“Fuck you, man. I don’t look down at people and you know it,” Timber gritted out.
“Could have fooled me. You did nothing to go help poor little Katherine,” Adam smirked.
Timber took a menacing step forward, but Ryan put his hand on his shoulder.
“Leave it alone,” Ryan said, low enough for only Timber to hear.
Glaring at Adam, he took in a deep breath through his nose, and turned to walk away.
“That’s what I thought.” Adam’s laugh caused Timber’s hands to clench into fists. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing you at the party.”
Timber walked to his beat up old ’66 Mustang and peeled his sweaty shirt off. Reaching into his vehicle, he pulled out a clean tee and pulled it over his head. He considered heading home and getting to work on his science project, but he couldn’t get himself to leave.
He sat in his car for over thirty minutes, waiting for Katherine to come out. Timber couldn’t explain why he felt the need to know that she was okay, but the fact remained, he would feel better if he saw her without any tears on her face. He’d never felt concerned like this before about any of the other pathetic kids that his friends teased. Maybe he was a heartless bastard for thinking them deserving of the ridicule, but they never stood up to his friends and fought back. Why anybody would stand there and take the shit that Adam, Ryan, or any of the other athletes dished out, he’d never know. But this girl… even though he’d seen Adam target her before, this time something in him made him feel sorry for her. Timber saw her tears, he felt the need to go to her and help her up and brush the dirt off of her cuts.
Gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles white, Timber’s eyes zeroed in on the dark haired girl that came walking out of the same door she went in less than an hour ago. Katherine had bandages on both of her knees. She was struggling to pull what looked like a very heavy backpack up over her slight shoulders. Timber watched her as she made her way to an old silver Toyota Corolla. After she hefted her backpack into the back seat, she shut the door and stood there, gazing down at the pavement. Her body sagged, and she looked up, her eyes scanning the nearly empty parking lot.
When she made eye contact with him, her expression changed. Katherine straightened her slumped shoulders and tipped her chin up. She was trying to show something to him. Her left hand came up and she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Timber decided to go speak to her. He opened his car door and got out. As he walked towards her, he noticed that her previous look of self-assuredness wavered. She shifted from one foot to another, watching him intently as he neared her. When Timber was standing directly in front of her, he looked down.
“What do you want? Did you come over here to shove me on the ground and cut my tires?” Her lip quivered, but she held it together. “Go ahead. I don’t care what you do to me.”
Timber had never actually inspected Katherine before. He never noticed how her almond shaped eyes held a hint of green amongst brown. They were absolutely beautiful. She hid them behind her dark rimmed glasses, and unless you were standing this close, you couldn’t see the exact color. He also noticed her lips were full and had a slight pout. What would it be like to kiss her? Closing his eyes tightly, Timber shook himself of the erratic thoughts.
“Are you just going to stand there? Do your worst,” she spat.
He opened his eyes. “My worst? You think I came over here to hurt you?”
Katherine looked up at him skeptically. “Well, you’re no better than your asshole friends, so yeah, of course you would.”
Timber’s jaw clenched. She actually thought he would do the same thing Adam did? “I’m not like them. It wasn’t like I was the one that threw the fucking football.”
She looked down, and her long, dark brown hair made a curtain around her face. “You might as well have,” she mumbled.
“Excuse me?” Her words took Timber aback.
She glanced back up at him with confusion in her eyes. “You heard me. You might as well have. Did you even bother to stop your friend from throwing it at me? Did you laugh right along with them when my back was turned? No, wait. You probably plotted to see what you guys could do to hurt the poor nerdy girl. What would embarrass her the most?”
Katherine was mad now and was firing accusations at him that pissed him off. “You have a lot of nerve. I’ve never done anything to you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes, you have.” Her lips quirked up in a rueful smile. “Frankly, I’d say that you are the worst out of all of them. You know what they’re doing, and yet you stand there and let them. You all walk around this school like you rule the place, and you pick on everybody that isn’t a clone of you. Well guess what, Timber,” she said his name with so much hate that it rocked him, “I am different. I care about people, and I don’t walk around pushing and shoving them, making them feel like they are less than me.”