Chiquitita's Friends

The ringleader wears his dark, heavily fringed hair split down the center of his forehead, dressing in brownish track pants and a shirt stamped with a fanged robot head labeled Iceman, a stub of black line on the back. Next comes a boy whose thick black hair spikes upward, his shirt carrying a dark star at front and back with shaded bands falling from the shoulders, paired with pale trousers; he has an outsized nose and slits for eyes. The last is a blond with messy, spiky hair in a hoodie that shows a little white square tucked in one corner of a bigger black one over some text, plus black track pants striped down the sides in white, round eyes, and big front teeth.

Doubtful of Chiquitita from the start, the boys branded him a liar to everyone the moment he wouldn't hit back. Their own swagger aside, they were bullied just the same, and it took his rescue for them to see how badly they had wronged him and come around as his friends.

Chiquitita first met the group when he presented himself to the new classroom in the strange cadence of his alien roots; they came over and the leader threw a punch. Since Chiquitita had bragged that hitting was his strong suit, the boy braced for a comeback, but the alien held off, explaining that his father stood for love and peace and forbade harming others, which left the trio writing him off as a coward. Heading home, the boys ran into older kids who knocked them around like sandbags, and when Chiquitita strolled past he was told to queue up for his own beating. Instead, one jab from him sent the bully sailing, proof that his dad had also told him to look after his friends. The trio soon came around, and the next morning the whole group danced together outside the school.