POSTED OCTOBER 18, 2013, 9:43 AM
Caption reads: what a FREAK
The video is from a high angle, a phone lifted above the heads of a crowd of middle school students. They’re shouting, some of them laughing, most of it unintelligible or profane. They’ve formed a tight ring in a hallway lined with blue-gray lockers, and in the center of the ring, a girl is on her knees. She hunches, screaming and tearing at her wheat-colored hair, pulling it free of the braid that hangs to the middle of her back.
STUDENT 1: What’s wrong with her?
STUDENT 2: Someone get help!
STUDENT 3: Holy shit! She’s going crazy!
The girl turns her face toward the camera. It is Sophia Novak, age thirteen. Her face is raked with red lines where her nails have dug into her cheeks. Her lips are skinned back in a rictus of fear and rage, and the whites of her eyes show as her gaze roves blindly over the students. And then she lunges. Not at the students, though they lurch back in a wave to get away, but straight into the bank of lockers.
She rams her head against them, and then her fists, pounding the metal.
TEACHER: Move! Get out of the way!
The male teacher pulls her away from the lockers. The locker doors are dented, smeared with blood. She wrenches away from him and then stops.
She freezes, the rage falling from her face like a mask cast to the floor. She blinks, looking dazed. She spreads her hands and looks down at them.
TEACHER: Sophia?
She turns and walks calmly away from him. The crowd of students parts hastily to give her room.
The video ends.