Here in the Cayman Islands we do things a little differently, down here you do your final exams for high-school in the eleventh year, and if you pass you can choose to do A-levels (something about the U.K.) dual-enrollment (finish high-school and work for an associates) or go to C.I.F.E.C. ( Cayman Islands Further Education Center) to get more passes. As it goes, I passed my exams and am now a dual-enrollment student, but many others weren't as (intelligent) fortunate as I, including three of my best friends. Don't get me wrong, they're excellent dudes, they just missed the bar by a couple points is all.

At this point you're wondering why I mentioned all of that when the story's title is 'Vendetta', right? Well, that's just to let you know where I stand at the moment. And I currently stand superior to every motherf*cker I've ever had a problem with in high-school.

I attended John-Gray High School, the typical ghetto public school where students are automatically labeled criminals in training regardless of what their GPA would look like, had such a thing been a part of the system. And I was rather popular (though I didn't know this until I was preparing for exams a few months prior to the summer), since I was the only person in the entire school to walk around with a Bible in my hand at most times of the day, most times of the year.

And being in said "ghetto" school, I found an abundance of attractive young women who I often played coy with. This merited a lot, and I mean A LOT (we're talking farms full) of beef (grudges, vendettas, etc.). This is where the story's title becomes relevant as I tell you of a few such vendettas.

Being the only "Bible Boy" was a double-edged broadsword, it was a heavy burden that often came back to hit me if I swung too hard (which was often). I was infamous among the students for hypocritically swearing (though never once did I rant about how swearing is wrong), for being hypocritically aggressive (boxing is apparently the first step to becoming a serial mugger), and for not reading the Bible back to front.

I know what you're asking, again, how is this relevant? I'll tell you how, it's relevant because whenever random guys saw me chatting with the sexiest girl they knew and worshiped, that's how they identified me. You didn't even need to know my name, just that I'm Bible Boy.

And as I said, I flirted a lot, and therefore merited a couple farm-fulls of beef. Now, no more boring you, onto the story at hand.

My number one nemesis, Albert Bodden, was a tall, brown-skinned handsome guy who sported an '80's Afro that actually looked good on him, he was in tenth year, I in ninth. Our beef (vendetta, whatever) started over a Dairelyn ( pronounced Dar-lene) Pena (who I hope isn't reading this, I really don't want her to track me down on Facebook or something), a petite brown-skinned Latina who had flowing dark hair, gorgeous curves, sparkling brown eyes, and an adorable dimple on one of her cheeks.

She was in my homeroom, I paid her no mind at first, but started talking to her, started to like her, and found out about her boyfriend, Albert. I paid him as much respect as I could when he was or was not around, and refrained from directly hitting on her, but soon a visible hatred set in on his part, and when I sensed it, I was pissed. I never went out of my way to talk to Dairelyn, I gave him the space he needed when he talked to her, and even held a little respect for him. So I completely ignored the fact that I was Bible Boy, a muscular young boxer who was rumoured to be as religious as a horsefly in a church, and that I was currently crushing on his girlfriend, and just went with the idea that he was picking on a little nerd who had no real shot with the girl.

I returned the hatred, but never actually let it show, and just bottled it up as best as I could essentially. But Al continued to let it show, he stared me down, cut his eyes at me, and looked down on me (granted he was tall enough for it). I held my chin high, narrowed my eyes, and ignored his existence, while breaking down threat levels and analyzing weak points and the like, scared that I would have to fight, but ready to lay down some serious ass-whooping.

To stretch the point of just how much I was expecting a physical confrontation, I got my cousin Ajani to tell me everything he knew about Al's fighting style (they "sparred" from time to time) and Ajani told me that he was utterly incapable of throwing a straight shot, and relied heavily on wild, weak, but rapid hooks. Leaving me with two advantages, variety, and stopping power, which were somewhat evened out by his reach and body-weight.

But alas, that information was kept on standby for as long as he was in John Gray. As it goes, Al was, and still is presumably, what I liked to call an "empty barrel". As you might know it, a dog without teeth. He relied heavily on intimidation, and he constantly cut his eyes at me, kept staring me down, bringing other guys in to assist him as he went all-out on the intimidation throttle. He had realized that Bible Boy wasn't as ruthless as rumours had it, and that Bible Boy was a pacifist who was too easy to scare, but Bible Boy also knew how to IGNORE toothless dogs. And I kept my distance, waited for him to make the first move, to push first, to insult me or curse me first so that I would've just been responding to his aggression, to do anything that reeked of aggression. But toothless dogs aren't really big on backing up their barks.

And it stayed like that for the next two years, until his drug-addicted ass failed his exams and landed himself in C.I.F.E.C. End of story, right? Nope. I have a few other vendettas to tell you about, but really, I think that I made an error in saying that Al was my worst nemesis. I believe Dairelyn was the source of my suffering, you see, she kinda sorta maybe just probably liked me too (maybe), and she wanted to make me jealous. So she flirted with every guy in sight, especially the guys who were my friends, and tried to look like she was ignoring me.

Apparently Bible Boys are supposed to be blindly in love with their crushes, never ever leaving their side, that wasn't me. I hardly went out of my way to talk to her, if she ignored me, I ignored her back. Or at least I tried to until she magically appeared right in front of me hitting on either a random turd or a friend. And this sported one major detail.

She did more damage by coincidence than by intention. Dairelyn was, and probably still is, one of those girls that almost every guy wanted, if you didn't you were either gay or retarded, and Bible Boy wasn't supposed to be doing so well with such a gorgeous and popular girl. Bible Boy was supposed to be in the Focus, secretly crushing on the smartest Christian girl in there (which he did in eleventh year but that's a different story) and writing in his diary about how it's such a struggle to be so nice in such a horrible place while quoting forty-two different Bible verses. Bible Boy sure as hell wasn't supposed to have the most popular girl around using other guys to make Bible Boy jealous.

So a lot of other guys started staring me down too, and those numbers grew by the dozen with each week. It started off as one or two I recognized as Al's friends, then four or five I saw Dairelyn talking to and/or flirting with, and then ten or twenty I never knew existed and would need the patience of a god to discover on my own. More and more guys continued to hate me for a girl who I was now practically at war with. Dairelyn turned guys that I respected against me, when she saw me she surrounded herself with guys, constantly looking over her shoulder to see if I was jealously watching (I'm very observant ya know) and they were jealously watching as I captured her attention by just being in the same area, as they stood in awkward silence while she kept looking at me, trying to play it off as just searching for someone.

Bible Boy had reached a level where almost every guy after Dairelyn couldn't dream of reaching, Bible Boy was handsome enough, charming enough, and whatever else enough that now that she didn't have his full attention, she desperately wanted it. Bible Boy was effectively competing with every guy alive, for just being in high-school, even though by the time I'd amassed a rather small army of about a hundred or so haters I'd given up on her and listened to my cousin Ajani and stopped wasting my time with her.

At about two hundred and fifty haters I'd now become enveloped in a lordly disdain for the girl, and an even more regal hatred for anyone who wasted their time trying to compete with me for her, because Bible Boy was still holding her attention a hell of a frigging lot better than almost every guy who was after her.

The moral of this story? Bible Boy's vendetta gradually increased from one jealous boyfriend, to a quarter of the school's male population, and wherever Bible Boy went, Bible Boy had an enemy he never knew existed until then.