The Selfish, Brazen Rabbit

Once upon a time, a young man named Rabbit lived in a small town. He was the most handsome guy in all the land and knew it as well. He was the favorite of all the others students in town, and even his teachers favored him. He was also smart and somehow talented in every sport. Everyone envied him and most followed him like he was an expert in everything. If he bought a certain style of clothing, soon the entire school would have it. This constant fanfare began to go to his head though. As he got older, his ability to do no wrong made him mean in his soul. He began to toy with the younger students because he could. No matter what he did, he breezed through it. If he skipped an assignment, the teachers gave him an extension. If someone accused him of bullying, he claimed to be misunderstood. Somehow life seemed to be perfect for Rabbit. By the time he began his senior year, he had achieved the status of most popular student.

The same cannot be said for a girl named Lion who was a year younger than Rabbit. She was quiet and faded into the shadows easily. She did not have many friends. She had lived a hard life, and growing up this way enabled her to see through Rabbit’s façade. She saw him trip another student once on purpose and she knew his good grades came from cheating off of the other students. It all seemed so unfair to her that he got away with everything and had such a great life that he took for granted.

One day, Rabbit got too cocky, though, and decided to steal Jaguar’s car. Jaguar had a cooler car than Rabbit, and Rabbit thought he deserved it more than Jaguar. He was only going to go buy a snack at the gas station but when bringing it back he hit another car in the parking lot. He knew that even he could not get out of this, so he decided to just leave it.

Principal Deer called Jaguar after another student reported the incident, and Jaguar was in serious trouble. The principal thought Jaguar not only wrecked his car but was lying about it as well. Jaguar was obviously confused but Rabbit claimed that he saw Jaguar leave the wrecked vehicle. Rabbit was such a great student and so well liked that Principal Deer immediately believed him over Jaguar.

Jaguar was expelled and everyone whispered about it in the hallways. Soon the rumor mill had fabricated a story that said Jaguar not only ran someone over, but then left them for dead. The whole school had turned on Jaguar for doing such a terrible thing. He lost all his friends, his parents were furious, and he had been expelled.

When Lion heard this story, she knew it could not be true. Jaguar had always been nice to Lion and he wouldn’t have done something like this. To get to the bottom of the story, Lion went to talk to her friend Elephant, who always knew all the truth behind the school gossip, but Elephant had just heard the story from Fox. So Lion went to talk to Fox and found out Fox had just heard it from someone else, and so on and so forth. Finally, Lion realized that she just needed to talk to Principal Deer herself because Jaguar being accused of this without any real evidence was unfair, but before she could talk to her, she ran into Rabbit. She saw him across the hallway, leaning on a locker with his friends and bragging about how he saw Jaguar do the whole thing. The more he spoke, the more the tale grew and Lion saw through his lies. Now knowing that Rabbit was involved, Lion was all the more convinced of Jaguar’s innocence. Lion went to Principal Deer to plead for Jaguar’s innocence, but Principal Deer said without evidence, there was nothing she could do. Then Lion remembered that the gas station across the street had a security camera. Principal Deer and Lion got the tape and saw Rabbit stealing Jaguar’s car.

Now that Rabbit had been caught red-handed, everyone else saw through all the terrible things he had done. Slowly all the rumors and drama he had caused unrolled. Jaguar came back to school and Rabbit paid for his car to be fixed. Lion having investigated and uncovered the whole ordeal found herself at the center of attention and was now the most popular girl in school. Although from the outside it looked like Lion was receiving all the same treatment that led to Rabbit turning bad, she had a good heart and used her newfound popularity and power to bring people together and to show everyone that in the end it is important to not follow blindly.