Ava Hidalgo smirked, and wiped the splatter of blood from her face that had come from the boy’s punch, spitting out her back left molar into her hand as she did. You’re not supposed to hit girls, she thought to herself. But man, am I glad you just did.
Ava ducked under another flying fist from the boy. Untrained and wild, it was almost simple for her to dodge; she was no black belt herself, but she’d gotten in so many fights she’d lost count, whereas this boy was clearly a first-timer. Her fist went up, catching the boy in the solar plexus through his Five Finger Death Punch T-shirt and knocking the wind out of him with an inhuman grunt.
He staggered backwards, wheezing, with a look on his face that was worth a million dollars, then charged with a roar. Still too slow, Ava thought as she circled behind him, braced herself in a crouching position, wrapped her arms around her assailant’s abdomen, and hoisted him overhead into the air, dropping him headfirst onto the tile of the school hallway. A perfect German suplex. Ava was proud of herself, and even more proud that she didn’t even break a sweat in the process. The boy twitched and groaned, but didn’t seem to be too seriously injured; good, Ava thought, I don’t need the murder charge.
Ava looked down at the boy, who was in a heap on his side, concussed. For Ava, a good fight was its own reward, but it was always nice to get some extra loot from her prey when she won, and this one’d had the decency to have it fall out of his pockets on the way down: a ten-dollar bill and a Ziploc baggie containing some suspicious green plant matter that Ava recognized as weed.
“I’ll be taking this,” she muttered to the boy as she bent down and shoved both into her sports bra through the neckline of her shirt. When she rose up to stand again, though, she noticed that the crowd who had appeared to watch the fight had all dispersed, and quickly realized why: Principal MacPherson, with his imposing six-foot-tall and easily three-foot-wide presence, was standing right behind her and towering over her.
“God damn it, not again,” the principal said. “Alright, come to the office, let’s talk this over.”
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“You realize this is the twentieth time this year?” Principal MacPherson groaned, fiddling with a tiny globe on his desk. On the other side of the barrier between the wielder of authority and those it is used against sat Ava, glowering and still dripping a little blood from the corner of her mouth. “Christ on a bicycle, it’s not even November yet. It’s not even Thanksgiving and you’ve already put twenty kids in the hospital.”
Ava laughed, sending a little bit of blood from her tooth socket onto the desk. The principal shuddered, recoiling from the blood.
“Thanks for keeping up with my win count,” Ava said.
The principal feared Ava Hidalgo. He’d been working at Roberts High for a decade, and he’d dealt with plenty of problem kids, but before Ava had started her sophomore year there, he’d never seen someone who he could describe as being addicted to physical violence, let alone a sixteen-year-old girl.
What made the situation even weirder, however, was that he really could not say he had any true moral compunctions with the girl. Her prey seemed to almost exclusively be the other problem kids; the bullies, the gang members, the people Principal MacPherson would have ordinarily been calling into the office on a regular basis (and was, instead, calling ambulances for). What’s more, she never actually started any fights that he was aware of; provoked with her words, sure, but she’d never been the one to throw the first punch, simply the one to answer it. In other words, Ava’s position as a student at John Roberts High School was safe; she had not only the administration’s fear in her grasp, but also their grudging respect.
Ava waved her hand in front of the principal’s face; while he’d been contemplating this, he’d simply been staring off into the distance, unsettling her.
“Hello? Earth to MacPherson?” she asked. The principal turned red with embarrassment. “What’s my punishment gonna be this time? Two days out-of-school like usual?” she added.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he said, waving his hand to shoo her out. “Go get that tooth checked out while you’re out.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t need the lecture,” Ava groaned at him as she stood up and left the office. The socket had stopped bleeding, and she’d gotten two days off, so she looked at the conversation with the principal as a win.
