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There was only one living inhabitant of the parking-lot, except for cars: though the inhabitant in question was part-car, if you thought about it, or at least part-mechanical. The moment that he turned to look at her was unfortunate, because she had been lining up a rock, taken a few steps back and belted at it with one sneaker-clad foot. The rock went whistling at a speed not unfamiliar with bullets past Harper's head, and Jace Darnell laughed out loud.

"Whoops," she said, not sounding as though she meant it at all. "Nice skateboard. Are you meant to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? Because you totally can't ride that thing. You look like a loser, loser." (Her insults hadn't been fully developed yet: she also had her hands in her pockets and a mean, somehow hungry look, desperate for something.) "You should let me try with your stupid skateboard."

The redheaded girl guffawed and put her hands in her pockets: her chin was raised defiantly as she swaggered over to Harper. It had taken her weeks to properly swagger the way she wanted to. The smirk had changed to a scowl the moment he had referred to her as mommy's little favourite, complete with a sharp jab of her middle finger in his direction, but then she spat manfully to the side and scuffed her sneaker on the asphalt.

"'Aren't even gonna say please,'" she mocked, high-pitched. "I didn't ask, I just. It was just a suggestion, okay? I mean everyone knows your stupid best friend is that stupid MP3 player and your stupid eyeliner and your stupid nailpolish. Everyone also knows you look totally gay. So what? You got a problem? I just - I never went on a skateboard before, all right?"

At this admission, she went slightly pink on the ears, and had to round it out with a scornful duuuuuh. "The eyeliner makes you look like Antony," she said, which was a low blow.

There was no answer to this. Jace had immediately launched into a flying tackle the moment he had accused her of having Antony as her boyfriend-girlfriend, and thankfully for Harper he had been tackled back onto a soft patch of grass: although Jacoba was fairly lightweight, she was filled with a terrible wrath, and her orange eyes blazed as she pinned him down and scowled at him with the heat of a thousand suns. "You are such a d**k," she shrieked, looking inside her word dictionary for every single word her mother would kill her for. "He is not my boyfriend and my NAME is NOT JACOBA. Were you - were you dropped on the head, I bet you were, I bet you were dropped like a thousand times down on the UGLY TREE so you hit every UGLY STICK on the way down - "

She shook his shoulders a little, though this didn't hurt so much as just jiggle him around a bit. The tackling should have been better-thought-through: pinning him down had been the main thing. The skateboard had sadly bounced off and was sitting on the grass next to them. "You totally want to kiss Manny," she hissed vindictively. "I bet you lie awake at night in your stupid bed thinking about big wet Manny smoochies."

"WHAT?" Jace's voice echoed off Jupiter; she rose to her knees, hands in fists. She was going bright red. "I did not! What? That is so gross! Why do you have to be so retarded? More like you WANT to kiss me and antony isn't my boyfriend shut up." (Another attempt to make a few more rattles ensued. The fact that he was laughing at it seemed to make her mad.) "I bet Manny didn't kiss you. Nobody wants to kiss you. I bet you taste like MOTOR OIL and DIRT. I bet you taste STUPID."

That did it. Jace yanked up a large clod of grass and dirt, digging her fingers in, and threw it wholesale over at Harper. The dirt war? It was ON. "I hope you choke and die," she hollered. "I would never kiss you ever in my whole entire life. If I did I would set my mouth on fire and then I would set the fire on fire and then I'd do it all over again. Because you're the world's - " Another clod. " - biggest - " Yet another. " - retard!"

She opened her mouth to shriek YES, but an unfortunate clod of dirt hit her right in the face. The next few minutes were pretty much a shower of dirt and the quickly-getting-ruined school lawn raining down on both of them, bits of grass and root and earth, until both of them were not so much their usual comfortable colours but muddy, dusty brown. After a few moments, there was an unexpected sound: Jace had started to snigger.

"At least you don't throw as bad as you suck," she said, which was probably a compliment.

"Cool," she said. She was dragging one foot in the dirt; she had spelled out the word CRAP with a slightly wobbly R, apparently just to complete the defacement of the lawn: apparently the violence and the dirt-fight had satisfied whatever violent and irritated urges she usually got. "We're going to get in so much damn trouble. We better book it unless you want to be in detention for, like, forever, with that gross guidance counsellor. The one who looked like rainbows puked up on her hair."