Author’s note: This is a sequel/prequel to “Release Me”. Reading the first story is not required, but hey, why not?

It’s been almost twenty years since that week. To be honest, there are times I think it was all a dream. It was the dream of a soon to be seventh grade boy who had too much budding testosterone but no one to explain why he felt the way he did. I was on the cusp of not hating girls, with the exception of a few girls who ruled the neighborhood playground.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t want you to think I was too afraid of them, but they seemed older, wiser and taller than I was at the time. Their names were Megan Stephenson, Amanda Bremerton, Colleen Pratt, and Sondra Pounders. They lived a few houses away from each other and were the female equivalent to the droogs of “A Clockwork Orange” in their matching clothes, attitudes, and the ability to bring others to tears. It was rumored they had set a house on fire just because they wanted to.

Megan was the oldest and the one who was in charge of the group. What she said was law. What she said was followed through. What she said was enshrined in our elementary school psyches. Amanda was the quiet one. She was the observer who blended into the background and soaked up all of the information she could about whoever the group was targeting. Colleen was the bubbly one. One would think she would be on the first one to leave the group when she finally came to her senses and learned the others were…can I say ‘bitchy’ to describe a twelve-year-old? Sondra was the muscle of the gang. Her strength was the stuff of playground legend. One time, five kids were trapped on the merry-go-round (aka, the hurler, vomiter, and death trap) as she would not let them safely get off the spinning terror of metal. You could see the green faces as they were unable to get off and no one could safely slow it down.

Now, to any adult they were a choir of angels; “Daddy’s Little Girls” who had anyone over 25 wrapped around their finger. Ask any kid at Carriage Hill Elementary and you’d hear everything from ‘they’re nice’, or ‘I call them a friend’ to ‘I do not fear death, I fear M.A.C.S..’ —which was what I called them, in secret while in another classroom.

I lived across the street from Coleen and there was a time when we kind of friends. We played tag against each other. I wanted to think I liked her, but, when one’s in fourth grade your thoughts about liking and loving are all over the map, which is what occurred on the week before we would all take that mighty step into junior high.

And even though I was supposed to make that one giant step from elementary school I could still be found on the swings at the park. The swing set had six swings, a tire castle, a sandbox and a slide that would burn your lower extremities in the forever hot Nebraska summer. I would rock back and forth slowly at first and then pick up speed, envisioning taking off into the clouds and flying through the air with my arms wide open. There were times that I felt like letting go of the chains and fly. However, on that day, I did not get to do that on my own power.

As the swing moved forward a hand grabbed the chain and I found myself flying through the air and, luckily, landing on my feet after stumbling for several feet. I turned to see Sondra still holding onto the chain. I was so wrapped out in my childhood fantasies and dreams I didn’t notice them standing there.
“That swing has my name on it, dork,” Megan said with a huff.
“There are five other swings,” I replied.
“Ohh, you can count.”
“We’re in the same math class, Megan.”
“Did he just say my name?”
“He did,” Colleen replied.
Amanda nodded and Sondra cracked her knuckles.
It was at that moment I realized I should have just walked away.

He four advanced towards me. Their shadows fell long on me, and I could feel the coldness from them. Zi didn’t want to cower or bow down to my knees begging for mercy. I’d get mercy form Colleen, maybe, but the other three would pummel me and throw me onto the wheel-o-death. I looked at the four of them and—stupidly, I might add-put up my fists.

“Are you kidding me?” Shonda laughed.
“I think he means it,” Megan commented. “Such an idiot.”
“You sure you want to take me on?”
“Yeah,” I replied with what little bravado I had. I didn’t know karate, didn’t know how to wield a bo staff, and had no wrestling training unless we count trying to mimic Hulk Hogan, but I refused to grab a girl like that.
I had hoped that placing a fighting posture they would think I was reacting like a cat raising its fur and just laugh it off. Shonda did not take it like that and punched me in stomach.

Shonda did not pull her punch and I felt like Marvis Frazier fifteen seconds into his fight with Mike Tyson. Shonda hit me in the chest a few times and then pushed me down. If I stayed down and pretended to be dead, maybe they would leave me alone.

“If you ever use my swings, yes, all of them, we will do this again, got it? Megan asked as she kicked dust on me.
I looked at her with eyes that wanted to cry but I didn’t want that to be front page news first week of school.

“Leave him alone and knock it off, your majesty!”
The voice had an accent to it, I couldn’t place it, but I felt the need to give her last rites as the MACS turned to her. She was standing in the sandbox.
“And who are you?”
“She’s a lost little girl,” Colleen replied as Shonda looked to Megan for the order to pound the strange new girl.
“I’m not sayin’ my name because you don’t care what I think. You don’t care about anyone else.”
“Oh, but we want to know it, so we can let your mommy and daddy know that you had a little accident on the playground.”
The girl drew a large circle in the sandbox and then looked at the four. “You can sure try. Who’s first?”
Megan nodded to Shonda and she approached the sandbox.
“Once you cross this circle, you’re gonna wish you stayed back there.”
“Sure, tiny,” Shonda mocked, but she was right. The sandbox girl was shorter than Shonda and didn’t seem like she could take her on.
Shonda never got to set her foot down onto the sand before she was eating said sand. One second, she was walking and the next her head was buried.
“Who wants to be next?” The girl asked as she raised her hands up. “C’mon, everybody step on up! Dish it out on me!”
Megan flashed her patented cold stare as she motioned for the other two to step back. Shonda stood up and had a look of absolute shock and nausea from swallowing too much sand. She walked back to Megan and then threw up a few feet behind her.
“You better hope you’re not here tomorrow.”
“Oh, but I will. And I so hope to get you to step here.”
The MACS left without saying anything more and the girl skipped over to me.
“They shouldn’t bother you again.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I’m Wendy. Wendy Joel.”