Anh-Thuy Nguyen, who recently bleached her hair and told everybody she wanted to be called Ashley, had her head smashed repeatedly onto the hallway floor while in the classroom Mr. Bauer’s back was turned to write on the board. Her head made a sick thud, like an overripe melon dropped onto the sidewalk. Only this was Boston Public, so the floor was linoleum. And this was ESL, so the day’s lesson wasn’t simile and metaphor, it was basic grammar. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what it sounded like or what Bauer was planning to teach; what matters is a girl was on the floor, bleeding.
