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“So, we’ve called the paramedics and they’re on their way, but until they arrive it’s up to us. Remember the acronym, kids: C-A-B. What’s the first thing you do?”
Aiyeesha Simpson, a gunner in the making destined for academic greatness and social ruin, raised her eager hand. “Find a flat surface to lay him down!”
“Correct.” Blossom took Brick by the shoulders and shoved him down to the floor. A gaggle of Girl Scouts gathered around him as he wheezed for air.
“Ow,” he said.
Blossom patted his chest. “Please choke more quietly.”
I will end you, he thought so loudly he hoped she could hear him through the murder in his eyes. There was community service, and then there was cruel and unusual punishment. When his required hours were up and his record expunged, he was going to write a very negative Yelp review of the local Townsville Girls Scouts of America chapter and tank this year’s cookie sales. Supremely annoying, outrageously petty, and totally legal. That would teach Blossom for sure.
“Place your hands here between the nipples.”
Some of the Cadette Girl Scouts giggled. To be fair, Blossom of all people saying the word nipples in reference to her former mortal enemy as she trained a room full of twelve-year-old girls in CPR using him as the dummy was a perfect storm of absurd and kinky that he did not see coming. And now he was giggling himself, because he was a teenaged boy who thought the word nipples was funny regardless of the very clear contextual cues, and that pubescent shame was on him, one hundred percent.
Blossom, an ancient and inconveniently attractive evil resurrected in a lab for the sole purpose of making his life miserable, did not appreciate his amusement. “Push hard at a rate of 100 to 120 compressions per minute. Remember to put your bodyweight behind it, like this.”
Brick flexed, and Blossom pushed against his heart like she was trying to crush it in her hands. Once, twice, three times she administered compressions, and Brick’s eyes glowed red with impotent rage.
“Assist Blossom with her CPR lessons to her satisfaction, and we can forget this ever happened,” Mayor Bellum had promised Brick when he lost his temper and blew up an (empty) ambulance. Butch didn’t need his Super stomach pumped no matter how much he drank, so the ambulance and the four-figure bill that came with it were completely unnecessary. This defense did not convince the mayor, however.
The promise of the bill forgiven and his record cleared—and the deterrence of Aiyeesha Simpson filming the whole thing to upload to YouTube later—gave Brick the strength not to eye beam Blossom in front of the children.
“Okay, who wants to try chest compressions on the dummy?” Blossom offered to the girls.
You evil bitch, thought the aforementioned dummy.
After the third little girl properly placed her sticky, little girl hands between his nipples, Brick had had enough. “Hey, I’m still dying over here. Can we move on already? Jesus Christ.”
“Of course.” Blossom smiled, and she had never looked more terrifying.
Brick hoped Butch was suffering. He hoped he was hung over so bad he couldn’t piss standing up. He hoped Butch tried going online only to find that Brick had disconnected the Internet and cut him off from all his online games and porn because fuck Butch and his weak-ass stomach.
“Who knows what the next step is? Maybe someone other than Aiyeesha this time?”
None of the other girls seemed willing to stick their hands up. The carpet under Brick had scorched where his power leaked out in his building resentment for this entire situation. The smell of burned polyester just made him feel even more powerless to stop this.
“No? Okay, well, remember the acronym. A is for airway. You want to be careful about a possible neck injury, so gently lift the chin…”
Blossom’s hands were not sticky like the Girl Scouts’ hands, but they were cold where they touched his skin and forced his head back.
“Are the paramedics here yet?”
Brick got a tight fist in his short hair for that one, and he considered it a small victory. “No. Something about a shortage of ambulances, apparently.”
Biiiiiiiitch.
God, he was going to destroy her so bad.
“Once you’ve cleared the airway and confirmed there are no obstructions—”
“Then you kiss!”
Some girls picked up the giggling again. Blossom, ever the professional, cleared her throat. “Mouth to mouth is a life-saving procedure and not something I’d recommend doing to someone you plan to kiss.”
Wow, great advice.
Some girls still giggled and whispered to each other. Brick had a sinking feeling that this was only going to end with his embarrassment: everyone knew that the cold judgment of pre-pubescent girls was the absolute worst type of judgment a person could suffer.
“Are you gonna show us?”
“Well, I don’t think I need to show you all how to breathe—”
“It’s in the manual! You have to demonstrate every step.” Aiyeesha waved the CPR manual, and Brick realized his misjudgment. She was no vapid goody two-shoes in the making, but a future Honors Student with a secret, a Work Hard Party Harder, an Ivy League Early Decision candidate with all of senior spring semester to slack off because no one was ever going to touch her 4.3 GPA.
