Dani

A hard life often makes people more empathetic. For Daniella, that wasn’t how things worked out.

Brought to the US when she was just a couple of years old, she had a pretty turbulent life. Her parents had escaped Guatemala into Mexico to escape the civil war in the early 1990s. By the mid 90s, an unplanned pregnancy had derailed their already substandard lives, and they decided they would rather not risk waiting for things to calm down back home, and knowing they couldn’t build a life from scratch in Mexico, they decided to head north into the relatively safe and secure US. And there Daniella was born, a full US citizen.

She never found a place where she thought she truly fit in. There was no language barrier, but her looks were distinctive enough for some casual racism and plenty of otherizing. After moving schools twice midway through elementary school and the start of middle school because of bullying, she decided that enough was enough. And so the start of her freshman year of high school, Daniella went through her rebellion phase. She became more irritable, asked everyone to call her Dani instead, and started being snarkier to people around her.

Astonishingly, it seemed to work. 14-year-olds love picking on other kids, but not if it meant rumors being spread about you, or being condescended to right to your face. The more it went on, the more popular she became. Soon she had her mean girl clique that followed her throughout the 4 years. It might have started out as a coping mechanism in response to the bullying, but by the end it had become the way she was, and it didn’t go away.

Fast forward to today, Dani was a 23-year-old graphic designer working for a tech startup and doing yoga on the side to cool down, a habit she picked up late in high school. Every week after work, she would grab her gym bag from her locker and change to her sports bra and yoga pants before walking a few minutes to reach her destination. Her attitude had meant that making friends was a bit hard, but she didn’t mind much, and she had some decent conversations with like-minded individuals. All in all, it was a pretty good deal.

In this particular class however, something was definitely off. She kept hearing muffled sounds coming from the edge of the room, and they seemed to be of someone struggling. But every time she looked towards the direction, she would see nothing out of the ordinary. Over time she managed to narrow the sound down to 2 people. Judy, who she’d had some pleasant conversations with previously, and that asshole jock David. She could not stand that guy from the second he walked in, and she saw right through his bullshit story about why he was there. He might have the rest of the women in this class fooled, but Dani was waiting for a chance to knock him down a peg.

After she was done she went to the bathroom to change before leaving, but as she went past the yoga room, she faintly heard some noise from inside, and an unmistakable kissing sound. “Ugh, always some horny teens,” she thought to herself. Someone needed to put a stop to this. As she walked towards the noise it somehow got even weirder. She heard phrases like ‘kiss it’ and ‘that’s a good boy’. Jesus, these 2 should’ve gotten a hotel room. But she would put a stop to this debauchery.

What she saw however shocked her. She saw David, the supposedly strong college guy, on his back with Judy standing above him. It didn’t make much sense until she took some more time observing and saw Judy’s bare foot above his mouth, and that unmistakable kissing sound from earlier.

That bitch was kissing that mom’s foot!

Dani was ecstatic. Stuff like that would make for perfect **** material. She could make him her personal errand boy to keep her quiet. An entire plan formulated in her head, step by step. And now all she had to do was act surprised.

“What’s going on?”