Chapter 1: Unclean Underwear

Kneeling on the hard classroom floor, Molly Phelan had her arms around the bleeding head of her best friend forever, Bailey O’Connor. More than a casual label, these BFFs were two inseparable girls who shared a bond stronger than parent to child or sibling to sibling.

In this eighth-grade math classroom, today’s violence was the terrible peak of their entire miserable middle school experience.

“You bastard!” hissed Molly at the sprawled out Wade Marshall.

“You have him?” she asked another boy, Dan, who was making sure Marshall was staying put.

“Yeah, is Bailey all right?”

“I don’t KNOW!” Molly cried. “She’s not moving. She’s breathing, but unconscious.” Looking down, she begged. “Bailey, please wake up. Can you hear me?”

“Diego’s gone for help,” advised Dan.

Tears dripped off her nose and splashed on Bailey’s cheek. FINALLY, their teacher (who Molly unkindly described as being 90 years old and 90 pounds overweight) had come to the back of the classroom.

“What is going on here?”

Leila Kain said, “I can answer that. He,” indicating Marshall, “was grabbing at me.”

In the one-piece desk-and-chair combinations common in classrooms, Leila sat ahead of Marshall, he was ahead of O’Connor, and she was ahead of Phelan, alphabetically.

Leila was upset, but she could still speak clearly.

“He pulled on my bra strap so hard, I thought it would tear apart. The pain in my chest was incredible, then he let go, and it snapped me. It was terribly painful!”

Molly took over the narrative.

“Bailey reached in through the gap in the back of his chair, grabbed hold of his greasy gray underwear and pulled with all her might. Because I stood up when I heard Leila cry out, I could see everything.

“Wade started begging for mercy, but then the fabric tore apart. Before I could react, Wade stood, turned, and punched Bailey in the side of her head. I jumped on him and took him to the floor, and Dan has been holding him down ever since.

“Get off me, punk!” snarled Wade.

Dan grunted, “Not happening,” and kept him pinned while their elderly teacher dithered.

Then a bunch of things started happening at once. The nurse and the assistant principal barged in, and eventually Molly started hearing sirens.

A couple of days later, Bailey was at home, recovering from her concussion. Molly had come directly to her house after school to keep her company during her mandated week of recovery.

“Mr. O’Connor, you’re home early! Bailey says this NEVER happens, and you work too hard.”

“For the thousandth time, Molly, call me Patrick. Yes, I’m working fifty- and sixty-hour weeks at my company, but I am also the single father of an only child. You know that. I find it unbelievable that Bailey could sustain such severe injuries at school.”