The Break-up Prank: Part Six

Get caught up: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

By third period, Jack felt like he was in the twilight zone. As Mrs. Engels, the Family and Consumer Economics teacher, diagrammed a bank statement on the digital board, he could hear snatches of furtive, whispered conversations all around him. The high, feminine voices sounded far cheerier than the somber, disbelieving low tones of the guys’, but regardless of gender, there was only one topic that seemed to be on the table: the break-up prank and the ensuing fallout. Mostly it centered around the casualties either inflicted or suffered depending on the cluster of students chatting – but all of it made Jack’s stomach flip and twist with uneasiness.

He really needed to talk to Sareena. As his hand traced the rectangular shape in the pocket of his jeans, he wished he could at least text Sareena but he knew she kept her phone off during the day – probably the only student in the whole school who obeyed that annoying rule. Sometimes, if he wasn’t running late after Mrs. Engels’ class, he had enough time to catch Sareena at her locker before she headed to lunch. Unfortunately, she had the early lunch period while he ate during the final slot. However, he got the sense that this would be another one of those times Mrs. Engels just couldn’t wrap up in time which would leave him no opportunity to see Sareena and get a guage on where she stood with things. He was about to bury his head in his hands in frustration when he heard Leann’s sing-song voice behind him. He snuck a peak and saw her leaning over to another girl in their class and caught her eye briefly as she checked to see if Mrs. Engels was watching. A fraction of a second was all Jack needed to see how much Leann was reveling in the goings on this morning. Though her haughty, eager smile was fleeting, it caused Jack’s stomach to flip-flop once again.

“Oh yeah,” he heard Leann whisper, her big gray eyes narrowed as threateningly as if her boyfriend was standing right in front of her, “Tony tries that shit on me? He’s gonna be sorry. I won’t hesitate to grab him by the nuts until he begs me to let go.” Jack slumped a little in his chair when he heard the other giggle and turned back to the diagram on the board.

Despite his best efforts to concentrate, it was impossible to keep the worry at bay. If Sareena thought he was going to break up with her, what would she do? While she wasn’t anything like Lacey, as in no one thought she was a brainless hussy, Sareena was a gentle spirit and very soft spoken – unless it was just her and Jack. When it was just the two of them, Sareena didn’t seem to have a problem unleashing the passion she kept hidden when she was in public situations. That knowledge of his girlfriend’s tendencies should have buoyed Jack, but he’d been wrong about Lacey which now made him doubt his feelings regarding Sareena. Though he couldn’t imagine Sareena doing what Missy or Lacey had done to their boyfriends, he couldn’t be sure and, thus, he really, really needed to talk to her and explain things.

When the bell rang, Mrs. Engels was still chattering away, evidently oblivious to its piercing tones. Jack stuffed his book into his bag and tensed, ready to burst from his chair and out the door as soon as she figured out class was supposed to be over. After a full minute, she must have sensed the shifting mood in the room and she glanced up at the clock.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, her eyes going comically wide like they did everytime she missed the bell. “I guess that’s all we have time for today.”

Jack darted out of the room, half walking, half running down the hall. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, I can catch her. But when he got to her row of lockers, Sareena wasn’t there. Jack cursed under his breath but stood tall, glancing around the crowded hall hoping to catch sight of that brightly dyed shock of hair. As he scoped the hall, Jack’s heart rate ebbed to its regular rhythm, but after several seconds of nervous searching, it quickened again, not in hope as it had leaving class, but in disappointment. He was not going to catch her after all, he realized. He turned glumly in the direction of his fourth period class only to hear a sucking whoosh behind him. He turned and found the noise was the sound of half the hallway gasping in unison.

Going up on his tippy toes, Jack peered over heads of his fellow classmates and saw Vanessa Spiro’s face contorted into a fiery snarl. Her usual porcelain cheeks were crimson, like her flesh was on fire and she looked pissed. Mouths hung agape all around her with widened eyes trained on the ground like something was at Vanessa’s feet. The sinking feeling returned in the pit of Jack’s stomach. It looked like Vanessa was roaring down at whatever was in front of her, but Jack could tell no sound was coming out. She must have been absolutely furious, he thought.

