Chapter Thirty One
He pushed the door to Julie’s room open and was surprised to find her laying in bed, wide awake. “Hey you,” he greeted, cringing when she sat up to face him and he got a good look at her. Although he’d assessed the damage the previous night, her ‘battle scars’ had been nowhere near as bad as they looked right now. “You said someone looked you over last night, right?” He questioned, biting his lip.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d think your nose was broken,” he told her honestly. And it was true. Her eyes had turned an angry black color and if he didn’t know better, he’d go as far as to say her nose didn’t look as straight as it once had. But maybe he was imagining things.
Julie shook her head. “The lady said it didn’t seem broken to her. Said if it kept giving me trouble, I should get it checked but it hurts no worse than it did last night,” she assured him, tearing her gaze away from him.
He moved to take a seat on the edge of her bed, offering her a small smile. “We need to talk about last night,” he reminded her gently. He saw the tears already glistening in her eyes and held his hands up in defense. “Hey kiddo, we’re just talking, remember? I just want to figure out what happened. Not Abbi’s distorted version, not the police man’s version. Yours. So spill,” he instructed, offering her a kind smile.
She nodded and took a deep breath. “I’d sent Abbi to get some pizza. I know I wasn’t supposed to send her off alone, but I just didn’t feel like going to stand in line for 8 million hours to wait for her to get something to eat. This part, I’m not too clear on because I was still in the stands, but apparently, Brianna and Joel were together and Abbi saw them,” she said, her voice becoming tight at the mention of her ex-boyfriend and former friend.
JC nodded for her to continue. “Anyway, according to what Abbi told me, she shouted something at Joel, something along the lines of how stupid he was to choose Brianna over me and told him that Brianna was ugly. Well, Brianna didn’t like that too much and she wanted to go give Abbi an earful, but Abbi darted off in between a few people.”
Hearing the way his daughter had been behaving, JC knew what the problem had been immediately. Abbi had, as usual, been instigating things. “So right now, we’re up to the point where Abbi comes back to you, correct?”
She nodded. “Yeah, so Abbi comes running back to me and then not long after, here comes Brianna and Joel. Brianna looks really mad, mind you, but I ignore it. Abbi hadn’t fessed up to what she’d done at this point. So like I said, here comes Brianna with Joel hot on her tail and she started shouting things at Abbi. Rude things, calling her all kinds of names. I mean really, who talks to a kid like that? And that’s just what Abbi is; a kid. It was ridiculous!”
“So you jumped Brianna because she was calling Abbi names?”
“No, I’ve not finished yet. So Brianna’s yelling obscenities at Abbi and we all know that she never stands by and takes any form of abuse from a person, so she gets up to say something back to Brianna and the twit SHOVED her. I’m not talking a gentle little love tap either. She knocked Abbi down and I’ll telling you, she’s lucky that Abbi had not tumbled down the bleachers because she would have gotten a lot worse, believe you me!”
JC frowned at the thought of his youngest daughter being shoved around by someone nearly twice her age. No one had any business putting his hands on Abbi, no matter if she’d run her mouth or not! “So that’s how Abbi banged her leg up?”
“Yes. She was upset too. She was crying and carrying on, I think Brianna had her scared, you know? She was towering above her, still cursing and she raised her hand to hit Abbi and that’s when I stepped in. I told her if she wanted to pick on someone to do it on someone her own size. I leaned over to help Abbi up and she HIT me!”
“She sucker punched you?”
“You’d better believe it! I’ve never been so mad in all my life. I leapt onto her and got only a few hits in before we were pulled apart by a couple of teachers. I really never meant for things to get out of hand, but I couldn’t stand by and allow her to hit Abbi. I just couldn’t. And as much as you and Jen go on about fighting, you’ve told me before that I need to look out for Abbi, and that’s just what I did.”
After getting the whole story for his oldest daughter, JC felt a strong sense of pride. He had not, of course, let her know that he was secretly pleased with her actions. He would not openly condone the fight that she’d participated in the previous night, but he was glad that she’d taken up for her little sister…
…Which brought him to another thought. He was going to have to have a serious talk with his youngest daughter. For as long as he could remember, she’d loved getting in the middle of things, instigating, stirring the pot to just make everything a hundred times worse. With a sigh, he headed towards her room and stopped, turning back to the stairs with a smile. He’d already handled part of the problem. It was time to let his wife in on the fun as well.
“Oh Jeee-eeen!”
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