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By the time Ava got to the apartment complex where she and her mother shared a two-bedroom, her shirt was stuck to her back from sweat, she smelled like a goat, and her short bob of black hair had become more of a clump. She cursed the Houston heat as she ascended the outdoor stairs to the third floor, where apartment number 1312, her humble home, awaited her; the punch she’d taken was starting to catch up with her too, as the adrenaline wore off, and her jaw throbbed. Cost of having a hobby, she thought to herself.
As usual, her mother, Lydia, was sitting outside the door, smoking a Marlboro cigarette.
“Hey, Mom,” Ava groaned.
“You’re home early,” Lydia said through the cigarette, waggling it up and down as she spoke. “Get in another fight?"
“Yup,” Ava said. “Two days out for it.”
“You start it or they start it?” Lydia said, taking it out of her mouth and exhaling a cloud of acrid tobacco smoke. Ava rolled her eyes; her mom knew damn well what the answer to that question was.
“They started it, duh,” Ava said.
“You win?” Lydia asked, putting the Marlboro back in her mouth.
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“Of course,” Ava said.
“Good girl,” Lydia said, smiling, as Ava pushed the door open into the apartment and made her way into her bedroom.
For a sixteen-year-old girl, Ava’s bedroom was somewhat austere. Grey walls surrounded a queen-size bed, with a large window overlooking it; in one corner of the room sat a corner desk, that doubled as a vanity on the rare occasion that Ava bothered with makeup and currently held a folded-shut laptop. Next to the desk sat a dresser, atop which sat a thirty-two-inch smart TV and a PlayStation 4, with the appropriate controller plugged into it and charging; a few games in their cases scattered the remainder of the dresser’s top, along with a pink glass bong with Hello Kitty decals, the only obvious marker of femininity an outsider would be able to note.
Ava grabbed the bong, along with the accompanying lighter, and flopped onto her bed, causing the water within to slosh around. She opened the window, and then fished into her bra, producing the Ziploc, which was now covered in unfortunate-smelling sweat funk; she grimaced, pried it open, and removed some of the ground-up plant matter, taking a sniff to make absolutely sure it was pot and not oregano before she decided to smoke it.
Fortunately, the smell checked out, and she packed a bit into the bowl of the Hello Kitty bong, her source of comfort, and lit it, drawing the smoke through the water and into her lungs. She exhaled, coughed until she practically choked, and then flopped over, asleep, her last conscious thoughts being that she’d stolen some damned good stuff.
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When she woke up, Ava was still quite stoned; a quick look in the mirror attached to her corner-desk revealed that her eyes were still redder than the genitalia of the Devil himself, and she was very, very hungry. She lumbered out of bed, and out the door, where her mother was smoking yet another cigarette.
“Hey, Mom, we got any food?” Ava asked.
“Card’s not refilled yet,” Lydia grumbled. “You’re on your own, kid.”
“Dammit,” Ava whined, before she remembered the ten-dollar bill that was still soaking in her bra sweat and perked up a bit. As gross as it was, it was still legal tender, and the taco truck outside the Exxon down the street didn’t give a damn. “Can I bum a smoke for the road?” she asked.
“Sure, sure,” Lydia grumbled, fishing a Marlboro out of the pack and tossing it to her daughter, who promptly lit it and took a drag as she went down the stairs.
“Thanks, Mom,” Ava said.
The walk to the Exxon was mostly uneventful, as usual; Ava hated the sweltering heat even more when she was high than she did when she was sober, and she regretted taking the smoke from her mother, as it was making her start to get winded. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she looked down, and noticed something brushing up against her leg: a stray cat, with scraggly black fur and a surprisingly fat body for a homeless tom. It looked up at her and meowed a meow that sounded like a deflating balloon.
“Hey, little guy,” Ava said in a high register, leaning down to pet the cat. It chirped and purred at her touch, bonking its head against her ankle and rubbing against her leg, then meowed again. “You trying to get some food too?” she asked the cat; it meowed affirmatively, and the two began walking together. Ten bucks was easily enough to get a can of Fancy Feast for the cat, too.