Aiyeesha beamed a winning smile at Brick, and it was as chilling as Blossom’s.
Jesus Christ, there are two of them.
True to form, Blossom had never been able to defy a good instructions manual. “I suppose if it says so in the manual…”
Locking lips with Blossom was not a big deal. He’d done it before when they were kids, and he could appreciate the irony of a gesture meant to save his life this time rather than end it. She didn’t even try to mess with him by using her ice breath, just went through the motions as described in the instructions. The girls were disappointed with the lack of hormonal fanfare of it all, which was probably for the best. Leave it to Blossom to make mouth to mouth the sexless, medical act it was literally intended to be. He was almost upset, because it felt like she’d won something here, which could only mean he’d lost.
Disappointed but more educated than they’d been when they’d arrived two hours ago, the Girl Scouts dispersed after the lesson, leaving Blossom and Brick to put away the equipment they’d used.
She held a dummy torso, and she was looking at him with that pinched, constipated look she got when she was about to say something especially snobby. Instead, she surprised him. “Brick, thanks for being mature about it. I can honestly say you surprised me.”
He stared at her.
“I’ll talk to Mayor Bellum. I’m sure you’ve done enough to meet your hours quota.”
He had not fulfilled even half of his required community service hours and they both knew it.
“So yeah, thanks. I can finish up here if you want to leave.”
Was she trying to get rid of him? Why?
“Brick? Why are you looking at me like that?”
When Blossom was winning, he was losing. That was simply the way of the world. So, if she was losing, it could only mean he was winning.
“Are you listening to me?”
Brick smiled in what he hoped was a cool, sexy way if he imagined looking at anyone but Blossom. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying. I just keep thinking about how good that mouth feels.”
Blossom stared. “I’m sorry?”
He would make her sorry.
“Yeah, you’re a great teacher. I could really feel your passion for demonstrating the lesson correctly. With your mouth.”
Her staring intensified. “Did you.”
“Oh, yeah.” He leaned his hip against the table like he’d seen in the movies. It worked for Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, and that guy had convinced Eva Green. Iconic. “I could really feel you trying to save me.”
Where was Aiyeesha with her phone to film this? There was so little he could do to rattle Blossom as they got older, and while the challenge delighted him, it was also exhausting being constantly a step behind her. Was this truly her demise? Had he won the Teenage Experience? Was this poetic justice for how she’d once killed him with a mere kiss, only to suffer the same fate in turn? He could have cackled. This was better than trolling the Girl Scouts of America reviews, although he might still do that because it was a genius idea and he had always indulged his own genius ideas when they came to him.
So infatuated was he with his own self-fellating digression that he was slow to react to Blossom sidling up to him. Her hand was still cold on his chin, and it sent a shiver down his spine. “Shall I save you again?”
Brick’s dignity drained with his blood, which was an unfortunate side-effect of being a teenaged boy that he would just have to suffer. But winning was about recognizing one’s weaknesses and working around them. He leaned into her personal space. “Please.”
He wasn’t sure who kissed who first, but it was happening and all he could think was I am better at this than you and I hate you and also Do that again. He tried holding her waist, and she fought back with her fingers in his hair. Not one to be deterred, Brick tried some tongue but pulled back when he tasted thirty degrees below zero. He immediately went back in because he could feel her superiority, her Got you, you horny idiot, but the joke was on her because he liked her cold, always had when it was hot as balls out and he’d make up any excuse to pick a fight with her just for the chance to cool off.
The Girl Scout troop leader walked in on them competitively making out in the classroom like it was an Olympic sport and put an end to things, leaving them at a frustrating draw for now. They said barely a word to each other when Brick glared at the troop leader so bad she flustered and didn’t even question them before running out of there with some excuse about getting the wrong room.
Later that evening, Brick caved and changed the Internet password back just so Butch would quit whining at him. He Googled kissing techniques and spent the next hour and a half watching YouTube videos and reading GQ articles about How to Please Her Like a Champion, because he was a champion and a winner and he was not going to lose to Blossom in this. Not a chance.
This had to be what they meant when they said kill with kindness.
“I’m going to end you,” he muttered to himself as he read about the top ten highest voted movie kissing scenes, which he would then stream and commit to memory in order to be fully armed and armored for the next time he encountered Blossom alone in a classroom. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe during their shared free period.
Truly, he had the most genius ideas.