When he tore off her hijab, that's when I toed him.

I walked through the hallways, searching for room 182. It was located in the new wing the school had just finished building this summer.

My backpack filled with notebooks and binders hung over my shoulder, and my hands were tucked away in the pockets of my super short jeans.

I wore a sleeveless Cinderella and Prince Charming shirt. The Prince was on his knees, holding the hand of Cinderella. She was in her famous blue dress. They were outside of the ballroom, the huge clocktower in the background striking midnight.

The shirt barely fell to the standards of dress code; the straps to the shirt as wide as my three fingers. But even if the shirt wasn't dress code appropriate, this school does a terrible job of enforcing the dress code to high schoolers, which is why I was also getting away with my shorts too. Yeah boy.

I wore pink and white tie dye high tops. They were once all pink, but after a mishap in the laundry when I got mud all over them, they were bleached at the front and sides. Hey, they looked even better than before, like the pink and white tie dye was on purpose. So that's a win.

Two sparkling bracelets wrapped around my left wrist: ones I had gotten at a China town in Toronto once. One was wide, and white, with purple beads shaped to look like butterflies. The other one was a piercing turquoise, with different sized emerald cut gems. Both bracelets were translucent in their plastic, their [insert shiny different faces word definition thingy that starts with f] blindingly shiny and sparkly in the light.

To top it all off, I wore a Alice in Wonderland style pocket watch around my neck, hanging down to my belly button, and a white flower crown around my head.

No I'm not a hipster. Nothing against them, I just don't roll like that.

"170, 171, 172..." I counted out loud, only rooms away from my first period class, Criminal Justice.

I turned a corner, into a new section of the wing. That was when I walked into a wall.

A wall with body odor.

Nope. Not a wall. I looked up at big, fat, bald, grubby kid.

"Oops. I'm sorry. I didn't see you there." I said apologetically, a chirp in my voice to make light of the situation.

I observed his appearance in even more detail. His wrinkled shirt was stained with sweat and an unknown brown substance. He wore a red baseball cap, backwards. (I'm personally more of a bent brim hat.)

He stood still, not even looking at me. Just into space over my head.

With my initial collision with him, I had missed the smell of  marijuana wafting from his breath.

Grubby finally snapped back into reality and glared at me. He walked around my tiny silhouette, bumping into my shoulder, hazily shouting a "Watch where you're going." back at me.

As he walked away, I dropped my backpack from my shoulder and held out my arms like I was going in for a hug.

"Oh, you wanna go mate? You wanna go? 1v1 me scrub!" I yelled at him in fun.

He didn't stop walking. Good thing too, I am not in any shape or build to take that guy on.

I shook my head at that poor guy. I scooped up my backpack from the ground, slung it over my shoulder, and continued to make my way to first period.

Then I heard yelling, coming from the corridor I had just turned my back on.

Grubby boy.

Curious, I walked back to the intersection and peeked over the corner.

I watched from a distance as Grubby boy started verbally harassing a girl, who was doing her very best to ignore him as she walked down the hallway in my direction. But Grubby only followed her.

"Come back and look at me when I'm talking to you!!"

I wasn't really paying attention to Grubby as much as I was to the girl he was harassing.

She was Muslim.

From her unfitted, beat down jeans to her loose beige shirt that flowed like a dress to her knees: her shirt covered her shoulders, chest, and arms; But the tell tale sign of her religion was her black hijab, or head scarf that Muslim girls wear to cover their head, hair, ears, and neck. It draped over her shoulders and around her chest like a flowing river of raven silk.

Her skin and her face was a dead giveaway as well. She looked foreign, exotic, like from Pakistan, Turkey, or some place like that where Muslims lived in abundance.

Her eyes were of caramel, shaped like almonds, yet the largest eyes I had ever seen.

I watched from feet away in awe. Of all my years at this school, all the way back to grade one, never has a Muslim attended this school.

The Muslim girl's unresponsiveness to Grubby made him even more rilled. And it was only at that point did I tune in to what kind of insults he was throwing at her.

"You [insert female dog swear]! You're good for nothing waste of space! You're people will burn in hell. I wish you would just die out. Your people are harder to kill off than a nest of cockroaches. Go die in a hole, you terrorist!"

Look, I'm pretty indifferent about these things, alright? I don't really pay attention to the news. I don't like politics, I don't like debates, I don't like disagreements. It leaves me depressed because I know that the world will never be a perfect and wonderful. And no matter what we do, no matter how much we argue, everyone will never agree with each other. Hey, I'm pretty to myself about my own religion. I don't force my beliefs on you, and you don't force your beliefs on me. That's how it should be, shouldn't it? I don't see why we have to make such a big deal about these things.

But insulting her and her religion like that? I don't care if you agree with someone's beliefs or not. I don't care if you're high or not. You. Do not. Under any circumstances. Disrespect someone and their beliefs like that. ESPECIALLY when they've done absolutely nothing wrong to you.

That's when I stepped out from behind my corner and marched up to Grubby. I stood in front of the harasser, the only thing between him and the girl. The Muslim girl stopped walking and had turned to watch as I confronted him.

"Hey man, step off. Get out of her grill. We're all humans here." I said, trying not to choke at his body odor.

He paused for a moment, processing what I had said, but only shoved me to the side and continued his verbal abuse. He walked toward her in an attempt to corner her at a wall.

I shoved him like he had shoved me. (It was hard to do. This guy's like twice my body weight.) I tried to give the Muslim girl as much of a getaway as I could. "Stop it you crack head! Leave her alone!"

His response to this was to toss me across the room like I was nothing but trash. I landed on my butt, thank goodness.

Grubby ran (jiggled) at the Muslim girl, who had gotten maybe twenty feet away. It only took him seconds to catch up to her. That's when he did the unthinkable.

He tore off her hijab.

The headscarf that covers her.

The Muslim girl stood in shock for a few moments, unable to process how much Grubby had just violated her and her religion.

When it finally sunk it, she shrieked in horror beyond anything I have ever heard, as if someone had just poured boiling acid all over her head. She threw her arms over her head and fell to her knees, still screaming at what this perv had just done.

I was already on my feet.

I charged at Grubby like a strain. Steam blew from my ears like engines; a scream of rage screeched like a whistle; the coals of a thousand fires burned in my eyes.

When he tore off her hijab, that's when I tomatoed him.

What does tomatoed mean, you might ask?

A word meaning breaking someone's nose in one swing of your fist.

And never in my life have I ever tomatoed someone with more satisfaction and justification.

Grubby dropped the hijab, and fell back. He clutched his nose with his hands and cried out in in pain.

I stood over the curled up Grubby, just for a minute. He moaned and cried as blood streamed down his face and onto his sweaty stained shirt and the floor around him.

I turned around, expecting to see the Muslim girl staring in disbelief at what had become of her attacker. But to my complete surprise, she was nowhere to be seen.

Grade 11 at Old Lake Public School was off to a great start.