If Only It Knocked You Out XIN PING CHEN

“Ow! Fuck off!” I screamed at the guy named Alston who’s been attacking my head with his pathetic hands.

“Why can’t you go read a book? Is it so hard to be a normal student?” I continued as I ducked the next attack.

Unfortunately for me, I dealt with Altson hitting my head like a baseball on those T-ball stands… without the bat, of course. Alston bullied me for the majority of my 8th grade. Always wore a hoodie during the cold days and a t-shirt during the warmer summer days. with spiky hair like a longer version of a buzz cut and he always had glasses on. He also wore a mask at the time, to prevent COVID-19 from catching him. If we ever decided to talk to each other, it’s either me giving him the threats as all middle school kids say now! Or he started the most random conversation about eating air…? Otherwise it would be him asking me if I wanted to be dragged off the table, being choked, or other methods of physical contact with me.

“Xinny Ping Ping! Do you want other people to smell your ass on the table?”

“What? No…? Alston, what the fuck are you going to-”

“Then let me help you get off!”

“You fucking bitch!” I blurted as Alston drags me to the floor. Most of us 8th graders were wearing a mask until March of 2022 when it wasn’t a requirement. A couple of people in the class continued wearing it because of two reasons. Protection from COVID-19 and liked how the mask covered part of the face. Let’s say, both Alston and I kept our mask on and never saw each others’ faces until a gloomy lunch day. The scent of poorly made cheese sticks and burnt burgers almost made me gag, school food was never for me. So! I always carried a lunchbox with food either made or bought. That day, I remember eating rice noodles with shrimps inside, it was the food I craved for every week. The saltiness of the shrimp wasn’t strong enough, which is why I dumped a good amount of soy sauce on it. We were all forced to eat something during lunch in the auditorium because of the principal's order and we took our masks off and ate. That was the moment I saw Alston’s face in-person for the first time. Wait– he has a baby face?! This booknerd looked like a damn 3-year-old baby?

“What are you looking at?” Alston asked.

“Who else? Am I looking at anyone else? Bitch, I never saw your face and that ugly shit is not what I expected” I replied.

“Look at you! I have never seen your face since 6th grade.”

Then we continued arguing about what our faces looked like until the end of lunch.

Alston typically bullied me by hitting me on the head, but at times he would drag me on the floor, choke me for entertainment, and pull my hair. I wasn’t the only target in the class either. Most of the introverted girls in the class had to deal with his stupidity, which means 47 percent of the class were bothered. Words were all we could use, none of us knew how to fight or even defend ourselves without the support of a weapon, until a boring May school day when I wasn’t in the mood to do anything but run out of school. We were told to leave the social studies classroom as the period ended, the next class was math. I held my binder and notebooks in my left arm and a pencil case in my right. The classes were all on the fifth floor, and conveniently enough, the math class is next to the social studies classroom! Less movement, but more mental preparation for hell other people call math.

As we were walking out of the class, the math teacher let his previous class out, made us form 2 single-file-lines, and he rushed off to use the restroom. People talked to each other quietly, sitting against the beige-yellow walls, staring into the abyss. The hallways were loud from the footsteps of middle school students and chitter-chatter from many of us kids. 2 minutes later, the hallway became a library, every other human-being in that middle school was dragged into a teacher’s classroom.