The morning sun was trying to peek through the heavy, velvet curtains of Brenda's room, but the golden rays seemed hesitant to enter, as if sensing the sheer, unadulterated rage vibrating within. The atmosphere inside was thick—saturated with the scent of expensive French perfume, premium hairspray, and a tension that was heavy enough to choke a horse.
Brenda Meeks was not having a good morning. In fact, "not good" was an understatement of cosmic proportions. She was pacing the plush carpet like a caged tigress, her movements sharp, jagged, and dangerous. She was wearing nothing but a short, crimson silk robe that fluttered with every aggressive turn she took, and her face was set in a look that could melt military-grade steel and boil a lake at fifty paces.
"I'm gonna kill him, Ray! I'm gonna go back to that room, bypass the security, and turn George Logan into a designer floor-mat!" Brenda screamed, her voice hitting a pitch that probably had the local dogs howling for miles. She grabbed a crystal perfume bottle from her vanity—a limited edition scent that cost more than George's entire life savings—and hurled it against the wall with the force of a professional pitcher.
The glass shattered into a thousand sparkling diamonds, the room instantly smelling like a floral explosion. Brenda didn't care. She was beyond caring about material possessions; she wanted blood.
"He got tree bark in my hair, Ray! Bark! Do you have any idea what ancient, dirty oak bark does to a professional blowout?! It's a hate crime against my scalp! I had to spend three hours with a pair of tweezers and a bottle of industrial-strength conditioner! And now I hear... I hear pitter-patter in the halls... that the little scrub survived the night and he's down there in his room, RAPPING?! RAPPING?! After I specifically instructed him to be silent for the rest of his natural-born life?!"
Ray Wilkins was leaning against the headboard of Brenda's oversized, king-sized bed, looking like a statue carved out of dark obsidian and pure confidence. He was shirtless, his broad chest and sculpted muscles glistening in the dim, filtered light of the room. He didn't look angry. He didn't look stressed. He looked at Brenda with that slow, half-lidded gaze that usually meant trouble—the kind of trouble that ended with broken headboards and heavy breathing.
"Baby, baby... chill," Ray said, his voice dropping an octave, resonating in the room like velvet and dark chocolate. It was a voice designed to soothe even the wildest of storms, yet it carried an edge of predatory hunger. "You're vibrating so hard you're gonna shake the bed frame right off its bolts, and I worked way too hard last night to get you in it just for you to jump out and scream about some C-grade scrub who isn't even worth your breath."
"Don't tell me to chill, Ray! Do not use that tone with me!" Brenda snapped, though her pace slowed just a fraction as she glanced at him. "My favorite stiletto—the one with the reinforced steel tip—literally has a piece of his scalp on it! I had to sanitize it twice with bleach and holy water! That boy is a menace to society and my wardrobe! He ruined the vibe, Ray! He ruined the night!"
Ray stood up from the bed, moving with the effortless, predatory grace of a professional athlete who knew exactly how much power he possessed. He stepped behind her, his shadow looming over her smaller frame. He didn't say a word at first. He simply wrapped his large, warm, calloused hands around her waist, pulling her back firmly against his chest.
Brenda stiffened for a second, a sharp retort on the tip of her tongue, but the moment she felt the heat radiating from his skin, the fire in her eyes began to flicker. Ray leaned down, his lips brushing against the sensitive curve of her neck, just below her ear.
"You're so hot when you're homicidal," Ray whispered, his breath warm and smelling faintly of mint and masculinity. "The way your eyes spark when you're talking about murder... it's doing things to me, Brenda. But you're wasting all that beautiful, raw fire on a zero like George. Why don't you focus that energy... somewhere else? Somewhere that actually deserves it? Somewhere that's gonna make you forget George ever existed?"
Brenda's breathing hitched. The sharp, jagged anger in her chest started to evaporate, replaced by a much more urgent, suffocating kind of heat. She leaned her head back against his shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut as his hands began to slide slowly downward, tracing the curves of her hips with a possessive familiarity.
"Ray..." she moaned, her voice losing its sharp edge and turning into a low, breathless growl. "I still hate him. I want to sue his ghost for emotional distress."
