The Malloys

      Jenna sat outside the principle’s office, a tissue shoved into her left nostril to stop the bleeding, the hem of her skirt and leggings torn, and her knuckles raw. Yet Peggy, who walked out of the office, flanked on either side by her parents, looked way worse. Jenna had torn off one of her pink scrunchies, leaving half of her raggedy hair loose, and the right side of her face was already becoming one big bruise. Her parents shot Jenna disgusted looks. Neither noticed their daughter take the opportunity to flip Jenna the bird.

           Jenna leaned forward.

           Peggy flinched and shuffled sideways into her mother’s embrace.

           Feeling sore but smug, Jenna watched them round the corner at the end of the hallway and then leaned back, crossing her hands behind her head.

           “Still undefeated-”

      “Ms. Malloy,” called a woman’s voice from behind the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

        Jenna dropped her arms and stood up. Her fingers ached as she took ahold of the knob and pulled the door open. She slipped inside. Three seats were positioned in front of Principal Baker’s desk. The woman in question, stout and plump with age, leaned against the corner of her desk, staring off towards the nearby window. The blinds were down, but the sound of children laughing and playing resonated through the office. It was small, considering Principal Baker ran one of the most prestigious, all-girl schools in the country. Plaques hung on the wall behind her, and teaching awards rested on the desk. None of the students were sure how old Principal Baker was, only that she had been teaching at this facility for nearly three decades now. 

           “Take a seat,” she said, not looking at Jenna.

           Jenna plopped down into the middle seat and immediately winced. She had underestimated just how sore the fight had left her. She wouldn’t be surprised if she woke up the next morning looking like a Dalmatian.

           “You left me no choice, Ms. Malloy,” Principal Baker declared somberly. Shaking her head, she took her seat. She fixed Jenna with a disapproving yet concerned look.

           Unfazed, Jenna arched an eyebrow.

           “What? You’re finally gonna suspend me?”

           “What would that accomplish?” Principal Baker asked. “Little better than a vacation. And then you’d return, wounds healed, back in fighting shape. No. This cycle must stop, Ms. Malloy. Both for the other girls’ sakes and yours.”

           “…Okay,” Jenna replied, frowning. “Detention? You’re gonna keep me after school?”

           “Negative,” Principal Baker replied. She tented her fingers beneath her chin, a proud edge to her smile. “Worse. You left me no choice, child. It took great effort, especially in the case of your mother, but I persevered and called your parents in.”

           “No!”

           The door was flung open and before she knew it, Jenna was being pulled out of the chair and into a fierce hug, the tissue knocked out of her nose. “Baby girl!” Like a giant bear stuffed into a suit, her father nuzzled her hair with his bearded cheek, exclaiming, “My baby! Don’t worry! Papa’s here!”

           “…Can’t…breathe,” Jenna tried to gasp into his heavily muscled chest. She punched at his arms and stomped on his feet, but to no avail. His love was too strong!

           “Mr. Malloy!” Principal Baker called over, sounding slightly panicked. His abrupt appearance had knocked the smile off her face.

           Jenna’s father immediately released his daughter and rushed over to Principal Baker. He took her wrinkled hand, kissed it, and flashed a too-white smile.

“Please,” he said, “Armando will do.”

           Jenna would have puked if she hadn’t been so busy gasping for air.

           “Er, Mr. Malloy,” Principal Baker said, taking back her hand. “Sit. Please.” Still smiling, Armando did. She looked past him, to the door. “Is Mrs. Malloy not with you…?”

           “Pft.” Armando waved a manicured hand dismissively before returning his attention to his daughter. “Jenna! Your face!” He took her face in his hands and ordered, “Did you lose any teeth? Open wide for Papa.”

           Jenna rolled her eyes but did so. Armando peered into her mouth, counting. “…All there, no chips,” he murmured. “How many times do I need to remind you, baby girl. Your smile’s the moneymaker…” He leaned back and frowned at her, “I spotted some yellow in the back. Have you not been using the teeth whitening kit I got you for your birthday-?”

           “Mr. Malloy,” Principal Baker said, more fiercely this time. Armando released his daughter’s face. She took the opportunity to close her mouth and sit down. Principal Baker looked between them, clearly trying to regain her composure. “Yes, very well. If Mrs. Malloy is indisposed at the moment, allow us to move on. Mr. Malloy, your daughter attacked Peggy Dixon, another student. Both came out of it with scrapes and bruises, but nothing broken, luckily.” She gestured to Jenna. “For her.”

