On their way back home, the two ran into Cassandra. Cassandra was wearing a black top, blue jeans, and a pair of matching sneakers.
Even though it looked odd, the outfit worked on her.
She was in a bad mood because she was being stalked.
It was some boy, the same age as Derrick and Cassandra, who was chasing behind her the same way as Kenny was pestering Gwen earlier.
"Please, Cassandra. At least give me a chance; I can give you happiness. Please go out with me."
Derrick frowned seeing the boy keep pestering Cassie even when she had rejected him thrice right before them.
He was about to step forward to interject when a hand stopped him. He turned to the side and saw Rebecca looking at him with an amused smile and shook her head.
"You don’t need to do anything. Just watch, my daughter is not as frail as others."
Derrick was confused, but he decided to trust the mother and stopped.
"Are you listening to me? Why won’t you just give me a chance—" The boy frowned, seeing how much she was ignoring him. He could no longer take it and stopped her by seizing her wrist.
Thud!
Before he could even finish his sentence, the boy was already lying on the road. He did not even realise when Cassandra had thrown him over her shoulder and slammed him into the ground.
By the time he registered the throbbing pain in the back of his head, Cassandra had pressed her foot on his chest.
"Argh! What—" She leant in to put her weight on the foot.
"Shut it, loser." Her voice was cold and even. "I don’t like doing this, but you see, some people are just incapable of hearing things that others tell them. So, let me be clear in words you do understand."
"Arghh!!!" She twisted the tips of her feet against his chest, making him scream in agony.
"Hey. Hey. "Look me in the eyes, you five-foot cocksucker." Cassandra slapped his face twice before holding him by the chin and forcing him to look at her. Only when he was looking at her with teary eyes did he say, "I don’t like you. I never will. So, stop pestering me, you retard."
"See, I am sure you are thinking I cannot do worse than this and it would be worth the pain. No, trust me, it won’t be. Next time, it won’t be your chest; it will be your dick. Maybe I will break a hand or two."
"And, you know, I am capable of that. Surely, you have heard the rumours, right?"
She forced the boy to nod without pulling back. Only when she was sure that he understood her did she pull back and watched as he ran away, holding his shirt like he had almost lost his innocence.
"Woah..." at the other end of the street, Derrick watched the whole thing play out with his mouth gaping.
"Told you." Rebecca chuckled from the side. But once her eyes turned to Cassie, she paused and said, "But once we are home, I need to have a talk with her about her language."
Derrick nodded absentmindedly; the words he had heard coming out of Cassie’s mouth even made him feel a bit ashamed.
"I mean, who calls others retard?"
Indeed, who calls others cock—
Wait? Retard?
Derrick turned his head to look at Rebecca with question marks flying over his head. ’Wtf? Are you sure we both heard the same thing?’
Before he could say anything, Rebecca had already started walking again.
Cassandra had also turned back to walk in the direction of her house when she noticed the two of them and froze. She clearly had not noticed her mother and brother standing, or she would not have used such profanity.
"M-mum. Where did you come from—I mean, did you go somewhere?" She tried her best to force a smile, but her emotionless face failed at that miserably.
What Derrick saw was such a horrible grin that he even stopped walking.
"We went to the Lees’ house."
"Did you explain everything to Gwen?" Her eyes sparkled, like she had gotten a second chance at living, and she skipped to Derrick’s side. "How did she take it?"
"Fine," Derrick said. "Who was that?
"Who?" She almost fumbled because she had thought that she had successfully escaped the topic, but it seemed like she had successfully failed. "No one. Don’t worry about it; he is just a dumb, idiotic douche who does not know his place—Ahem! He is from my class. And I am not like that... usually. It’s just that he pestered me all the way from my friend’s house."
"How did that happen?" Derrick was confused; if she had gone to meet her friend, where did she encounter him? His eyes narrowed as he thought the boy might have been stalking her.
"It seems I have a snake of a friend. She sold me out and called me under the pretence of catching up while she had him at her house. She even tried to justify it as if she had not just taken his money to betray our friendship." Cassie clicked her tongue in disgust, but she froze when she noticed her mother watching them.
"Ah, look at the time. Why are we standing here in the open? It is such a hot day." She started fanning herself with one hand and tried to walk past her mother, whose eyes followed her like a hawk.
And it was cloudy outside, with signs that it might rain soon.
Soon, they walked through the front gate of their house. It was a modest place. The house was big enough to accommodate a small family like theirs.
There was a small garden with a tall tree in the front along with a storage shed in the corner. If he had to compare, it was the house of a middle-class family from his old world.
"I will join you guys later. I would like to workout here a little." Looking at the open space of the garden, a thought flashed in Derrick’s mind, and ignoring the pitiful looks Cassie was giving him, he rushed in and out of his room, changing into a more comfortable outfit for exercising.
"Wait, I will join you—"
Before Cassie could follow him out, a hand clasped her shoulder hard, preventing her from moving. She slowly turned around to see the ceiling and the smile on her mother’s face.
"You can join him later. We have a lot to talk about, young lady."
That day, Derrick heard the stone-cold-looking young woman’s wails for the first time.