"I know, baby," Ray murmured, his hands moving with more intent now, turning her around in his arms so she was forced to look up into his dark, intense eyes. He lifted her chin with a single finger, his gaze locking onto hers with a heat that made the morning sun outside seem cold. "But right now, the only thing you need to be hitting... is this."
He didn't wait for an answer. He lifted her effortlessly, Brenda's legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he carried her back toward the silk sheets. As they tumbled back onto the bed, the thoughts of George Logan and his high-speed rapping vanished completely. The only sounds left in the room were the rhythmic creaking of the expensive furniture and Brenda's muffled, breathless cries—which this time, had absolutely nothing to do with revenge.
THE CRITICS' CORNER (BECKA & KATIE)
Meanwhile, in the girls' common room, the vibe was significantly less steamy and significantly more cynical. Becka and Katie were slumped on the oversized leather sofa, looking like they had survived a war. They were surrounded by a graveyard of empty popcorn bags, half-eaten boxes of chocolate-covered raisins, and the lingering aura of profound intellectual disappointment.
They had spent the entire night—mostly to avoid the early morning chaos—having a marathon of the Fantastic Four movies. They had just finished the 2025 reboot, and the silence in the room was heavy with judgment.
"I feel like my brain was just assaulted by a very expensive, very loud CGI vacuum cleaner," Becka said, staring at the rolling credits with a look of pure, unadulterated disgust. She didn't move; she just lay there like a discarded doll. "Katie, please. You're the one with the high GPA. Explain it to me. Why is this 2025 version getting fresh ratings on every site? It was literally just two hours of people staring at blue screens and talking about 'family' and 'destiny' while looking like they were waiting for their checks to clear. It was a vacuum of joy, Katie. A joy-vacuum!"
Katie snorted, tossing a stale piece of popcorn at the TV screen. "It's a mystery for the ages, girl. The universe is broken. Physics no longer apply. They spent 200 million dollars—200 million, Becka!—to make Reed Richards look like a depressed substitute teacher who lost his pension in a crypto scam. And don't even get me started on the 'gritty' lighting. I couldn't tell if I was watching a superhero movie or a low-budget commercial for clinical antidepressants. Everything was so dark I thought I was having a stroke."
"Exactly!" Becka giggled, hugging a decorative pillow to her chest. "People are so pretentious now. Remember the 2005 version? Critics trashed it back then, called it 'cheesy' and 'shallow.' But you know what? At least Chris Evans was hot and actually had a personality! He looked like he wanted to be there! He looked like he was having fun! And Jessica Alba? Iconic. She was the blueprint. It was bright! It had colors! It didn't try to be a Shakespearean tragedy about a man who can turn into a giant orange rock and feels sad about his life choices!"
"The 2005 movie had soul," Katie agreed, shaking her head so hard her ponytail whipped around. "This new one? It's just... beige. Everything is beige. Even the fire looks like it was generated on a laptop from 2012 by an unpaid intern. Why is it highly rated? Because critics are terrified of being called 'haters' by the corporate overlords. It's a collective hallucination. The 2005 movie was a masterpiece of popcorn cinema compared to this cinematic dumpster fire. It's like they forgot that movies are supposed to be, you know, entertaining?"
"I missed the part where they actually acted," Becka added, sitting up and gesturing wildly. "In the new one, the Invisible Woman just stands there looking confused, like she can't find her car keys. In 2005, she was actually doing things! She had agency! And Doom? Don't even get me started on the new Doom. He looks like a trash can that fell into a vat of glitter and came out angry. The 2005 Doom had that billionaire-playboy-gone-wrong energy that we deserve! It made sense! This? This is just nonsense wrapped in expensive pixels."
They both dissolved into a fit of giggles, mocking the stiff, robotic acting and the over-complicated, nonsensical plot of the 2025 film.
"2005 was the peak!" they chanted in unison, clinking their soda cans together. "2005 was art, 2025 is a bad joke! The world is a lie! Reality is a scam!"
While the girls were debating film theory and Brenda was occupied with Ray, the outside world was dealing with a different kind of disaster.
Specifically, the disaster known as Bobby.