           “Ah,” Armando replied, smiling vacantly.

           Principal Baker had clearly expected more of a reaction from him. Narrowing her eyes judgmentally, she went on. “I managed to convince the Dixons to not press charges. Only because I promised to discipline Jenna accordingly. Yet,” she hesitated, “I find it difficult to do so since Jenna refuses to answer why she attacked Peggy in the first place.”

           “Survival of the fittest,” said a voice by the window.

           Principal Baker jumped in her seat, banging her knees up against the desk’s underbelly. The impact knocked one of her awards onto the floor, where it broke apart. “What…? How…?” she gasped, rising in her chair. “Who…?”

           A lean-muscled woman stood by the blinds, peering through them with one hand while holding the other against the small of her back. Her dark hair was shaved on both sides. She wore a full, dark suit over combat boots. She would have been pretty if her expression had not been so grim, so distrusting of the children playing on the other side of the window. A cold and dangerous intent radiated off of the woman in waves. The office grew darker, as if the very shadows in the room were reacting to her, coming together and bowing their dark heads in worship…

           “Hey, Mom,” Jenna said, waving halfheartedly.

           “Pft,” Armando said again more fiercely, folding his arms over his chest and pointedly looking away. “Show off.”

           Meanwhile, Principal Baker was looking back and forth from the woman to the closed door. Had it not been open just a moment ago?

           “Mrs. Malloy, how-? When did you-?”

           “The door was open,” Jenna’s mother declared, her words robotic. “You blinked. So now I’m here.”

The scary lady lowered her hand and turned from the window, fixing her pale blue eyes on Principal Baker. “Beatrice Baker,” she said. “Harvard graduate, year 1982. You were two points shy of being valedictorian. After that you spent three years volunteering in Africa, delivering medicine to local villages. You had a fiancé, but he was killed by smugglers. You returned to the states and began teaching in earnest, more as a distraction for your grief. Your teaching career is spotless, and you come highly recommended by graduates, meaning you eventually regained your passion. Yet the grief remains. Over the past three decades you’ve had five cats and four dogs. You named every one of them ‘William Lenore’ for your dead fiancé. The current William, a Bedlington terrier, isn’t feeling too well. The tumors in his stomach are spreading. Though the doctors say it is treatable, you worry that it isn’t too long before the tumors pop open the dog’s stomach, just like the bullets did to your fiancé.” She grimaced. “You are a good person. I would not have humored your invitation to this meeting otherwise.” 

“How…how do you…? How could you possibly know all that?!” Principal Baker asked, a tremor in her voice.

           The scary lady ignored her question. She held up a pink scrunchy.

           “Mom,” Jenna groaned, “did you kill Peggy?”

           Principal Baker made a whimpering whine in the back of her throat.

           “No.” Jenna’s mother used both of her hands to test the scrunchie’s elasticity. “Yet you could have easily strangled her with this-”

           “Mrs. Malloy!” Principal Baker exclaimed.

           “Por favor!” Armando scoffed at his wife. “Get down off that murder robot you use as a high horse and sit, Juniper. Nobody’s got time for you.”

           The temperature in the room dropped another several degrees.

           Like a predator stalking its prey, Juniper slowly walked over and sat in the remaining chair. Caught in the microwave that was the tension between her parents, Jenna cleared her throat loudly and asked Principal Baker, “Sooooooo you were saying?”

           “Um, yes.” The woman stared at Juniper a moment longer, tears welling in her eyes. She shook her head fiercely and tried her best to persevere. “Jenna, what reason did you have to attack Ms. Dixon-?”

           “Isn’t it obvious?” Armando asked flippantly. “Because she’s a bitch. A bitch who needs to make everything about her. School. Recess. Our marriage.” He pointed an accusing finger at his wife and practically shouted at Principal Baker, “We’ve been married ten years. Ten. In that time we’ve only had sex four times. Four!”

           “Fuck me,” Jenna groaned, slumping in her chair.

           “Jenna, language,” Principal Baker retorted, more out of reflex. “Mr. Malloy, I…That’s beside the point here-”

           “As if you’ve gone the decade dry,” Juniper said over her. She pulled too hard on Peggy’s scrunchy, tearing it. “I have full-length movies starring you and your personal assistants.”

           Armando gasped. “You recorded me!”

