We have a saying in the area where I grew up and still live; if you don't like the weather, hang on a minute.
The people giving the weather on the news are viewed as something of a joke, through no fault of their own really. The fact is that if a wind whips down out of the North Pole or up from the gulf, there is just nothing to stop it or even slow it down.
In my lifetime, all spent right here, I've seen it snow on Christmas and I've seen it eighty degrees. I've seen it a sweltering hundred and ten in the shade in August, and I've seen people wearing jackets and hailstones the size of basketballs. I've seen the sun shining then dirt blowing on seventy mile an hour winds then rain then snow then a seventy-eight degree heatwave all within an afternoon. I've seen snow accompanied by thunder and lightening and I've seen mud falling like rain.
But, no one around here had ever seen anything like what happened one Valentine weekend before or since. It made the record books twice. Once for the lowest temperature ever recorded in the area. And once for the most precipitation in a twenty-four hour period when it dumped thirty-six inches of snow over night. We didn't normally get fifteen inches of precipitation in three months!
No one had anticipated anything of the sort as the entire town, and several surrounding ones, looked forward to celebrating the entire weekend. Friday the thirteenth would see a "Darlings Dance" in the school gym for all of the school aged kids from elementary on up to high school. Saturday, Valentine's Day, there would be a "Square Dance on the Town Square". And Sunday, just about every church would have mixers for couples and singles.
I wasn't planning on going to any of them.
And if I had my way, neither would the two beautiful bitches who had cost me everything and gotten away with it. But, not for much longer.
That sounds melodramatic now, but I was only just turned eighteen at the time. The way I figured it, those two getting in a fight and catching me in the scuffle and breaking my leg in early October had ruined more than just the football season. It had derailed my entire life.
It would have been my third year starting for the varsity and the smart money was that the team would win State and that I was probably looking at a full ride to the college of my choice. The only question anyone had was which side of the ball I would be recruited on.
I was walking to class one day in October through crowded hallways in my letter jacket festooned with both team and personal award patches from the previous two years and just about to turn the corner by the science lab when someone yelled out my name and I turned to wave when I saw it about to happen.
Amber Brighton was strolling down the hall on the wrong side, flipping her flame colored hair as she mouthed off to one of her minions who was swinging wide like we were all supposed to.
Bianca Perez was walking on the correct side, but so close to the wall that she couldn't have seen around the corner even if she hadn't been looking at the ground just ahead of her feet with her dark hair curtaining her face and books clutched to her chest.
Both girls were as infamous for their tempers, especially with each other, as they were famous for their looks. I froze, twisted around with my arm half up in the air, and couldn't look away from the horrible train wreck that I could feel coming.
Bianca's books crashed to the floor as the two collided. Amber fell back a pace and looked to see who she had run into.
"Watch where you're going, bitch." Amber snarled and made as if to walk around Bianca.
"Puta!" Bianca screamed and lashed out to knock Amber's books from her hands.
I was standing right there, looking right at them. I can remember as clear as day how Amber's red hair and Bianca's raven dark swung and the flashes of hate in green eyes and brown. But I could not say just who's hand wrapped in who's hair first. Although I think Bianca's fist landed just a hair faster than Amber's.
I was used to the violent crush and pop of pads on the football field. And, I'd been in my share of fights and seen a fair few besides. Nothing had prepared me for the sheer ferocity as those two laid into each other.
And then it happened.
Amber's blue blouse had just popped a button and I was frankly staring at the creamy forbidden flesh, revealed since she wasn't wearing a bra, when their bodies toppled, each with one hand entangled in the other's hair while the free hand was doing double time at any part of the other they could reach. I felt their combined weight hit my leg and my foot slipped almost an inch before it stuck fast.
My next clear memory was of teachers coming from everywhere and telling me to stop and tearing them loose from my grip. Although I didn't realize it until afterwards, they thought I was attacking the girls in those confused moments.
Amber and Bianca set them straight by promptly getting away from the teachers who held each of them and laying into each other again. Cued in to where the problem really was, everyone let go of me and left me lying there as they separated the two hellcats once more.
Although I wasn't there, I understand they went after each other a third time right in the principal's office. I missed that part being a little busy holding my busted leg with the broken ends of bone sticking through my shin while Coach and the school nurse hovered over me.
I also understand they went at it yet a fourth time in the back of our town's lone police car as they drove them away. I didn't see it since I was being wheeled out the back door and into an ambulance.
My season was over almost before it began. The team didn't even make the playoffs. The scouts didn't get to see me play and no one was making the anticipated noises about scholarships.
But, at least those bitches were paying the price.
In December, however, I learned a little known fact about the justice system in my country, or at least the part where I live. Apparently somebody back a few years ago decided it probably wasn't a good idea to put teenage shoplifters in with adult murderers and rapists. I guess on the whole that was probably a good thing.
But, it developed two separate systems. One for kids from ten to seventeen and the adult system that picked up when people turned eighteen.
The two bitches who had done this to me turned eighteen within a week of each other late in November. It shouldn't have been any problem. Just kick them over to the adult system, right?
Wrong.
Apparently when a child turns eighteen and becomes an adult, they don't just automatically skip over to the adult jail without passing "Go" and collecting their two hundred dollars. Instead, they have another trial to see if they will be transferred to the adult system.
As the "victim of record of an assault with aggravated circumstances", I was notified by letter during Christmas break that "because it was the first offense and the injury sustained, while serious, was accidental, the charges of aggravated assault as held by the juvenile court have been dropped to a class-c mutual combat normally punishable by fine, but as the plaintiff(s) had been detained for just over a month, the court will waive the fine in lieu of time served."
The bitches were turned loose without probation or anything! And because they had been juveniles at the time, the records were sealed. No one who wasn't there would even know what the cunts had done to me!
It was probably a good thing I found out by letter and at a time when school was on break. As I had turned eighteen also, I would have been charged as an adult without a handy get out of jail free card.
I can't take credit for realizing that one on my own. Dad had to point it out to me. Repeatedly. At one point holding me by the letter jacket against the wall with my feet a foot off the ground.
And on the first day back at school after New Years, Coach and the principal went over it again. And pointed out that although the school had to allow them back for our last four months, they would be confined to two cubicles in the library normally used for in-school suspension for the duration, so it shouldn't be a problem for me to stay away from them.
