“Hey, Jessica, I almost didn't see you down there,” Valery greeted her as Jessica was walking down the hallway to her locker. Her friends snickered. Valery Thompson was captain of the cheerleader squad and the volley ball team. Also, she was an exceptional student and she loved to make fun of Jessica.

“Ha ha,” Jessica murmured.

“ Really though, you would think somebody would have stepped on you or something.”

Valery's friends laughed.

Jessica kept walking, pretending she didn't hear Valery's comment. Throughout the rest of the day, several different people commented on her height, her clothes and her hair.

Jessica was relieved when school ended.

After school, Jessica hurried down her empty street to karate class. She entered the small, dark, dojo. A few of her fellow karate students stood in clusters at the edge of the room.

Before class her instructor made an announcement about the Red Dragon Tae Kwon Do tournament. Since competing in a tournament was a qualification for a black belt, Jessica thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to go. She really didn't want to go because she was terrified she would get her butt kicked into next week.

After class, Jessica approached her instructor. “Master Clark, do you have the registration paperwork for the tournament?”

Over the next two weeks, Jessica didn't do much more than school and practice karate. At last it was the day of the competition.

Jessica looked around the spacious dojo of the Red Dragon Tae Kwon Do Studio. The multitudes of people were so tall, she felt incredibly Lilliputian compared to everyone in the room. After some rather lengthy announcements from the head of the Red Dragon Tae Kwon Do Studio, the competition began.

The first event was forms. She watched the five other competitors in her division go before her. Although their forms were not very intense, they definitely looked like they knew what they were doing. Also, they were very long and complicated. Jessica was up. Bowing, she began her form. Jessica bombed. She was so nervous she forgot most of the form. Even though it was intense, she counted twelve errors. When she was done with the form, the judges announced the places.

“Third place, Janet Crawford,”

A tall brunette bowed to the judges and took a trophy.

“Second Place Alana McCloud,”

“Frist Place, Jessica Tyler,”

Bewildered, Jessica bowed and took her trophy. After thinking it over a little, Jessica remembered something about the head of the Red Dragon saying something about it being a multi-school tournament and that not all the schools had the same forms. Pretty much if it was intense and looked good, she could get a place.

Jessica took third in board breaking and didn't get a place in weapons forms.

The last event was sparring.

Jessica looked nervously from the referee to her muscular opponent.

“Fight,” said the referee. The words echoed like a death sentence.

The last thing Jessica wanted to do was get pulverized by a six foot brown belt. But it was too late to back out. Forcefully, the brown belt threw a kick to Jessica's stomach. Her block didn't prevent it. The three Judges declared it a point for her opponent.

Determined not to get annihilated, Jessica quickly dodged the punch countering it with a spin kick to the stomach. Two points for Jessica.

The brown belt did a double kick again, going through Jessica's block. Now they were tied. Jessica threw about five kicks, all blocked. The stale mate went on for quite some time. At last, with a burst of adrenaline, Jessica jumped and faked a kick to the head and hit the stomach on the way back down.

She had won.

A few gargantuan adversaries later, Jessica was faced with probably the only person in the entire event about her size, for first in the division. This should be simple, Jessica thought. Wrong. Although Jessica did rather well, the match ended three to two the red belt's favor. Jessica was okay with this, she had done better than she expected.

At school Monday, she encountered Valery again. “Wow,” she said sarcastically. “Love your shirt. How many dumpsters did you look through to find it?”

“Hi Valery,” she replied and kept on walking. After sparring seemingly the world's biggest brown belt, being harassed by a middle school girl seemed too petty to bother with.