Bullied Girls

         Perky 4th-grader Tandy is late for her big first period test this morning, and takes a shortcut through the woods that she’s overheard some bigger kids at school talk about. Tandy is the picture of pretty as she traipses along in her denim overalls shorts and her pink top (with the little white dots). Tandy is blonde and already wears braces and glasses, but still looks cute as a button.

         There’s a fairly well-worn single-file footpath through, and she sees signs of kids or vagrants by the wrappers and empty bottle and other litter here and there. Some spots have the distinct odor of urine, but Tandy, wincing, presses on, too late to consider retracing her steps to get to school by her usual route.

         As she walks on down through the winding trail, Tandy rounds a bend around a tree and is suddenly confronted by some older kids who she had heard mostly negative things about. Bad seeds that skipped class, and were known to bully littler kids for grins in the halls and after school. Especially in situations like this, where poor Tandy is alone, with no one else around, when she walks right up on tall, creepy Ted (rumored to have been held back for two years), little bad-girl Nikki (who just wants to impress Ted), and their friends Scott (just a big, mean dumbass) and Marcus (a total creep with long hair and a weak goatee)! Tandy’s heart froze, but she knew she had to just press on, as there was no turning back (as she might have, had she seen them before they saw her).

         So, chin-up, Tandy marches ahead, and, sure enough – the gang make a point of standing in her way. Nikki makes a grab at her book-bag, which Tandy now clutches to her chest with all her might, “What’s in the bag, kid? You better hand it over if you want to pass through here!”, she insists, both hands out now, waiting for Tandy’s school stuff.

         “Come on! Please, guys? I don’t have time for this. Really! I have a big test!”, pleads Tandy as she attempts to just keep walking, hoping they’ll make way for her. She and Nikki now tussle for possession of her book-bags, which Tandy actually still manages to cling tightly to, despite (or because of) her increasingly frightened state.

“NoNoNo! Please just let me go to schooool!”, which she punctuates with a yelp when suddenly, her arms are captured from either side by Scott and Marcus, who begin laughing, while Ted is standing back arms crossed, smiling at Tandy like a dessert treat.

         Tandy still had a death-grip on her school-bag regardless, though it is slipping with her elbows held by the bigger boys. Nikki feels disrespected by Tandy (since she was unable to wrestle her bag from her without help), and smiles as she says, “No time for us, huh? Too good to let me see your stuff, huh? Let’s take Little Miss Too-Big-for-Her-Britches to the old pump-house and give her a taste of what happens to little brats who think they’re all BETTER than us. Or maybe we ought to just dangle her from the old oak branch by the back-straps of her overalls, like a human piñata!”, considers Nikki, deferring to Ted, who agrees that they ought to have more fun bullying poor Tandy, since they were already considering skipping class today, anyway.

         They lead her, kicking and screaming (but still clutching her bag), into a denser part of the woods on one of the side-trails leading around a hill.