DiDi and I had definitely had some romantic eye contact in the past. But me and the clay man- now we have chemistry that people write novels about. He stood there, this- Golem, and watched me. I considered for a moment that perhaps he was an art project. Something the ceramics kids made and planted out in the quad. That hope was crushed when he took a step forward. Well, perchance a robotics project, by the robotics team?. . . Seemed unlikely since our school didn’t have one.

I thought what any rational person would think, which was that I had gone completely insane and, if my head didn’t feel like it was about to burst and I wasn’t crumpled on the floor like a baby, I probably would have just ran and. . . kept running. Like, forever.

But the big guy was just standing there. A massive form, only barely resembling an actual human. It had a head like the Juggernaut’s; neck less and rounded. Like if someone were to take a really really large ball, cut it perfectly in half and then glue it right on his shoulders, which were alone the length of my arms from one middle finger to the other. His eyes were little upside down triangles, hollow as if someone had carved them right out of his face. They very well may have because, and I cannot stress this enough, THE DUDE WAS MADE OF CLAY.

I wanted to vomit a little.

Sorry; that was a lie.

I wanted to vomit a lot.

And on top of the fact that there was a motionless clay giant staring at me in the middle of the quad, there was the fact that my headache was still going strong. I was just hitting the top of my head at this point, half consciously believing that my fists would make either the headache or the Golem leave. One of them had to go!

The Juggernaut Golem took a very weighted step forward. There was something carved into the sandy stone of his forehead that I now saw. It was writing of sorts- in a different

language. It looked somewhat like this; אֶמֶת; but perhaps I have it wrong. It reminded me slightly of Arabic, but I doubted I was correct.

The Golem took another step and I gave another whimper and pressed my eyes shut tight in hopes that when they opened he would be gone. Along with my headache.

That was a mistake. The pain amplified itself, stunning my hearing and knocking my vision completely off guard. It was like two fisher’s hooks trying to dig their way out of the inside of my head.

And the Golem? Well, he was walking towards me now. With confidence. If it had any kind of mouth, I am sure it would have smiled evilly as he walked, but without one he simply ended up looking like he was confused.

It was close now, his hands swinging all the way down to the floor, drawing lines onto the pavement like chalk. With every step it took, the more I felt that it was real and not just a figment of my imagination. The sun was baking over its stony orange body, looking very convincing.

I didn’t know what to do.

So I screamed. Come on! It seemed like the only solution to a surprise encountered by a massive man made of clay in the middle of fourth period LIT/WRIT outside in the quad on my first day of ninth grade. At least it was a manly scream.

“Aw, don’t scream, Blondy. You’re gonna scare him away.”

My head twisted on my neck, my muscles cramping. The Golem froze in its tracks and, for a moment, even my headache seemed to pause in suspense.

I couldn’t remember ever having seen this girl before. I’m sure that I would have if she was in any of my classes, because her smirk simply screamed trouble. No doubt two seconds into class and she would be getting sent to the principal's office for misconduct.

She wore a crop top that read “Stairway To Heaven” and hung with all the fluidity of a stick over her scrawny form. When she smiled, the sun caught on her braces and a little scar on her nose wrinkled like a wave.

“So- you see him too? I’m not crazy?”

She strolled over my limp body and braced her hands on her hips, watching the Golem like she’d known him for years. “Well, I don’t know about that.” She laughed and it sounded like she was making fun of me- which I hated. “I mean, any dumbass who buries his head in concrete like a freaking ostrich when facing a life and death situation could be deemed crazy in my book.”

“So he’s not dangerous then?” I asked her, feeling like an idiot even as the words came out of my lips.

“Hmm. ‘Bout as dangerous as a baby.”

I sighed.

“Who weighs several hundred tons and will tear you limb from limb and bring your head to its master while painting itself in your blood and murdering for your family. Of course he's dangerous, you freaking silly goofy.”

She giggled, almost amazed at how funny she supposedly was. Reaching back, her fingers curled in her pockets and pulled out something too small for me to see. Next thing I know, she’s holding two great knives. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had pried them out of the jaw of some mythological beast. They were jagged, immensely sharp with unsanded wooden handles and uneven edges.

Knives? At school?!

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I felt faint.

The Golem watched as she thrust the knives in the air and called out: “MAY LEVIATHAN GIVE ME POWER!” and suddenly thrust her body forward, a blur of thick black hair trailing behind her from the ponytail atop her head.

Her face was pale, nearly a mask of white, with a thin mouth and a small nose and tiny, beady red eyes that blazed when she looked at me. Red eyes like mine.

For the first time in my life I understood what it was like to be on the receiving end of my glare; to see the unnatural, chilling little rubies buzzing with energy and heat. It made me feel uncomfortable. Like they could see further than just the shelter of my skin. It made me feel like I had a secret and she was figuring it out just by looking me over.

The Golem stared at her blankly. His fists rising like they were heavy even for him.

It was insane. A little girl, thin and scrawny, holding two massive knives. . . and a huge man made out of hardened clay.

Absolutely insane. He would kill her. Or. . . she would kill him?