Eventually, she got to the Exxon’s parking lot and walked up to the window of the large truck labeled with “Tacos Michoacanas;” as usual, the smiling face of Luis, the truck’s owner, approached from the other side.
“Hey, Ava,” Luis said. “Kicked out of school again?” Luis was an old man, easily in his sixties, but in his day, he’d been pretty similar to Ava; he’d gotten in more than his fair share of fights, and he’d loved each and every one. She respected him, and he understood her, and that was the most anyone could ask.
“Yeah,” Ava said. “Got punched, took the guy down, stole his weed. Can I get four of my usual? Pastor, cilantro and onions, on corn?”
“Damn, good girl! Yeah, sure, eight bucks,” Luis said as Ava handed the ten dollar bill over. “You’re really your mother’s kid, you know that?” he asked.
“Oh, bullshit,” Ava said, rolling her eyes. “Tell me that when you see me stuck outside all day with a smoke in my mouth instead of doing anything useful.”
“You don’t know what she was like when she was your age,” Luis said as he prepared the tacos. “She used to be a little badass too, just like you.”
“That just makes me even more afraid I’m gonna end up like her,” Ava said.
“Well, do well in school and don’t have a kid when you’re 20, and you won’t,” Luis said, handing over a paper bag, the bottom of it soaked in the grease of a delicious meal. Ava waved as she walked off into the store with the bag and her change, and emerged moments later holding a can of food for the stray cat; she opened it and let the cat have his own meal, and then the two set off back home.
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When the girl and the cat who had seemingly adopted her passed by the spot where they’d first met, the cat started to arch up and hiss at the tall grass on the edge of the path, frightened by something.
Ava reached down to pet the cat and comfort it, unsure what, exactly, it was scared of; instead of receiving the affection gladly, it bit her on the hand and took off into the street, fortunately managing to cross before anything could hit it. So much for the cat, Ava thought. And I liked that little guy.
Moved by curiosity, Ava peered into the grass, and was immediately struck unconscious by something she didn’t see coming.
When she awoke, she was in agony. Every single part of her body hurt like she’d never hurt before; not in a hundred fights or more had she ever felt like this. She tried to scream, but nothing came out; she tried to move her head, but could only barely pick it up.
She laid there for what felt like several hours, wanting to scream and thrash but unable to move her body, feeling like she was in flames, her skin, muscles and bone all cremating to ash while she was still conscious. The only clue she had as to what was going on was the deflated skin of something that looked sort of like a jellyfish, poking out of the tall grass she had peered into. Curiosity kills me, I guess, she thought to herself as the pain won and she fell back into the red of unconsciousness.
Hours later, she awoke under the night sky from a dreamless sleep, the pain having faded entirely, aside from her back being somewhat sore from the pavement. She stood up, her legs creaking a bit as she did, and picked up the jellyfish-like skin, along with the bag of long-since-cold tacos, and began to walk back to the apartment complex, hoping to God that she wasn’t about to die.
As if irony itself had taken over her life, what felt like a knife shot past the side of Ava Hidalgo’s head, cutting through her bob of hair and leaving a slight gash in the skin. She stumbled forwards in shock, gasping, and turned around to see a cloaked, muscular adult man, his face invisible in the night.
“So, it chose you, huh?” he asked.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and I’d really like to just go home and eat dinner, if you don’t mind,” Ava said, feeling very grumpy about this turn of events.
“The parasite. It chose you as its host. Soon, you’ll experience great power… but not yet,” the mystery man said. “I have unfinished business with the previous host of that parasite. When the time comes, I’ll finish that business with you, but not yet.”
With that, the man walked off into the darkness.
"Don't know what the hell that was all about," Ava grunted to herself, confused and annoyed, as she resumed her walk back home. "Dammit, now I'm gonna need to get my hair redone."