The Smartest Decision

If they had been tall, muscular folk, they would have looked intimIdating, but they weren't. They

looked like college students, or younger, some still with acne, or too-oily hair, beards that wouldn't quite grow all the way in, and the thinness of youth. They looked awkward and out of place.

Four or five of them were gathered behind and around a stout young man less than five and a half feet tall. He had thick glasses and pudgy fingers, and would have looked more at home with a pocket protector than with the spiked leather gloves on his fingers.

He stood with his hands on his hips, glaring up at a rail-thin blond girl at least a head taller than he, the lines of her willowy body all awkward, her long, sad face set in an expression of anger. Her hair fell about her face and head in a ragged mane, but her eyes sparkled with contained wrath.

Another five or six of the young people we're gathered behind her, and everyone seemed tense.