Liquid bubbled from the fountain beside me, slowly dripping down the sides of the hot metal. Then It erupted. The water spit into the air like fireworks, cutting through the hot summer sun and splashing over me in my haze. It hovered above my head momentarily, shading me from the scene before thrusting forward, mind of its own, and blowing against the Golem with such weight that the sculpture tilted back and forth before losing balance and falling backwards. The girl was flung to the ground, skidding away like a rock across a lake. With her fall the water seemed to lose direction and fell over herself and the Golem in a shower like the rain of a storm.

I rushed to her side and held up her head as she coughed out the water.

“Don’t worry.” I assured her. “I got you.”

She looked up at me with raging red eyes. “Let go!” She shrugged from my grip and twisted her crop top to drain the fountain water out. “I’m such an idiot!” She raged and hurried back to her feet she picked up her knives and headed for the Golem. “Water!” She yelped. “Why would I throw water at a guy made of clay!” She stopped in her tracks and turned to face me again. “You know what, none of this would have happened if you’d just ran away from the big guy when you had the chance! Now we’re not even fighting a Golem, we’re fighting Clay Face-”

“Um, you should-” I tried to warn her, but she cut me off.

“No! You are way more trouble than you seem, I guess, Goldy Locks. No one has ever gotten me so riled up-”

“But, you-”

“So riled up, that I use my water like that! I hate newbies! Maybe I should just-”

“Wait, but the clay-”

“Listen, Blondy, Imma need you to get away from here. You’re way more trouble than you’re worth and I can’t babysit and fight at the same time.” She half squealed, half grunted in frustration, but that wasn’t going to scare me.

“I’m not going anywhere.” I promised confidently. “I’m going to stay right here and-” So she punched me in the face.

What I saw when I woke up was somehow even weirder than what I had seen before going down. The girl was still there- and so was the Golem. But things were. . . different now. The Led Zeppelin girl was running around in circles, laughing, being chased by a headless Golem body and holding a bodiless Golem head under her arm, football style.

Something seemed a little different about the Golem’s body now; it was slimy and shiny, seemingly much less coarse than it was before. It was darker in color also, and much more elastic.

It took my hazy mind a moment to understand that somehow the magic water from the fountain had softened the clay and made it less of a rock and more of a mound of playdough.

It was also hard for me to understand why that would be a disadvantage for the girl. She seemed to be doing even better now, with the Golem’s head cut off and all.

But as the Golem’s arms stretched out, straining to catch her, his hands sort of melted and reformed in a different shape. They were just blobs of wet clay for a few moments before the fingers sharpened and were elongated and both the hands took to a shape identical to that of the girl’s knives.

The hand was swung blindly on the floor, hitting right where the girl had stood a moment prior, spreading long, spidery cracks into the cold pavement.

The head that the girl was holding decided that now might be an excellent time to hollow out a mouth for itself, and was snapping yellow-red teeth at the girl’s fingers like an angry cat.

My left eye, where she had hit me, was so swollen that it had clamped itself shut and I was blind through it. And the confusion was making me so angry that my skin was beginning to redden. And just when I thought that the first day of ninth grade could not possibly get any worse, I had realized that the Golem had found a new target.

The massive, slippery body was running in my direction, and the girl was preoccupied, hunching over the wiggling, snarling head with her knife. Her sarcastic grin was now replaced with a look of utter concentration as the head propped itself up with a minuscule and non proportional body. Tiny fingers pushing the knives away like a child refusing to get a shot.

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At least my headache was gone. When the girl punched my face, it was like the impact of her first had blown my headache away. Or perhaps it was the impact of my face hitting the pavement. Who cares? I could get up onto my feet now and do my best to fight that Juggernaut thing.

"Um, excuse me!" I called out to her.

"Busy!" She replied, not even looking at me.

"But, please, I-"

"I'll be there in a sec, Blondy."

As aforementioned, I fight often, so this shouldn't be too hard. At least that’s what I told myself.

Jab, cross, hook, cross, uppercut (to its stomach, since it’s head was elsewhere), overhand.

I looked back up, panting. And received absolutely nothing.

