more hands grab and pinch and yank at her, and she makes one desperate attempt to rip herself away from the girl who's got her braid, only to be jerked off her feet for the effort.
The other girls are suddenly much, much bigger from down on the ground; they blot out the afternoon sun as they swarm around her. The hands are back, now open in stinging slaps and clawed fingers, and she hears a rip as someone tears her blouse. She wants to scream, for help, in rage, anything, but her tears are getting in the way. Daddy! Hyde! She wails in the sanctuary of her mind. Above her, the girls shriek in triumph as the first tear escapes, and then another, and another. From out of nowhere, a sharp, stunning blow to her left cheek sends her all the way to the ground, and instinctively she curls in on herself, protecting her head and stomach from the worst blows. What can I do what can I do someone please help -
"I'm just a kid." Normally not an admission she would be willing to make, but Hyde was speaking way above her head, and she didn't understand what he was trying to say.
"I know you're just a - a kid. But just because you're little doesn't mean that bad things won't happen to you. Sometimes...bad things happen because you're a kid." He was kneeling on the grease-stained floor of the workshop, face to face with her. "Look, I'm just trying to tell you what your dad doesn't think you're ready for. And he's your dad, and you're his younglin'. I get that. He doesn't want you to grow up too fast, y'know?"
She didn't know, not really, but she nodded anyway to appease him.
"But you're never too young to be prepared. Now, what I should tell you is to stop a fight before it starts. 'S the smart thing to do. But you 'n' me," he gestured between the two of them, grinning lopsidedly, "and yer dad...we ain't diplomats. Mostly, we're gonna shoot first and ask questions never. But, seeing as how he won't let you even look at a weapon," and here he might have sighed a little, "you're gonna have to settle with these." And he picked up her little mitts in his massive ones, closing them into fists.
He paused for a minute, trying to find the right words. He never was one for long, pretty speeches, but what he did say always made her sit up and listen. His eyes came back to hers, and he lowered their hands between them, squeezing them. "You gotta know what it is to stand up for yerself. Whether it's yer fists or yer mouth, you gotta learn. Yer parents and me, we won't always be around to have your back.
Now, the first thing you gotta know in a fight is: Don't just know your strengths and weaknesses. Know your enemy's, too. Then, you find a way to use it against 'em."
Her scalp is stinging, her tongue tastes blood, and above her, the enemy crows in delight at her pain.
But they were too focused on her head, her soft squishy stomach. No one bothered with her legs, her feet. The thought that she might actually try to fight back, for some unfathomable reason, didn't occur to them - such is the mentality of an eleven-year-old mob.
Her eyes are watering, her sides are throbbing, and above her - the enemy's knees.
Their weak, girly, unscabbed knees that have never known the scrape of a tree trunk, or concrete, or hot steel. And here she is, with her stomping boots on.
Without another thought save for aiming, she lashes out one steel-toed foot, and hears a rather satisfying wet crunch. It is immediately followed by a piercing, hysterical scream, and she strikes again, this time more to the right. Again there is impact, though it doesn't have the same sharp sound to it. More screams now, and suddenly there is sunlight above her, as the pack of children fall away. She hauls herself up quickly, taking stock of the situation. The girl she kicked has taken her place in the dirt, writhing in obvious pain, clutching at her swelling knee. The others quickly pull around her, crying and shouting. "Look what you did!" one of them screeches at her.
She looks, and finds no pity in her to give. They started it, and she ended it, and that was how it worked.
When the teachers finally discover them a few minutes later, they are of a different opinion.
It doesn't matter to her. Hyde and Daddy will be proud of her, and that makes her proud of herself. Momma, now - that's another story, and she knows she's going to have to get through a parent-teacher conference, a week's worth of detention, and grounding before she'll see reason. The girl's knee is broken, after all.
This is the first, and last, physical altercation she will have (on school grounds). Now she knows better than to have grown-ups fight your battles - grown-ups are silly about things like right and wrong and all the little things in between. But today she learns that she doesn't need grown-ups for things like this. She is small, but she is strong, and her family has taught her well. And really, it's nice to learn you can stand on your own two feet. Even when you've got to hit the ground first.