Channels Medea to talk smack to bullies

It was a close thing. A lot of my other heroes were too noble to allow themselves to strike at people so much weaker than them in anger, but Medea was not a hero, not in the strictest sense. She had been hurt and punished and betrayed, she had been forced to do terrible things, to kill her own brother in front of her loving father for the sake of a man she had been brainwashed into loving, and when she was no longer needed, when Jason had no longer needed her to steal and swindle kings out of their countries or treasures, she was discarded with no more care than a used up tissue.

Medea was not a hero, she was a victim like myself, a victim who’d been treated even worse than I had, and she did not restrain herself from tearing her enemies apart or taking revenge upon those who wronged her.

“Oh?” The words came out deceptively soft; silk, soaked in venom. “I knew you’d sunk pretty low, Emma, but making fun of me for crying when my mother died? Spilling secrets told to you in the strictest of confidences? Do your friends here realize how heartless you are? Do they know you’ll turn on them the minute you’ve ‘outgrown’ them, the way you did me?”

Emma and her hangers-on, who had all started laughing at me, suddenly stopped, some of them looking at Emma with surprise, like they hadn’t known why, exactly, that line was supposed to be so effective. I barely heard it over the thundering of blood in my ears.

“Would you cry, too, if your mom died?” I asked with a viciousness that felt like it didn’t belong to me. It still felt good. “Or your dad? Or maybe you only care about your dad as long as he can get you out of trouble, and if he can’t do that for you, he may as well just —”

But Sophia stepped forward, snarling, and came so close to me that I had to take a step back. I could have counted the pores on her nose, if I’d been so inclined. The look in her eyes promised violence as surely as her curled fists.

“A little weakling like you should know better than to talk back to your betters.”

A cruel laugh bubbled up in my chest, and I felt my lips part around it as it escaped from my mouth.

“You’re right, Sophia, you’ve just got it the wrong way around. An ignorant thug like you should know better than to think you can talk down to your superiors.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw one hand begin to lift. Medea knew what to say to that.

“What are you going to do, Sophia? Punch me? Hit me until I’m black and blue? Put me in the hospital again? You get away with a lot, but do you really think you can claim you were defending yourself or whatever if the only part of you that’s bloodied is your knuckles? You really think your posse of pet sociopaths would just sit by and watch, knowing that they could get thrown in jail for it, or that it would only take one bad day, just one bad day, before you beat them up, too? You think the teachers could really ignore something like that happening right in front of them? Then go ahead, Sophia. Do it.”

For several long seconds, she looked like she was considering it, like she really, desperately wanted to, but for all of the disparaging comments I might have uttered before about her intelligence, if only in my own head, she wasn’t stupid. If she punched me, then all she did was prove me right.

“You see, Sophia, at the end of the day, you’re just a high school bully. You and Emma will never be more powerful or more important than you are right now. The height of your life will be whatever trophies you win as a Track star. After that, out in the real world? You’ll either be flipping burgers at Fugly Bob’s or spreading your legs for the highest bidder.”