Page 23 of The Blackened Blade

I look back down at my drenched plate, my meal now soggy and soiled by what smells faintly of grape juice.

My hand slightly shakes as I clench the fork in my hand, only seeming to incite more laughter from the group surrounding my table.

“Or did you want to continue your meal?” A mocking grin laces Ivy’s lips as she leans closer, her eyes flickering from me to the messy food in front of me.

“After all, we shouldn’t waste food, should we Micai?” She gives a figure now standing behind me a nod.

A rough hand pushes my shoulder forward, a brown haired boy nodding toward the tainted lasagne with a dark smirk on his lips. “Eat.”

He pushes my shoulder again, trying to edge me closer down toward the sloppy plate, while another boy with a blonde mohawk comes to the other side of me.

“Make sure she eats all of it since she’s so eager to stay.” He sneers.

Ivy laughs, the sound of it grating on my ears as the boys around her join in.

I look up into Ivy's curved green eyes. It wasn’t their taunts that bothered me, or even what they had done to me here before. But to ruin the meal that just a moment ago I had been happily enjoying, wasintolerable. Another ‘lesson’ I learned in the Facility…every piece of food given was precious.

I grab the dripping, messy plate as they continue to chuckle, and in one swift move, drive it into the closest face to me.

Ivys.

The boys surrounding us all freeze, their eyes open wide as they watch the plate fall to the floor with a clatter. The remaining lasagne and grape juice slowly drips down Ivy's horrified face and down her newly stained uniform.

The already quiet room falls into a pin-drop silence, only a couple of whispers and stifled chuckles across the room heard as I pull myself up and slowly straighten myself. I brush some small droplets from my blazer as I glance toward Ivy.

“Since you didn’t want me to waste anything, it’s better to share, right?” I flick my gaze to the boys around me and Ivy.

“Or should I have put it with the rest of thetrash.” A small grin stretches my lips as Ivy wipes her face, her cheeks almost tomato red. Or maybe that was the sauce still dripping from her skin?

Her eyes tighten into slits as her voice reaches a pitch that would make dogs whimper.

“What iswrongwith you?! Did you really go insane?!” She screeches, her small freckled nose scrunching as her face twists into an ugly scowl. One of the boys beside her tries to peel a piece of pasta off her cheek, but she slaps his hand away, giving him a foul glare before turning back toward me.

“Maybe?” I look at the splattered lasagne remains on the floor as a hand tries to grab me from behind. I shirk the hand off and side step another coming toward me, quickly pushing my way past the two bodies around me until I’m standing to the side of them.

Ivy's eyes widen before quickly curving up into crescents, her lips twisting into a mocking grin as she wipes her face.

“Is ‘any attention is better than none’Micai? Are you that deprived of it, you’ll do whatever to get even a slither now?” She wipes more sauce from her face, her nose slowly tilting upwards as her lips stretch wider.

“Have you finally realised how pathetic your life is, and gone deranged from how hated you are by everyone here…and athome?” Some chuckles and snickering rings out from around the room, and from the boys around Ivy.

The old me would have shrunk back and curled into a small ball with just the mention ofhome. She would have walked away and never spoken back, shedding a few quiet tears while trying to clean herself up in her room alone. But unfortunately for these assholes, I had no problem hitting back, I’d even bite if she wanted it so badly.

“If I’m sopatheticandderangedthen maybe you should be a little worried Ivy,” I take a step closer, her face still dripping with red and white sauce, “Because if I really have no-one, then I have nothing to lose.”

I lift a piece of pasta from her blazer, dropping it to the floor as it makes a light splatter noise.

“Having nothing and no-one can really do something to someone's mentality.” Meeting Ivy's gaze again I give her a small smile, one that has her slightly flinching and taking a subconscious step back before I continue. “Even someone small or weak can light a match that would burn an entire house down to ashes.”

There's a moment of silence before one of the morons around Ivy barks out laughing, and then another, until they're all clutching their stomachs and wiping their eyes.

“As ifyoucould do anything.” Laughs the brown haired ass who had pushed me toward the spoiled lasagne. “What are you gonna do,bite us?”

“Or curse us?” Sneers the blonde boy, wiping his eyes. “You’ve got to have talent and ability for that, or at least some sort of magic…which you don’t.”

“Of course she doesn’t.” Ivy scoffs before chanting something under her breath, and within just a moment, all the mess over her face and hair is wiped clean, her uniform pristine once again. The only evidence of what happened between us being the plate and mess still splattered on the floor below us.

“I guess that was your attempt at payback?” She grins, a dark glint in her eyes. “But it's futile. You can’t touch us, to do that you’d have to have power or be someone. And you're nothing.”

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