Slack

Jack and Eric teased Peri often, and everyone laughed at their jokes. They meant nothing much by it, and had no ill will, but the class clowns needed a safe target. Making fun of just anyone was off-limits, as a natural order had developed in the three years since we entered as freshmen. It came to be that she was politically expedient to make the scapegoat, the status quo since she won a county writing prize in junior year. She took the spotlight with a stiff face, a walnut for the pincers of the mob to crack. Her cold display at the school assembly raised her social profile, and thereafter jabs at the gloomy classmate, a local literary genius, were allowed. Punching up, as some thought of it, was the noble duty of bright young adults.