She gasps and sharp inhales sound around the table, people having only caught my response but completely clueless as to what we’re talking about.

Amy beams a bright, instant red.

“Wait, what are we talking about?” Cali leans closer while Jules seeming anxious, sinks into herself.

Amy glares, an instant ‘nothing’ flying from her.

I sit forward, not allowing her to backtrack. “We’re talking about Amy slumming it.” I use words bound to eat at her.

“You bitch,” she shouts, loud enough to turn heads as she shoots to her feet. “Like you’re one to talk.”

“There’s a difference. I’m not ashamed.”

Her shoulders draw up, her tiny fists balling up at her sides. “You might have a good family name to stand behind, but you are nothing like us. You’re trash. Just like your sister, just like them.”

I fly to my feet, launching the contents of my coffee cup all over her.

Those at the table shriek, and Amy hops back, shocked with her palms in the air and I swiftly round the table getting in her face.

“You’re lucky it’s cooled down or your skin would be on fire,” I snap.

“You are so—”

“What?” I goad her. “Dead?” I walk into her, forcing her steps backward. “Please. You’re more than weak-minded and you know it.”

Amy growls, shoving me in the chest, and I stumble back a step, but push back twice as hard until she’s falling into the girls sitting near us.

People around us begin to shout, and I only get a foot closer before Scott is slipping between us.

Amy reaches past him, so I flip the cup on the table at her, and it sprays over several people.

She gasps again and I dart for her, but Scott grabs me by the arms and walks me backward.

We only make it a half step before he’s tackled into the table, and I’m jerked back in the same second.

The table, with several students still sitting at the far end of it, grinds along the flooring with an echoed, grating sound.

Students scream and scramble to get away as Ransom lays hit after hit into Scott’s ribs. Scott gets his arms locked around Ransom’s head, grinning in premature triumph through the pain, but Ransom lifts and slams him into the edge of the table, the sharpest corner digging into his back.

He lets out a loud wail that is nothing compared to the echoed whack of Ransom’s skull as it comes straight down onto the tabletop, something he knew would happen when he went for the move yet followed through with anyway.

Scott’s ribs may have been snapped in two, and as Ransom planned, he’s released. He tears himself away, and lifting his foot, he more shoves Scott than kicks him to the ground. To Ransom’s feet.