Chapter 5 - Second Day (New Reputations)
1664 Words
Third-Person Limited (Kendra, then Dominic)
Kendra woke up with the mood of somebody who’d spent the night fighting demons in her sleep and lost.
Her nose hurt. Her knuckles hurt. Her back hurt from the hard cafeteria bench. Even her pride felt bruised, though she’d never say that out loud.
She stared at the ceiling for a moment, replaying yesterday in her head in quick flashes:
The trip in the hallway.
The laughter.
The punch.
The milkshake.
The scream when she slammed Dominic’s girlfriend’s face into the table.
She snorted into her pillow. “Worth it.”
Her phone buzzed beside her. Groaning, she reached over, blinking at the flood of notifications.
New followers.
DMs from people she didn’t know.
Tags on posts from students whose names she hadn’t learned yet.
One stood out: a page called @GarrisonTea had tagged her.
She tapped it.
@GarrisonTea
First day & the new Jamaican girl baptized our resident queen in dipping sauce 💀 #saucysmackdown
Below it, a shaky video showed the cafeteria scene from yesterday. It started just after the milkshake hit, then caught Kendra grabbing the blonde girl’s hair, slamming her face into the table, and dumping sauce down her shirt.
The audio was mostly screaming and gasping.
Kendra watched herself move in the frame. She looked… furious. Controlled, but furious.
The comments were already stacked.
Is that Karina??
Karina Frost got FROSTED 😭
Who is the Jamaican girl? I love her.
She really said, “Sauce is served” 😭
I heard the new girl punched Antonio, too??
Dominic’s girlfriend really picked the wrong one lmaooo
Kendra squinted at that last one.
Dominic’s girlfriend?
She scrolled back up. The girl in the video—the one she’d decorated with sauce—was tagged:
@karinafrost.xo
Karina Frost. Of course, her name sounded like a perfume brand.
The caption on another repost read:
Day one: A new girl slams Dominic Garrison’s girlfriend into a table. This year’s going to be wild.
“Oh, perfect,” Kendra sighed. “I hit the mean girl and embarrassed the golden boy’s girlfriend. Nice.”
“KENDRA!” Erica’s voice echoed down the hallway, followed by a bang on her door. “If you’re not up, I’m coming in with cold water!”
“I’m up, man! Relax!” Kendra yelled back.
She dragged herself out of bed, dressed in black jeans and a clean sweatshirt—the least milkshake-scented one she owned—and tied her hair into a bun. Her nose was tender when she touched it, but not crooked or swollen. Good enough.
Downstairs, the kitchen was already loud.
“There she is,” Jeah grinned. “The legend herself.”
“Don’t start,” Kendra said, grabbing a slice of toast.
“We saw the video,” Alrreah said through a mouthful of cereal. “Multiple angles, actually.”
Erica snorted. “You’re basically campus famous, you know.”
“Infamous,” Jennie corrected quietly. “There’s a difference.”
Kendra shrugged, biting into the toast. “People talk too much.”
“Still,” Jeah added, “you did kind of flip that girl like a pancake.”
“She poured a milkshake on my head,” Kendra reminded them. “I didn’t attack her in the parking lot for breathing.”
“And you punched Antonio,” Erica said cheerfully.
“He shoved me,” Kendra said. “If anything, that was charity. My right hook needed practice.”
Outside, a car horn honked.
Sofia.
“Girls!” she called from the front door. “Let’s go before my boss thinks I’ve started a side hustle as a chauffeur!”
They piled into the car. The drive to school felt shorter now that the route was familiar, but Kendra’s stomach still twisted as the building came into view.
Garrison Academy rose sleek and intimidating against the pale sky, the parking lot buzzing with students.
“Maybe today will be… normal,” Jennie said hopefully.
Kendra side-eyed her. “You just cursed us, you know that, right?”
Jennie groaned. “I take it back.”
The second Kendra stepped out of the car, she could feel it.
Eyes.
It wasn’t like yesterday, when they’d been just the new girls: curious glances, double takes, whispers about accents. Today, the stares were heavier. People looked at her, then quickly looked away. Some nudged their friends. Some didn’t bother pretending they weren’t talking about her.
A girl with pink braids passed by and gave Kendra a tiny nod of respect.
“Yo, that’s her,” someone whispered. “The Jamaican girl from the video.”
“Karina looked so pissed, bro.”
“I heard she had to go home and change—”
Kendra rolled her shoulders and kept walking, pretending not to hear.
