Chapter 51: A Good School Day.
Zoey’s lunch break was taken up completely by the jocks at the school. She completely underestimated the popularity of the jocks or herself because more than just the jocks surrounded her when lunchtime came. It turned out the jocks were talking about nothing but learning how to jab from her since their first-hour class, and this captured the attention of the everyday common folk, bullies, losers, and even the popular girls. So, instead of just teaching the jocks how to do a regular jab, she was teaching probably half the school how to jab!
The popular girls wanted to learn because the jocks wanted to learn. The bullies wanted to learn for their own selfish purposes. The losers wanted to learn in hopes of defending themselves against the bullies. The normal students wanted to learn because the popular kids wanted to learn. Because of this unexpected turnout, many more people learned about Zoey’s after-school hobby. Also simultaneously increasing her previously zero popularity rating in the school into something that was higher than the popular kids.
Right now, Zoey was in front of a sea of students that followed her outside. They were in the courtyard of the school, and because there were so many people coming outside, the teachers and faculty of the school came out to watch as well. Usually, when a group of students came together like this, there was a fight about to break out. Zoey was feeling a multitude of emotions right now as she prepared herself to teach all these people how to do a simple jab.
How much experience was she going to gain by teaching so many people at once? When could she ever get the opportunity to do something like this again? All the attention wasn’t so bad, either... Zoey was very weak to compliments and positive attention as they weren’t things she regularly received from people. Hopefully, she would get used to them very soon because if she didn’t, she could find herself getting addicted to all of this. This was not even mentioning all the stuff from the YFTL!
“Are you ready, Zoey?” Bill asked. He was the school’s star quarterback.
She nodded.
“Alright, everybody, shut the fuck up and listen up!” Kody shouted with a few other boys.
The crowd of students quieted down quickly. None of the teachers intervened once they realized what was really going on. Since there was no fight, there was no need to stop anything or make a big fuss about what was happening. A student of theirs happened to be a fighter outside of school and was going to teach everyone who was interested how to do a simple jab. They didn’t understand why so many people were interested in how to do a punch, but kids were just weird like that. It happens every year with the kids getting excited about some new strange thing they couldn’t understand.
Zoey took a deep fucking breath as everyone’s eyes locked on her. As she wasn’t the type of person to yell or shout except in emergencies, she decided to make an exception today because of all the experience she could gain from this. She swallowed her shyness down and began to think about the perfect jab. Every single motion that comes into play when throwing a jab.
“First, stance!” Zoey yelled.
She slowly moved her body in front of everyone to show them the proper stance.
“Feet shoulder-width apart! Knees slightly bent! Non-dominant lead leg and fist forward!” Everyone followed her instructions to the best of their ability.
[Teaching Lv10]
There were some that couldn’t follow this first set of instructions, but Zoey didn’t stop just because a few people didn’t get it right. They had a lot of time left for lunch, and she could fix them up after going through the motions.
“Second, defense! Keep your chin down and use your non-dominant hand to protect your face!” This second step wasn’t as complicated as the first, so more people were able to do this correctly.
[Teaching Lv11]
“Final step, offense! Rotate the entire upper body as you throw the punch. Hips, shoulders, arms, and fist should all be moving as one! Snap the fist, extend the entire arm, and bring it back to defensive position!” The sound of the wind splitting apart reached the ears of some of the people up front.
Zoey didn’t slow down the speed of her jab like with the other steps. She repeated the motions of the last step multiple times. Starting off fast before ending slow. Breaking down each move for everyone to see clearly.
[Teaching Lv13]
After showing everyone the steps, she started over from the beginning. This teaching lesson lasted until lunch period was over. Once she went through the three simple steps about four or five times, she began to walk around the crowd helping anyone that still wasn’t doing it correctly. By doing this, she gained even more experience for her Teaching skill. She also learned that Callie and Katlyn were in the crowd of people too.
“It would be nice to learn just in case any boys get too handsy,” Callie explained.
“I could use this if some prick doesn’t get the hint and won’t fuck off,” Katlyn explained.
[Teaching Lv16]
It was probably the first time Zoey has ever seen a skill rise in levels so fast. She wanted to jump around, dance, and fucking lose her mind, but all this interacting with people really drained her out. Her social energy levels have been bottomed out, and she wasn’t sure that she could really socialize anymore for today. Focusing on her classes after lunch was pretty much impossible.
By the time school was out, Zoey barely had any energy to do anything at all. Too much excitement fuzzed out her brain from functioning correctly. Right now, all she wanted to do was get home and take the best nap ever. Her dad picked her up from school, and she could barely tell him how her dad went. Zoey only put her thumbs up in response to that question.
“That’s good to hear. After everything that went down yesterday, I was worried you wouldn’t be able to focus at school.” Bruce said.
“If you need anything, just tell me. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you feel like you’re at your best. Even if you just need to go get some coffee or ice cream.”
Zoey couldn’t help but smile. Her dad was really too kind even though he wasn’t her real dad. She always wondered how she’d turn out if he were a part of her life from the beginning. Maybe she’d be a bit nicer and more outgoing because of him. Even though her dad was a huge nerd, he had plenty of friends and never seemed to get on anyone’s bad side.
Not even her mom’s. Somehow her dad had the ability to calm anyone down just by being nice and friendly. Her mom, who she thought of as a total fucking bitch when she was younger, was this nice sweet little lady when it came to her dad. It was like she became a totally different person when she was around him, and the weird thing was... Zoey still couldn’t tell if that was her true self she kept separate from Bruce or the other way around. But either way, Zoey would still be confused. When her dad wasn’t around, she was the average black mom. Kind, sweet, fierce, has an attitude, can start snapping on a flip of a dime, shows her concern and worry through harsh words, threats, and spankings, hates spending a lot of money, made poor choices in her teens, and was still facing the consequences of them today.
Maybe she was ashamed of this black side of herself. Zoey thought it wasn’t crazy that she would be. Some black people are ashamed to be black. They don’t feel that being black is something to be proud of and that certain rules or responsibilities come with being black. Zoey wasn’t particularly proud of the color of her skin, but it wasn’t like she was ashamed, either. Her skin was just skin. It didn’t define her, and she didn’t let it chain her down because of the history that happened with her race. She was just going to be herself. Zoey Winters.
When they got home, Zoey basically dropped dead once she reached her bed. She didn’t even get the chance to take off her bra like she usually does before falling asleep. Wearing a bra before going to bed just felt uncomfortable. It felt way better to sleep naturally with her girls, free to move and shift as they pleased.
Zoey set herself an alarm to wake up at seven pm if she didn’t wake up before it. She had homework to do, magji studying for the magjistar tournament next Monday, studying on the latest gsports game that made the most money from hosting gaming competitions before teaching her brother how to get really good at those games, and boxing drills and... She fell asleep.