[Strike Witch]

Back in high school, I had a friend who was pretty shy. She was a very nice, normal girl, intelligent, but not particularly annoying or uppity or anything.

But there was this other girl, let's call her Kara. She was also normal, intelligent, seemingly nice. But she had a hard-on for books. And not just any book.

Yup, Twilight.

So after Twilight was getting popular, Kara, who was a huge huge fan and read it "before it was popular" was basically evangelizing the thing to everyone. My friend wasn't a reader, but since she was on good terms with Kara, borrowed the book from her and said she'd try it.

So for the next few periods, my friend was basically harassed by Kara who wanted her to read it again and again, and eventually my friend basically said to hell with maths and read it during class. She made it about half a chapter and it bored her to tears, so she smiled at me and asked if I wanted to read it instead. I, having already read it, declined, and we went back to math problems. (teacher in this class was a total lazy fuck by the way).

So, it's afternoon, and we meet up with everyone to wind down. Cue Kara evangelizing to my friend, expecting another triumphant convert. My friend smiled, then handed to book to her.

"It was pretty boring."

Not the best choice of words.

Kara's face puffed up and her eyes practically bulged. She looked a little purple. She said okay and took the book away, and that was the end of it, we though.

But over the next few weeks, turns out Kara had moved the group's lunch spot without telling us. She'd spread some nasty rumours about my friend. Then we found out from the IT teacher that she'd posted something nasty on some now-defunct twilight forum. My friend didn't take this very well, as she was a pretty wimpy person. Me personally, I was just fuming at what a bitch Kara was. After this, apparently there were some other reactions, especially among some of our male friends, who also disagreed with Kara's antics, and my friend, myself, two guys and two girls basically had a talk about what to do. My friend decided the best thing would be to confront her directly and try to work it out....

So we did that. Kara flipped her shit. She took her fucking hardcover and thumped my friend in the head with it. After my friends pulled her away, I took my friend to the nurse's office for some ice. She watched as I then ran all the way back (bout half a K to senior school fucking layout) to the recess area with bloodshot eyes.

I kicked her in the shins and bashed her in the head with her own book. We were both dragged in to the principal's office. Principal is an idiot and the head of senior school was a pedantic fuck, so I texted my mother and refused to say anything until she arrived. My mother, as I've said before, is a workaholic scary black-wearing semi-sociopathic terror, and my friend's mother also backed me up.

So the two of us somehow got off with a detention!

But that wasn't the end of it.

Kara's boyfriend from another school approached me about a week later when I was walking home alone, and threatened me with a bunch of nonspecific things. I could see Kara glaring at me from his car up the road. The guy was kind of stupid, so I just said "Oh, you want my seester! she in school in school" is a fake-asian-accent. He even started to walk back down to the school before Kara furiously texted him. By that point I was waiting in line for the bus. So he runs at me, I kick him in the balls, and ride home.

My friend wasn't the only one though, I found out about a year later that Kara basically peer-pressure/bullied most of her friends into reading that fucking book. About half of them just played along, which my friend later told me we should have done in the first place.

Oh well, live and learn. At least I wasn't shot with a paintball gun again.