My gut twisted.

I could have just bitten my tongue and let it go, but now that I'd seen it with my own eyes, I couldn't.

At school I wanted to keep my temper on a leash if I possibly could.

And a teaching assistant is the lowest rung of power at any school.

But I saw red.

One look and you could tell: a teaching assistant was grinding down some kids.

Broke students can hold their start-of-semester party in a lecture room. Nothing wrong with that.

My first start-of-semester party in this second life was a letdown, sure, but that was still no way to treat people.

What was that? Making the impossible possible is a class rep's job?

This isn't the army!

Nobody said a class rep has to come armed with the Marine Corps spirit.

For all the title, a class rep is a kid barely out of high school.

And this so-called teaching assistant had stomped him flat.

It was obvious what he was after: crush the kid now so he'd have an easy errand boy all year.

Once a kid's spirit gets broken, it's hard to get it back.

The guy looked like he'd done his share of running wild back in his own school days.

Either that, or he was definitely a psycho.

His eyes had a greasy shine.

He might be one of those creeps who gets off on picking on other people.

I'd been a class rep myself, before I came back.

After I got out of the army, I took the job because of tuition.

Tuition at a provincial private college was insanely expensive.

The teaching assistant back then had come on just as high and mighty.

Argh! Just thinking about it got me steamed.

Back then, like that student council president, I didn't make a peep.

I sold my soul for a measly scholarship.

For a whole semester, I made myself the assistant's loyal bootlicker.

My job had just switched from running for bread to running for cigarettes and photocopies.

After living through that, I'd be a real bastard to…