Bullies Choke New Girl — Unaware She's A Deadly MMA Fighter
Chapter 15
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"No," Grady said. "Smarter than that. We get her up on that stage in front of the whole county. Make her look small in front of everybody at once. No storage room this time, no secrets—just everybody sees exactly what she is.""Which is what?"Grady's jaw tightened. "Nobody."He didn't say the rest of what was underneath that word—didn't say that ever since the rumor about the wrist trick had spread, something in his own chest had started feeling smaller, too, and he didn't like that feeling one bit. Boys like Grady rarely examine why cruelty feels like relief; they just keep reaching for it."Four days," Grady said. "Plenty of time to set it up right."After school, Grady drove out past the edge of town, past his father's construction yard, out to the overlook where he and his friends usually killed a few hours when nobody expected anything from them. He sat on the tailgate of his truck, staring out at the county below, quiet in a way his friends had learned not to interrupt."You good?" Cody asked eventually."Fine.""You've been weird all week."Grady didn't answer right away. He was thinking about the rumor, the wrist trick, the way three witnesses had gone quiet and strange after seeing it—the way something about that girl didn't add up to the story he'd built in his head about her. He didn't like things that didn't add up. His whole life had been built on things adding up exactly the way he expected them to: money adding up to comfort, his last name adding up to safety, trouble adding up to somebody else's problem, never his own. A scared new girl who turned out to be something else entirely didn't fit anywhere in that math."You ever feel like your whole life is something somebody else built for you?" Grady asked out of nowhere, staring at the horizon.Cody blinked, caught off guard. "What?""Nothing. Forget it."He didn't bring it up again—didn't know how to say the rest of it: that some nights, alone in his room, he felt like a stranger wearing his own name, performing a version of confidence that had nothing underneath it holding it up. He drove home before dark, the plan for the fair still sitting unfinished in his mind, restless in a way he couldn't name.Ren heard about the trade fair the same way everyone else did: a banner, an announcement, a countdown taped to the wall of the main hallway with a marker crossing off each day as it passed. 4 days. She didn't think much of it at first—just another school event, the kind she'd have gladly skipped if it were optional.It wasn't optional; attendance was mandatory for anyone in a trade program. That meant Grady would be there; that meant she would be there; that meant four more days of walking hallways that had gotten a little colder toward her since the incident with the wrist.