None of them answered. They averted their eyes from me, finding objects to peruse on the ground and in the sky.

"Get the fuck out of here then." I commanded and they instantly obeyed, moving quickly down the path to the school's entrance.

I looked up to see expressions of unbelieving awe on Mike, the junior and senior girls, and several freshmen kids that had approached. The freshmen would probably had been Richard's next victims had I not taken action. They were looking at me as if I was Jesus Christ right down from the cross.

I smiled shyly. "None of you saw anything, did you?" I asked.

From the ground Richard was moaning, snorting blood out of his nose and mouth, and holding his side. They all looked at him for a moment and then back at me. A chorus of 'no's ensued.

"Good." I nodded, heading towards the school entrance once again. I looked back at Mike, who was still staring, unmoving, at Richard. "You coming?" I asked him.

"Huh?" He nearly jumped. "Oh, yeah."

We entered the school, walking through the crowded halls, hearing the slamming of locker doors and the babble of thousands of conversations.

"That was un-fucking-believable!" Mike finally said, looking at me as if I might be hot.

I shrugged. "It was nothing. Those fuckin' scrotes don't know how to fight. They just act like they do."

"Scrotes?" Mike asked, confused. "What's a scrote?"

Oops. I'd just used a term that, while a common descriptor among Spokane's paramedics, cops, and firefighters in the nineties, had not been in general usage in high schools in the eighties. A small mistake but I instinctively knew that I would have to watch what I said. What if I suddenly started talking about the Persian Gulf War, or the Internet, or something like that.