Kenny hadn’t wanted to be paired with some crazy white kid, and certainly not on his first day. Taiwo would have been his choice, always. But Taiwo wasn’t with him, he wasn’t even in the same school. Kenny was alone, surrounded by white faces and Western faces and mean faces, sticking out like a sore thumb with nobody to speak to and the all-too-confident knowledge that even if he did, his accent alone would be yet another difference. It was like being crushed from all sides, so much so that he almost jumped at every noise, almost ran at every glance.

And to top it all off, he’d been paired with the class psycho. The mutterer, eyes flitting around, hands slowly curling and uncurling. There weren’t many 12 year-olds who looked like they’d be more at home behind an acrylic sheet and 100 security guards, but this new boy- Bernard, his name was- did a splendid job at conveying just that. He looked up at Kenny as he approached, looking like he was considering then and there whether to kill or eat him. Perhaps both, hopefully both, if it was to be the latter at all. Kenny would rather be dead when that happened.

But he was spiralling, distracting himself, wasting valuable mental energy. Kenny steeled himself, forced a veneer of friendliness he didn’t feel, and smiled at the kid.

“Hi, my name’s-”

“Lying cunt.” Bernard snarled, glaring at him. “You’re a lying cunt, you’re not pleased to see me, so why are you smiling? What are you hiding?”

Well, he’d certainly had introductions that went less smoothly, but for the life of him Kenny couldn’t think of any. He hesitated, and in that moment he noticed a few things about the boy. The first was that he was shorter than Kenny, but not by much. The second was his accent- Western for sure, but clearly different from the people around them. The third was the bizarre rictus seizing his face as he spoke, as if the muscles beneath were trying to escape from under their fleshy covering.

“I’m not hiding anything.” Kenny said, slowly, eager not to startle the lunatic standing before him. “I’m just being polite, we’re on the same team, right? We need to work together for this project, so let’s work together, I’d rather we not be at each other’s throats while we do so.”

His eyes flitted across Kenny’s face, body, hands. As if he were looking for concealed weapons. Concealed somethings, in any case, and apparently he found none. Bernard grunted with something almost mistakeable for satisfaction.

“You’re not as much of a cock as everyone else.” He noted. Kenny couldn’t help but let a smile crack his mouth at that.

“You barely know me.” He grinned. “Give it some time.”

Whatever budding, common humour was about to grow between them, it got interrupted by the arrival of their group’s third member. Cádo, his name was, from what Kenny recalled. The only boy in the class as tall as him, and the one, so he’d heard, who had yet failed to give up even a single school sport for another to claim first place in. He smiled as he approached, and oddly enough the expression seemed sincere.

Fortunately, Bernard seemed to agree, because he didn’t give nearly as hostile a greeting to the newcomer as he had Kenny.

“We’re only in threes, right?” He asked. “Nobody else is joining us?”

Cádo hesitated, then answered with a nod. Kenny saw Bernard deflate. Evidently he wasn’t a particularly big fan of people. Kenny supposed he could relate.

“Good, what are we doing then?” The smallest of them- the maddest- continued. “I want to hurry up with getting this over and done.”

Their assignment had been a fairly broad one, creating a diorama somehow. All arts and crafts, handiwork and glue, it wasn’t something Kenny had really bothered to think about. He’d never been particularly bad with his hands, but nor did he enjoy using them. It would just be work, and he’d sooner get it finished fast, as well.

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Fortunately, despite the obvious differences in personality and the fricative interactions they caused, it wasn’t much effort to coordinate on a design. A simple concept, the interior of a cell, and an easy way of organising it. Bernard, Kenny found, was near-preternaturally good at keeping track of the steps and dimensions involved, to the point where he suspected within the hour that the boy had already mapped the entire project out in his head. Cádo listened intently, and seemed excellent at lowering the otherwise neurotic boy’s guard, while Kenny himself did his usual thing and kept both of them on-task and well structured. Things were moving far, far smoother than anticipated.

But then the hitch came, as hitches were want to do.

The three of them had taken to continuing their project after class, for no reason that any one of them, save Cádo, would have admitted. They were beginning to enjoy it, and enjoy one another’s company. Kenny enjoyed the quickness of Bernard, the ease of communicating with him, how easily he grabbed the finer nuances of a point and reconstructed their conclusion without being prompted. He liked Cádo too, for the boy was simply pleasant, and all of them were starting to get along. Enough so that their pretence of finishing the project out of class to earn themselves a free period during the continuation the next day was growing thinner as feigned disinterest crumbled and plans started forming of how to spend their free time together.

It was in this crucial stage that the interruption came. Kevin was responsible, the largest boy in the school, and over 2 years their senior. Though not academically lacking, Kevin had been regarded by all as dull, and his cruelty was prodigious. Almost as much so as his size and strength. The boy towered over even Kenny by more than a head, and was actually larger than most of the adults in their school at only 14. Much of this weight was muscle, too, for he’d done well for himself in the school’s football team. His reputation was more for brutality than skill, however, for though there were none better at barging towering boys aside as he marched across the pitch, the difference in fouls and visits to the nurse’s office was far more skewed around him than any records of winning or losing.

“Not surprised you weirdos are hanging out.” He grinned, marching over with his broad face twisted by a vacant, animal smile. Cruelty glinted in his eyes, as if often did, and even Kenny, the newest of the three, felt a stab of anticipation. He knew something was coming.

“I know Bernard.” The older boy grunted. “And I know Caydough, but you’re new.” His eyes were on Kenny, now, with an eerie focus. “Name.”

The question was phrased like a demand, and Kenny found himself swallowing before answering it. Kevin really was very big. He’d only seen him from a distance before that moment, only heard about him from others, it was quite another thing to find the 190 lbs sack of muscle rearing up before him face to face.

“Kenny.” Kenny answered, knowing full well the sort of response he might enjoy from sharing his Nigerian name. “I-”

Kevin cut him off.

“What’s wrong with your accent?” He grunted. “You can’t even talk right? That’s why you’re so desperate to spend the extra time on your project?”

He closed in, fingers closing about Kenny’s lapel. Everything Kenny knew about people, about talking to them, started to crumble at that. Words failing him, the situation falling into violence and madness. He forced himself calm, wove together a suitable answer and opened his mouth to give it voice.

But the words never left him, Bernard’s forehead was faster than his tongue.

Kenny heard the crunching, and when Kevin’s eyes rose again, having fallen with his wince of pain, it was clear that the cartilage centering his face had been mangled beyond recognition. His nose was smashed to pieces, lumps jutting out in every direction, broken down to its very base as blood streamed out of its bulging nostrils. Hate burned in the boy’s gaze as it fell on Bernard, who sneered back.

“Fuck off.” The smaller boy growled, speaking like a feral thing. Kevin was undaunted.

“I’m gonna kill you.” He snarled, closing in on big, loping strides. Bernard moved forwards, not back, eyes wide with madness.

“Kill me? You couldn’t kill me with a nuke, you fucking moron. Come near me and I’ll actually kill you, I’ll smear a bit of rat shit on my fingernails and scratch ya, let you catch something and die pissing out so much blood that ye bedsheets are red.”

It gave Kevin pause, even gave Kenny pause, and in the resulting silence, Cádo moved. He threw a kick, more dexterous than any Kenny had seen before, and his heel found Kevin right beneath his ribs, sinking in deep as the soft tissue before it deformed.

The boy dropped down to his knees, vomited an amount that was, if anything, disproportionately large for his frame, and crumpled face-down. The boys eyed one another, silence broken by Cádo himself.

“We should do this again sometime.”