Your palms are sweaty as you try to speak up. You know how to defend yourself. The answer is right on the tip of your tongue but you just can’t say it. The words are trapped and you don’t think it has anything to do with the seniors crouched over you or maybe it does. Maybe they are the reason you can’t defend yourself, maybe that’s why your self-esteem is low, maybe just maybe it’s why you are tongue-tied.
But that’s not the point. The point is you’re trapped. No way to get out and these angry-looking fellows might start throwing hands pretty soon.
Actually you’re not the one who committed the crime. It wasn’t you who spread the rumour but you can’t say anything. You must NOT snitch. That’s the number one rule of being in secondary school. You definitely know this, everyone does.
That is why when you are called into the principal’s office to relate the ordeal you tell them your black eye was because you fell from the stairs in your house. Later those same seniors accost you after school to tell you well done but you don’t feel accomplished.
You feel broken, quiet, guilty and you didn’t even do anything wrong.