It seemed silly; my fists either bounced off of the soft clay or were engulfed by it. And the Golem had stood for a second, as though to kindly give me a shot. He even waited a few moments after I was done, just so that it can be sure I finished.

Now it gave its hand (still shaped like the girl’s jagged knives) a light swing back, preparing to slice me in half. My heart froze but I had to force myself to move. My natural instincts told me to kick it between the legs, but I had a feeling that whatever the Golem had down there, my foot wasn’t going to hurt it much.

So instead I dropped to the floor and slid underneath it, now standing behind its hulking body. With all of the might I could possibly have mustered, with my heart pounding, with my ears ringing, I kicked the Golem in the back, right above where his butt cheeks connected.

The Golem froze completely. Not the kind of ‘stop moving’ frozen, but the kind of frozen where something stops functioning.

Then, dramatically, he toppled over, his skin turning into that dry, orange- gray color again as it came to the ground. It smashed into the floor with a sound like a building collapsing. The whole area was choked with dust and orange debris as the rock body broke into too many pieces to count.

I looked back at the girl, my face dragging with exhaustion and shock.

She smiled; “Don’t be too proud of yourself, Blondy.” she said, standing up and brushing crumbs of clay from her ripped jeans. They used to be baby blue, now they were the color of the desert. At least she didn't seem mad at me anymore- not that she really had any reason to be mad at me in the first place.

The Led Zeppelin girl walked over, her shoulders pulled back, and shoved a huge frozen Golem head into my hands.

I looked down at it, feeling sick at the horrid mid- bite in which the thing had died, with its teeth like claws and its tongue slivering out from between his crusty lips.

I looked away quickly and tried to hand it back to her back. She wouldn’t take it.

“Look.” she said and pointed to the head. I let my eyes droop down slowly to examine the place where her dirt- caked nails were pointing.

There was something there that I didn’t notice before. A letter was crossed out from the word on the Golem’s forehead. I looked back at her.

“That’s Hebrew.” She ran her finger over the word. “Golems come from Israel, like yours truly. Every Golem has the word אֶמֶת engraved onto their foreheads.” (the word sounded like ‘emet’) “Emet means truth in Hebrew. The only way to kill a Golem is by scratching out the letter Aleph, the first letter (which to an English speaking person would look like the last letter). When you cross out the Aleph, you are left with the word מֶת (met) which translates to ‘dead’ in English.”

Absolutely fascinating. Fascinating that of all things this was what she decided to explain.

I pushed the head back into her hands, making sure she got pushed back a little too.

I wanted to yell at her. For punching me in the face, for bringing me into this, for ruining my first day of school. A part of me even wanted to hit her (although, considering the beheading she had just given the Golem, punching her probably would not have bode well for me). But, with my teeth clenched, I forced myself to calm down and turn to her.

“Are you okay?” I asked, my lips pursed. “Did you get hurt?”

She laughed and turned to pick up her knives, but her hands moved up and over the bruises on her neck.

“Of course I’m not hurt.” She scoffed. “But I quite like the way I re- arranged your face.”

I grunted. “That's not funny.”

“Yes.” she agreed. “Figured you wouldn’t think so.”

“Who- who are you?”

“Jezebel Murphy. Get used to me now, buddy, ‘cuz you’re gonna be seeing a whole lot of me in your near future.”

“What? I don’t understand-”

She waved her hand through the air dismissively as she began to walk away from the cracked pavement, pile of dead Golem pieces and confused teenage boy with a black eye.

I wanted to follow her, but I held my ground. I did nothing wrong. I shouldn’t have to be begging her to explain things to me.

“I’m not coming with you.” I called after her, trying to sound decisive, but coming off more uncertain.

“Fine. Then don’t.”

Okay. Not exactly what I expected.

“Aren’t you going to try and make me or something? Threats, promises, anything?”

“Nope. I don’t need to.” I hated how confident she sounded. “The curiosity will kill you. You’ll come on your own. And if you don’t. . .” she stopped walking and turned her smirking face at me halfway. “You’ll die and I’ll see you there anyway.”