Outside the local dive bar—a place called 'The Rusty Anchor' that was situated just half a mile from the school gates—the morning light was hitting the pavement with a brutal, unforgiving intensity. To Bobby, it felt like a physical punch to the face delivered by a professional boxer.
Bobby blinked, his vision blurry and swimming with dark spots that looked suspiciously like dancing gnats. His head felt like it was being used as a drum by a very angry, very drunk heavy metal band playing a twenty-minute solo in the middle of a construction site. He was currently leaning against a dented, rusted dumpster, his knuckles bruised, bloody, and throbbing with a rhythmic pain. His shirt was torn, missing three buttons, and he was covered in a layer of grime that suggested he had spent significant time wrestling with the pavement.
Around him lay the evidence of a very productive, very violent, and very drunken night. Three or four local "tough guys"—the kind of idiots who hang out at bars at 3 AM looking for someone to look at them the wrong way—were sprawled across the asphalt in various states of unconsciousness. One was groaning and clutching his ribs; another was face-down, snoring through a nose that was definitely pointing in the wrong direction.
Bobby looked down at his hands, watching them shake as he tried to focus his eyes. He took a long, shaky pull from a lukewarm beer bottle he was still clutching as if it were a holy relic. The liquid was flat, tasted like copper, old pennies, and deep regret, but it was the only thing keeping his soul from floating away.
"Ugh... my head... it's like a strobe light is going off in my skull and someone is screaming in my ears," Bobby groaned, squinting at a discarded, rain-soaked newspaper that was fluttering in the breeze nearby. He squinted hard, trying to make out the blurry numbers.
"Wait..." he blinked, his jaw dropping slightly as the realization hit him. "Is that the date? It's... it's Tuesday? I thought it was still Sunday night. I remember ordering a shot of tequila and then... nothing. Just darkness and the sound of someone hitting a trash can. Where did Monday go? Did someone steal Monday while I wasn't looking?!"
He looked back at the unconscious men he had apparently decimated in a drunken, blackout rage. He didn't remember the fight—not a single punch, not a single insult—but he remembered the feeling of hitting something solid, and judging by the state of the guy next to the dumpster, Bobby had won the encounter decisively.
"Did I... did I win? Tell me I won," he asked the snoring man. The man responded with a weak, pained whimper and a bubble of spit.
Bobby shrugged, which was a massive mistake because it made the entire world spin in a sickening, clockwise direction. He tucked the nearly empty beer bottle into his back pocket, wiped a smear of dried blood from his lip, and started stumbling—with a surprising amount of unearned swagger for someone who was technically a walking medical emergency—back toward the school gates.
"Tuesday, man. Tuesday is the new Friday. I need a burrito the size of my head, a gallon of water, and someone to explain to me why I have a stranger's wallet and a half-eaten pepperoni stick in my shoe."
He whistled a tuneless, discordant song, stepping over a fallen traffic cone with the grace of a drunken gazelle. The school was only a few hundred yards away, and as long as he could slip past the main gate without being seen by Dwight or that annoying bird, he might actually make it to his bed.
"Tuesday..." he muttered, stumbling through the grass. "I could have sworn it was Sunday. I really need to stop drinking with people who have tattoos on their faces."
As the clock struck 8:30 AM, the Stevenson County school was a powder keg of hormones, cinematic snobbery, and bruised knuckles. The "Plasma Disco" in the basement might have vaporized the slime, but it had left a lingering energy in the air—or maybe that was just the smell of Bobby's breath as he crossed the campus.
Tom was still in his room, staring at George, who was now rapping in his sleep about the "socio-economic impact of stiletto wounds." Cindy was watching him, half-impressed and half-terrified, while Theo was busy calculating how much they could charge for tickets to George's first concert.
In the kitchen, Mistress Kane was humming a love song, accidentally adding double the sugar to the morning oatmeal because she was still thinking about Shorty's "Mashed-Hot-tatoes" comment.
And in Brenda's room, the silence was finally broken by Ray letting out a satisfied sigh, completely oblivious to the fact that half a mile away, Bobby had just ended Tuesday morning with a triple-KO.
The day was just beginning, and in this school, that usually meant things were about to get a whole lot worse.
"Burrito..." Bobby whispered, reaching the cafeteria doors. "I will find you."