Page 365 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

“Beth!”

Audrey turned around to see Morgan jogging across the school grounds, headed straight for her. She started out to meet him when she noticed a group of four boys in letter jackets moving to meet him as well. There was no greeting exchanged, but as they drew close enough, one jock pulled away from the pack and stuck out his foot.

A briefly irritated look crossed Morgan’s face a second before he obligingly tripped over the proffered limb, stumbled, then went all the way down to the sidewalk in a nasty spill.

“Morgan!” Audrey broke into a run. “Are you okay?” she cried as she reached him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Morgan said, picking himself up off the cement. He looked at his hands, then bent to brush the dirt from his trousers.

Audrey spun on the boys, her eyes narrowing and her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “You bullying bastards! You did that on purpose!”

All four of the young men looked stunned, but the one who had done the actual tripping gaped at her in disbelief. “Hey, chill out, doll face. I didn’t know the spaz was gonna fall down.”

“Doll face?” Audrey echoed, and then again with even more temper than before. “Doll face? I’ll doll face you!”

She punched him square in the nose. Cartilage crunched under her knuckles and his head snapped back.

Blood spurted between the young man’s fingers as he grabbed his face with both hands and fell to his knees. “By dose! By dose!”

“Audrey!” Morgan grabbed her from behind, pulling her sharply back and away from the stunned jocks.

“Ew broke by dose!” the young man cried, staring at his bloody hands in total astonishment.

His three friends stood like gaping statues, frozen in a half-circle of uncertainty around their downed companion.

Audrey struck a boxer’s pose, her fists up and ready, straining against Morgan’s tight grasp as she demanded, “Who’s next? You?” she barked at the taller of the three friends. “You want a piece of me? How about you, you want a piece of me? Come on! I am a woman on the edge; I’ll take you all on!”

“Ew broke by nose!” the man on the ground groaned, sniffing and checking the blood on his fingers.

“Get up,” she dared him, “I’ll give you the black eyes and fat lip to match!”

Without taking their eyes off her, the friends reached down to grab their fallen companion by his jacket. They quickly dragged him out of her reach until he could finally stagger back onto his feet.

Looking from his bloody fingers to her, the wounded jock shouted, “Led the spaz take ew to da dance, den! I’m trew wid ew!”

They fled to the school with Audrey shouting after them, “Yeah, you better fucking run! I’ll break the lot of you down to my size!”

Behind her, Morgan began to shake and then to laugh. He had to pick her up off the ground entirely to keep her from running after them. “Audrey, it’s all right. I’m fine. They were supposed to knock me down. It’s in the script.”

“Well, the script sucks!” she snapped back at him. Then glared at him over her shoulder as she added, “And don’t let this go to your head. I still don’t like you.”

Morgan flopped down to sit on the curb, holding a still seething Audrey tightly on his lap. Though she struggled briefly against his embrace, he continued to laugh and to hold her until the vacuum sensation began to suck at them and the whole scene started over.

Chapter Three

Watching the bully spill Morgan flat on his face on the sidewalk without any more protest than what Beth, as a nineteen-fifties style maiden of the times would utter, had Audrey gritting her teeth in frustration. Thankfully, it was a scene that didn’t last long. At least not once she got it right, a process that took six ‘takes’ before she managed it. Knocking Trevor on his ass turned out to be the highlight of them all.

In the second attempt, Audrey managed to contain herself while Morgan obligingly stumbled to the ground. But her skin crawled when Trevor threw his arm around her neck and pulled her close to his chest.

“My old man’s giving me keys to the car on Friday,” he said. “I’ll be picking you up in style!”

“Peachy,” she said flatly.

He hugged her neck until she was walking hunched over almost bent in half beside him. She wasn’t sure whether he was being brutishly loverly, or if he was going to knuckle her head until she cried ‘Uncle.’

She tried to push his arm back at least enough so that she could stand up straight. But then he grinned and tried to kiss her, and Audrey reacted without thinking. She grabbed his arm, twisted and then flipped him.

Trevor yelled out the instant he became airborne, and then hit the sidewalk flat on his back. He gaped, his mouth bobbing open and shut again as he sucked to refill his lung with the air that had just been knocked out of him.

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