Sam's attempt at fanfic draft 1; part 2 (edited, expanded)

Hardly reassuring was Mindy’s promise to abide by all the above rules. But now it was Monday, the very first Monday, and he was driving her to school, palms sweaty, dreading to think what would happen, whether he’d be paged at work about a school-yard massacre and be subsequently picking up a blood-rinsed Mindy from the school lobby, while her mates waited to be picked up in spattered body bags. But no, she was a good girl, really.


“We’re early; Dunkin Donuts on the way?”

“Mmm. Yes please Mark”

That’s right, sweet bribes.

Finally they pulled up curb side at the school.

“Now do you remember what we talked about?” he said sternly, handing her a whopping twenty-box split chocolate-cream with jam-filled.

“Sure” she said, getting out and reaching for her coffee through the passenger seat window, which Mark courteously passed to her from the holder.

“Where’s your bag?”

“Oh” she said, “still in the car”. Mark, again, courteously handed it to her, affording her these deliberate tests of his patience because she could break his neck in two if he didn’t.

“And what was it exactly that we talked about Mindy?”

“About how school is an environment in which violence is both discouraged and abhorred . . .”

“ . . .and . . .”

“ . . .and should I participate in any non-regulation contact, not excluding sexual, you’ll be very angry with me, and so will the parents of the unfortunate”

“Good girl. Now have fun”

“Right” she said between mouthfuls of chocolate, crumbs and cream tumbling from the roof of her mouth with every ravenous chew, settling on her white front in staining collectives. And finally he drove off, a little wobbly at the wheel in his panic, but he managed to sooth the jagged butterflies and merge uniformly with traffic after three blocks. Mindy waved frantically, grinning from ear to ear, chocolate stains and all, and proceeded to wash down a handful of jelly donuts with a suitably cooled swig of coffee. Hmm, cinnamon; reminded her of the beach for some reason.

‘And now’ she thought, spinning round to face the tired brick face of that impossibly square building, ‘now for school!’ She walked towards a madding crowd of sneaker-wearing ipod-toting adolescents, all of them at least three years her senior and suffering from volcanic eruptions of acne, pocking their smug faces like so many sceptic moon craters.

And she was equally smug, because Mark had only checked her bag; had he patted her down before they left the house, he might’ve found her pocket knives.

“Hey you!”


A jam smeared Mindy grinned and held out her hand to be shaken , eyes glistening innocently above a baking-sugar dusted nose.

“Hi” she said, “I’m Mindy. This is my very first day of school and I’m oh so very pleased to meet you!”

Before her stood perhaps the least attractive boy from a shuffling huddle of similarly C-grade specimens. He snorted, the right side of his mouth curving up in a sneer that dramatically unveiled great hunking train-tracks. She couldn’t believe they didn’t tent through his cheeks . . .

“Lunch money”

She stared, mesmerised by the braces. Then snapping back . . .

“Sorry, did you say something?”

The boy was maybe three years her senior and stepped forward, folding his arms across an inflated chest in a bid to be menacing; all he needed to do was open his mouth again.

“Lunch money; now!”

With that he put his hand out, expectantly. She cottoned on.

“Sorry” she said. He eyeballed her, indignant.

“What do you mean ‘sorry’?”

“I mean sorry, you can’t have it”

There was silence, lasting only a few minutes, but to Mindy and the practically-deformed boy in question, it seemed to stretch on and on, reaching for eternity in its simmering unspoken angst. He tried leering at her.

“Gimme your goddamn lunch money; NOW!”

“No” she said. Her eyes were cool and dead set on his, her face was still, her stance unmoving.

The boy, clearly agitated, had started to turn heads, and unknowingly the pair had drawn a crowd to them that expanded the longer Mindy resisted his increasingly heated demands. What Mindy wasn’t to know was that Earl (the boys name) had a reputation, one which up until that morning had never seen indifference the likes of this; rather, students younger and older did everything to avoid Earl’s wrath, not provoke it. But Mindy was doing just that.

And loving it.