           “Of course. It’s my job-”

           “As my bodyguard! Not my wife!”

           “The difference being…?’

           Armando’s face flushed. “I was only ever just a job to you, wasn’t I?!” he blubbered. “If not for Jenna, I never would have seen you again! Ever!”

           “Yes,” Juniper replied with zero hesitation.

           While Armando sobbed in his hands and Juniper looked on dispassionately, Jenna explained to a lost-looking Principal Baker, “Dad’s a bigshot actor in Spain. That meant a lot of stalkers. Stalkers that were part of some cult. They wanted to sacrifice him to their ancient god or something. His agency hired Mom as a bodyguard. She had experience in this type of thing. They, well mostly she, beat the cultists, saved the day, and then they banged. And nine months later,” she gestured to herself, “I happened.”

           “You…you,” the poor woman said. With one last effort to get this meeting back on track, she asked Jenna beseechingly, “Jenna, please, why did you fight Peggy?”

           Jenna considered telling her the truth. Telling her that Peggy was regularly bullying another of their classmates, Annie. When Annie had finally tried to stand up for herself, Peggy had gone in for a punch. But Jenna had managed to get in between them, knocking the punch to the side and sweep kicking her like Mom had taught her. And then the real fight had begun.

           Yet if Jenna told Principal Baker, Annie’s life would only get harder. Grownups always just made things more complicated when they tried to help.

           Jenna cleared her throat hoarsely and looked down at her knees. Tears welled up in her eyes as she said in a quiet, ashamed voice, “I don’t know how to explain it but…but whenever I see Peggy, I just get so,’ she touched a hand to her chest, “warm. My heart won’t stop pounding and…I think…I didn’t want to admit it…” She wiped at her tears with her other hand. “I think I love Peggy a-and I don’t know what to do about it. She’s just so pretty. So I-I guess I thought that, if I made her less pretty, I’d stop loving her and…” She dropped her hands and bowed her head. “I know it’s stupid. And I’m sorry. Really I am-! Huh? Dad?”

           Her father had taken her hands in his. He gazed down at her with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “Never be ashamed of love, baby girl,” he said fiercely, a manly tear trickling down his cheek. “And never give up on it. You won’t give up on it. Not if Armando Montana De La Rosa Malloy has anything to say about it!”

           Staring at him in horror, Jenna thought, Screw you, Annie!

           Yet before she could confess the truth, her father was leaning forward, making intense eye contact with Juniper. “June, for our daughter’s sake, we must band together once more. My sexiness and your scariness combined? There is truly no greater force on Earth. Search that blackened heart of yours. You know it to be true.”

           “What did you have in mind?” his wife asked, reciprocating his intense gaze.

“The world premiere of Universal Matador IV is this Friday. I will get the Dixons VIP tickets. Expensive wine, front seats, autographs from yours truly. That’s sure to win them over and make them forget all about the fight.”

           “Good thinking, Armando,” Juniper said, sounding genuinely impressed. By this point, Jenna was smushed in between them. “Butter them up like only you can. That will give me enough time to install surveillance into their home and vehicles.”

           Armando nodded eagerly. “Yes, that way we will know their every move. Meaning we can ‘accidently’ run into them afterwards, giving Jenna plenty of opportunities to seduce Peggy!”

“As our daughter, it will only take her two meetings at most.” Juniper’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Yet contingencies will be put in place in case this ‘Peggy’ mistreats her-”

           “No bombs!” Armando snapped, breaking eye contact and pulling away.

           “It was one time,” Juniper sneered, tossing the ruined scrunchy aside.

           He shot to his feet and glowered down at her. The short-lived peace between them was shattered. The marital war resumed.

“At my mother’s funeral!”

           “She was already dead. Not like she noticed.”

           “Not the point! You always hated her!” Armando kicked the chair away and ran out of the office. His voice echoed through the school as he cried hysterically, “JUST LIKE YOU’VE ALWAYS HATED ME!!!”

            Juniper watched her husband run off before murmuring aloud, “He’s not wrong. If the diabetes hadn’t killed her, I would have.”

           Looking pale and weak, Principal Baker massaged her eyes tiredly. “Mrs. Malloy, I think, that for Jenna’s sake, you and your husband need to take a step back and-Mrs. Malloy?!”

           Juniper was gone.

           “You blinked,” Jenna told the poor woman sympathetically. “Yeah…A for effort, ma’am. But next time just suspend me.”