I Am Nina — Chapter 4 — The Shield
Public school shows no mercy. Nina learns to armor up.
Nina was rich, then poor on purpose, then rich again. And neither of the boys knows.
Public school showed no mercy.
I showed up a year behind — behind in behavior, not in schoolwork. I still talked like someone giving orders. I still expected things to be brought to me. I still had that face of someone who thinks she's just passing through a bad place.
The other kids smelled it in the first week.
They didn't hit me right off the bat. First it was the nickname. Then it was taking my stuff and giving it back broken. Then it was shoving in the hallway, backpack on the floor, lunch in the trash. I didn't know how to fight back against any of it, and crying only made it worse.
I was the rich girl who'd turned poor and hadn't figured it out yet.
One day, on the way home, we drove past a gym.
There were people training out on the sidewalk. Kicks, knees, elbows. Sharp, repeated movements, no anger at all — just technique.
— Dad. I want to learn that.
He looked at me in the rearview mirror.
— Why.
— Because at school they hit me and I can't do anything.
He didn't say anything else that day. But the next week he signed me up. It was the only expensive thing he let me have in all those years, and I only understood much later that he never would have said no to that.