They reached their lockers. As she spun her combination, the intercom crackled overhead.
“Would the following students please report to the principal’s office immediately: Kendra Atchinson, Jeah Gordon, Alrreah Thomas, Erica Campbell, Jennie Bailey… Dominic Garrison, Karina Frost, Antonio Reed, Robin Miles. Thank you.”
The hallway noise dipped. Kendra froze, her hand on her locker door.
“Ah, s**t,” she muttered.
Erica winced. “That… can’t be good.”
“Maybe it’s for a welcome party,” Kendra said dryly. “With balloons and a banner that says, ‘Please Stop Assaulting Our Students.’”
Despite the joke, her chest felt tighter.
Getting in trouble at home? Fine. She knew the system. Here, in some rich-town private school with a principal she didn’t know and way too much money on the line.
Different risks.
They walked together toward the office as a group. At the next hallway intersection, they almost collided with a familiar cluster of boys.
Dominic walked at the front, hands in his pockets, face unreadable. Karina strutted at his side in a new top and perfectly styled hair; her lips pressed in a thin line. Antonio and Robin trailed behind two other guys, talking quietly.
Kendra’s gaze brushed Dominic’s for a split second.
There was no smirk today. Just cool, dark eyes, flicking over her like she was a math problem he hadn’t solved yet.
She looked away at first.
She hated that.
Principal Garrison’s office was bigger than the ones back home, with wide windows and bookshelves that had books on them. Certificates lined the walls in neat frames. Pictures of sports teams and school events filled the spaces in between.
Behind the desk sat Mr. Garrison.
He didn’t smile.
Kendra could see the resemblance immediately—strong jaw, same sharp eyes as Dominic, just older and colder. But while Dominic gave off arrogant, take-up-space energy, his father radiated something quieter and heavier.
Authority.
“Sit,” he said.
Chairs had been placed in two rows facing the desk. Kendra and her friends took one side; Dominic and his group took the other. Karina sat closest to Dominic. Up close, under the layers of concealer, Kendra could still see faint redness along her collarbone where the sauce had dripped.
Kendra tried not to feel satisfied about that.
Mr. Garrison let the silence stretch for a moment. His gaze moved from one face to the next, taking them all in. “I spent a good part of my evening reviewing yesterday’s camera footage,” he said finally. His voice was deep, calm in a way that somehow made it more intimidating. “From the hallway and the cafeteria.”
Karina shifted in her seat. Antonio stared at the floor. Kendra kept her gaze steady.
“This is an elite institution,” Mr. Garrison continued. “We do not tolerate violence, bullying, or public scenes that damage the reputation of this school.”
His eyes cut briefly toward Kendra.
“However,” he added, looking over at Dominic’s side, “we also do not tolerate deliberate provocation.”
He turned to Dominic first.
“Dominic,” he said, “explain why you decided to trip a new student in a crowded hallway.”
So, he had seen it.
Dominic’s posture didn’t change. “It was a joke,” he said evenly. “I didn’t think she’d fall like that.”
Kendra’s head jerked toward him. “I’m sorry, what—”
“Miss Atchinson,” Mr. Garrison said sharply. “You will have a turn to speak.”
She bit down on everything she wanted to say and pressed her lips together.
My. Bad.
Mr. Garrison turned back to his son. “A ‘joke’ that resulted in a bloody nose for a student on her first day in a foreign country,” he said. “You are not a child, Dominic. You know better.”
A flicker of something passed through Dominic’s eyes, gone as quickly as it appeared.
Mr. Garrison shifted his gaze to Karina.
“And you, Miss Frost,” he said. “Why did you pour a milkshake over another student’s head in the cafeteria?”
Karina tried to arrange her face into something innocent. “She disrespected me,” she said tightly. “In front of everyone.”
“And that merited a physical response?” he asked. “Which you initiated, in front of even more people?”
Karina glanced at Dominic as if looking for backup. He didn’t move.
Mr. Garrison finally looked directly at Kendra.
“Miss Atchinson,” he said, “I understand you felt provoked. However, you cannot respond by slamming another student onto a table and threatening her.”
Kendra straightened a little. “With respect, sir, I wasn’t the one who started either of those things,” she said, voice steady. “If your son hadn’t stuck his foot out, and if your student hadn’t dumped food on me, none of that would have happened.”
There was a tiny pause after “your son.” She didn’t mean to emphasize it, but it fell heavily into the air between them anyway.
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
- Writer