Pushing past a group of unbelievably unobservant students – seriously, how could they be so oblivious? – , Jack rushed to get a better look. It was as he’d feared. Zach Cotton was on his knees, his head level with Vanessa’s waist, a position most guys would have envied since Vanessa, owner of one of, if not the, best set of legs in the school, was wearing a very tight set of leggings and a sweater that barely reached below her waist. What red-blooded male wouldn’t want a good look at that thigh gap? At the moment, the answer to that was obvious: senior linebacker, Zach Cotton.

Zach’s face held none of the confident swagger it usually did and, to Jack, it looked almost grostesquely discolored – not red, but not quite purple either. His eyes were squeezed shut and he looked like he was fighting for breath. The way he was struggling reminded Jack of a handful of times Zach had been part of a mighty collision on the gridiron and was left with the wind knocked out of him. Only right now, there was no two hundred pound man in full pads in the hallway – just a one hundred pound girl with great legs but little muscle, standing over him.

Though he was pretty sure he knew why Zach looked the way he did, Jack figured he should probably find out for sure. With his eyes fixed on Zach’s kneeling form, he tapped the shoulder of the person in front of him. He did a double-take when his brain finally registered the face turning back to him. It just had to be Missy, didn’t it, he groaned to himself. Her eyes were all lit up like a Broadway marquee and her full, freshly painted lips were drawn up at the corners clearly displaying her mirth. Her smile only widened at the sight of Jack’s appalled expression.

“Oh hi, Jack,” Missy practically leered, drawing it out. “Did you see that?”

Jack shook his head, wrinkling his nose. Why did she have to sound so smug?

“Too bad,” Missy cooed. “I think Vanessa might have broke his balls.”

The little sneer in her voice as she emphasized ‘broke his balls’ was almost too much for Jack to handle but then he heard himself ask anyway. “What?”

“Oh yeah,” Missy said, her head bobbing up and down as if to underline the truth of what she was saying. “Zach tried to break up with her just now and Vanessa lost it. God damn if she didn’t haul off and kick his balls into next week.” Her head went from bobbing to shaking. “Fuck Jack, you should have heard it. It was the meatiest squish I’ve ever heard! I can’t believe he’s not puking.” She glanced back at him and added, with a chuckle, “Looks like he wants to, though.”

“He might be really hurt,” Jack retorted, blanching at Missy’s careless attitude.

“Good,” Missy snapped. “He deserves it.” The leer crept back into her voice as she narrowed her eyes at Jack. “I hope she kicked him hard enough that his balls are still hurting tomorrow.” When she saw Jack’s face sour, Missy drove the dagger deeper. “I heard Colin seems to be doing better – althought Leann said he was still limping a little. If you see him, tell him he better steer clear of me, because if I see him, I won’t hesitate to kick him again and make his balls hurt even worse than I did this morning. He’ll wish he could just cut them off.”

Zach may or may not want to puke, but as Missy strode off down the hall, Jack suddenly felt like he might. His buddies were dropping like flies thanks to this stupid prank, left to suffer as their most sensitive parts were abused and crushed each time a girl dished out her revenge. “Why?” An anguished voice screamed in Jack’s head. “Why must they keep kicking our balls?”

He looked around in surprise when another voice answered with sobering honesty, “We deserve it. The pain, the humiliation, the embarrassment – all of it. If she wants to leave us on the floor with hurting and swollen balls, our fragile egos shattered because she kicked us where it hurts most, then she absolutely should. And we should feel humiliated. We should feel the total embarrassment in every fiber of our being. And our balls should hurt until we come to grips with girl power.”

Jack was about to protest audibly when he realized the second voice was also coming from inside him. When he growled at himself instead he could almost feel the second voice sigh. “But you never will,” the voice said, sounding as if it was shaking its ethereal head in resignation. “And that’s why girls must keep kicking our balls.”

“Shut up!” Jack snarled. As the voice disappeared, he looked up and found several sets of eyes gaping at him and he realized he’d said it out loud. Quickly, he grabbed the straps of his backpack and spun away as his neck reddened in response to his chagrin.

Jack was still trying to shake the absurd notion from his head as he slipped into his fourth period desk. It’s bullshit, he thought trying to disperse the dark cloud surrounding his mind. Sareena would never do that, he told himself.

Would she?

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