"As if my life wasn't filled with enough anxiety and indecision. Now I'm being indecisive on how I want to relieve my anxiety. What next? An earthquake?"

I hate karma.

Ask for an earthquake, and an earthquake shall appear. I should have known better. So what if it was a metaphorical earthquake, it still rocked my little world all the same. And, in retrospect, it all occurred in about an hour. A lot can change in sixty minutes.

It all started when I was sitting in English. I was supposed to be reading, but my mind is too restless to actually concentrate on things like literature. I was contemplating the significance of the deep, philosophical crevices of my insane brain, and trying to decide between a hot bath and electroshock therapy to relieve my problems (and I was seriously considering the latter), when it happened. A ruckus in the hallway.

Now, my school isn't too big on violence, but we do get an occasional fight from time to time (to keep the administrators on their toes). This one, though, was a doozy. Especially considering the fighters. One of them was the quarterback of the school's prized football team -- but he's not that important -- and the other was my next-door-neighbor, Sebastian Oswald, or "Oz" to the majority of the population. I didn't like that nickname, it reminded me too much of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Which is ridiculous, because Sebastian may have been magical to some people, but he wasn't God. He had no ones life in his hands.

Except for Football Head's, apparently, because Sebastian certainly looked angry enough to kill. He's had his minor issues with anger management, but this was a whole new level for him. One I wasn't used to.

So of course, being the extraordinarily good friend that I am, I spent my next period study hall in the "nurse's office" (a.k.a. the main office), talking about it with him. Trying to get his side of the story.

"He made me mad."

"A lot of things make you mad. Why did you have to liquidate this one?"

"He was talking too much, I wanted to shut him up."

"Permanently? Because that's kind of what it looked like from an audience perspective." He stared sheepishly down at his folded hands. Being the weird kid that I consider myself, I pressed the issue further. "What did he say that made you so angry, anyway?" Again, he broke his eye contact.

"He was talking about you..." He said, "and I didn't like what he was saying."

Well this was a shocking new development! So new and shocking, in fact, that I disregarded the fact that I was the topic of that conversation to put full focus on the fact that I was the topic of this one.

"So you beat him to a bloody pulp for talking about me?" Aw. He was defending my honor. Sigh. Swoon.

"Of course," he said with a smile, "it's my job to protect you."

Protect me. Ha. If I had known then what I know now, I would have run screaming. But he just reeled me in, and then it was impossible to get myself out. I just couldn't help myself around him. What a mistake.