I looked between the two and backed away on my elbows and knees. My head was still spinning in furious pain, and, even apart from the fear and pain, I felt that there was not much in which I could contribute to this. . . whatever it was. I didn’t even know who to fight with and who to fight against. I know that sounds crazy, but how was I supposed to know which one of them was good and which was bad? Was I just supposed to assume that because one was a girl I should trust her and because the other was a made- up giant mythical creature who should logically not be able to move on its own I should- you know what? Forget it. Point made.

The clay giant and the girl both took a synchronized step forward but, just as the Golem raised his arm for the first strike, the girl shouted; “WAIT.” she raised both her hands in surrender.

“If we’re really going to fight in front of the newbie-” she jerked her head towards me and the Golem’s face followed stupidly as it dropped his hands besides its legs. “-We might as well look cool. First impressions are super important.” The silver brackets of her braces glimmered through her lips as she lightly tapped the tips of her knives together. There was a moment where nothing happened and me and the Golem looked at one another awkwardly- then music started to pump from her hands.

She got back into her fighting stance in satisfied confidence and waved her hand to the Golem as though allowing it to do the same. It followed stupidly.

The girl looked at him through her eyebrows. “Alright, Golem,” she said in a deeper voice than before, speaking slowly to build tension. “Let’s do this th-” she paused again with a sigh and returned from her fighting stance, her hands on her hips. “No, I’m not feeling this.” she admitted. “Oh, you know what it is? I think that we just need a different song. . . I really just don’t think that ‘Genesis’ is setting the right mood.” She looked down at her knives and the Golem and I looked at one another. If it had a mouth, I feel like it would have said something like “Dude. . . what’s with this gnarly girl?” in a heavy Californian accent. I shrugged at it, even though it didn’t have a mouth and could not, in fact, speak in a Californian accent.

A few songs came on and off and the girl, without looking up from the glowering knives in her hands, mumbled to the Golem. “How do you feel about ‘Van Halen’? I thought maybe-” I guess she had tested the Golem’s patience long enough. He lurched forward and made a grab for her.

“Look out!” I had barely had the time to get to my feet and tackle her out of the way before the Golem’s massive stone hand incinerated the ground on which she had stood only seconds ago to a powder fine enough to snort.

“Oh.” She said, getting to her feet and pulling free of my hands. She sounded almost offended. “I see how it is.”

“If you want to play dirty,” she tapped her knives and the music settled on a song I actually did know (because it was super overplayed on the radio) which was Dirty Deeds by some little known band whose name escapes me.

“Then let's play dirty.” I had a feeling she totally planned that to work out that way.

She took a step forward, knives held up high and skipped through the air, her feet dancing above the pavement. The Golem took an uncoordinated but powerful step forward and waved his hand through the air as a cat might swat idly at a fly. But the girl was quick and she dodged him, smiling, her hair whipping the side of her face.

I watched in horror as she moved exceptionally close to him. She was taunting him, it seemed, rarely acting as the offense, but moving around him and letting him do all the rough stuff. “You know, Golem,” She rolled this way, skipped that, all in a perfectly light and airy way. It was like watching a Madeleine cookie fight a bunt cake, “I really thought we had something.”

She cut through the air like a bullet, her knives skimming smoothly over the surface of the Golem’s stone skin. Every movement of the knives was set in the thundering rhythm of the music. She even mouthed along.

“Come on now, baby, you can do better!” she coached it as it swung heavy arms over her head. The girl, which had looked so scrawny to me earlier, was moving over the pavement like a soap bubble, sinking and rising without meeting the floor. She dodged and spun and sliced and swiped, moving around the poor guy with a laughter that echoed through the whole quad.

She had gotten a little too cocky, I think, and wasn’t quite expecting it with the Golem’s elbow smashed into her face. It wasn’t a very hard hit, especially because she had managed to move away right as it happened. I doubted it would even leave a bruise, but it had definitely stunned her. The Golem saw his opportunity and wrapped his bulky hand over her thin neck. His other hand swatted the knives out of her fists and the two turquoise weapons went skidding away on the pavement. A look of horror washed over her and she reached her hands out, clawing at the air in front of the Golem's face. Then she froze still. For a moment, I thought he’d killed her, and I stared at her face as she hung limp in his hand, dangling like a string between his fingers. Then I heard her scream. She called out what she had before, about Leviathan or something like that. Her fists curled at her side and her eyes widened like two pennies, the color of the blood that ran through her veins. With a flash she was gone. I mean, she wasn’t gone. But she was no longer who she had been a moment before. A red melted over her skin like candle wax, washing hot over her pale figure. She squirmed for a moment and a great pair of horns dug themselves from her head, glossy and shimmering; two impressive dragon’s teeth curling from her scalp. From between the finger’s of the Golem, a tail ruptured, with a pointed tip the shape of a teardrop.

The water fountain beside me began to rumble. I felt the ground shake under my arms. Pebbles vibrated between my fingers. It was as though the earth and sky were responding to her fear. Like the ground was bowing to her rage- the world itself was shaking in solidarity to her terror. I lied there, almost believing she had enraged the earth so deeply that it began to quake.

I was stunned to find out that it was nothing like an earthquake. If anything, it was more like a tsunami.