“Five ten,” the cashier says to Val.
Val hands her a five and rummages through her bag for some change. Her face flips to a deep-hued red. Avoiding any type of humiliation in the cafeteria is essential. “Do you have a dime?” she asks me, but I’m already searching my pockets and coming up empty.
The lunch lady starts ringing me up, leaving Val to continue her frantic search. “Do you got it or not?” It’s like the cashier’s voice is engineered to be loud and maximize embarrassment.
“I have it,” a guy says from behind me in a deep radio-deejay voice. Ezra Drummond and his puff of black hair waltz up to the register with two nickels.
“Thank you so much!” Val says.
“My pleasure. I couldn’t let a fellow student starve...or go without caffeine.”
“And they say chivalry is dead.”
“I don’t think anything under a quarter can be considered chivalry, per se.”
“Uh-huh.” Val’s gift for gab goes missing.
I pay for my meal and step out of line, waiting for Val to join me.
“Thanks again.” Val speed walks to our table. I scurry to catch up, making sure I don’t spill or hit anyone.
“So I totally got a vibe from Ezra,” she says. She does the 1-2-3-look as he makes his way back to his pack of theater friends.
“That was really nice of him.”
“That was more than nice. You have to admit, there was definitely some kind of vibe there.”
Ezra’s a generally friendly guy. We randomly had a bunch of electives together sophomore year, and he still gives me a nod when we pass each other in uncrowded corridors. I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know.” I don’t have the energy to go this path with Val. I’m hungry.
But we can’t eat just yet.
We reach our table to find it dotted with comic books and Capri Suns, and instead of empty chairs awaiting us, we have three scrawny guys.
“Hi.” That’s the first word I’ve said to Fred Teplitzky and his patch of acne in about six years. “Um, we were sitting here.”
“We saved your seats.” The other two guys, Quentin Yao and Howard Langman, pat the chairs next to them. Is this a date ambush?
“Can you please move your magazines?” Val asks. They grab their comic books away from Val’s incoming lunch tray.
Fred jumps out of my chair. I’m face-to-face with his beaming smile and surprisingly straight teeth. Props to his orthodontist. “Listen, there were some fisticuffs at our usual table, and we need a new home. We could all squeeze and make it work here.”
“Fisticuffs?” I ask. When was the last time somebody used that word?
“We went to sit at our table today, but it was taken by the D’Agostino twins and their girlfriends,” Fred says, nodding his head to the table. Lucy Dorsett and Gina Janetti are snuggled in with equally ripped John and Jack. “We tried to tell them that we’ve been sitting there since September, but they aren’t the type of guys to listen to reason. They have those arm-chain tattoos.”
“Don’t they usually spend their lunch period smoking in the parking lot?” I had to sit next to Lucy in sixth period last year, and I almost died of secondhand smoke.
“I guess they wanted to add more fiber to their diet,” Fred says.
“There’s a table by the kitchen,” Val says. She firmly believes that you are who you sit with, and sharing a table with these guys—even though they’re all nice guys—will not help her social profile.
“It smells like lard and grease over there,” Quentin says.
“Invest in potpourri.”
Val turns to me for solidarity. I can’t tell the D’Agostino twins apart, but they each have their right arm around their girlfriend. I never noticed how many couples populate the cafeteria. Why do they get to dictate the seating chart? You never hear of a gaggle of girls or a group of guys evicting a twosome from their table.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Join us.”
Val shoots me a nasty look, but before she can say anything, I whisper into her ear: “I think Ezra and Fred are friends, or friendlyish.”
Val’s face lights up and she reverts to her 1-2-3-look.
“Really? We had speech class together freshman year, and he was always really nice. Hmm...Ezra Drummond.” Val smiles to herself. She’s coming dangerously close to a neck cramp. “And the hemp choker necklace really brings out the hazel in his eyes....”
If I have to spend a lunch period listening to people talk about crushes and comic books, my head may explode.
“Whoa, they’re eating each other alive!” Quentin points to Derek and Bari at a side table. His mouth swallows her tongue whole. His hands dig into her hips.
PDA = HIGH.
They stand and stroll up to the garbage cans with their trash, holding hands and keeping one eye on each other the whole time. Calista eats with other cheerleaders, but isn’t engaging with them. The newly minted couple pass Calista’s table, completely oblivious to the loneliness in her eyes. Bari could probably decipher Calista’s exact mood with one glance, if she’d only pay her friend a speck of attention.
I glance across the cafeteria and watch my former best friend have the lunch period of her life. Huxley nestles her head against Steve’s shoulder. She doesn’t even notice I’m staring.
4
My English teacher Ms. Hardwick is one of the youngest teachers at Ashland, and as coach of the cheerleading squad, she likes to think she’s one of the girls. My parents thought she was a student when they met her. They couldn’t believe she taught honors English. So it’s difficult to take her seriously when she discusses Shakespeare.
“Okay, guys,” she says, taking a seat on her desk. “You should’ve all finished Romeo and Juliet over the weekend. So let’s discuss. What did you guys think? Wasn’t it super sad at the end?”
Shana Wigand raises her hand. “I found the themes of forcefulness of love and the inevitability of fate to be the most captivating.”
“Now, Shana. I asked everyone to read R and J, not Wikipedia. C’mon, guys. Give me your honest feedback. We all know this story in one form or another.”
Silence.
Ms. Hardwick smacks her lips together. They’re soaked in red lipstick. “Anyone? Don’t be shy.”
“I thought they were so romantic,” another classmate says.
I know that voice. That calm, cold voice in the center of the room weighted down with unbridled confidence.
“Huxley, care to elaborate?” Ms. Hardwick asks.
Huxley sits up straight, refusing to slouch like us common folk. There always seems to be a spotlight on her olive skin and cascading brown hair, straight out of a shampoo commercial. She’ll make a perfect senator’s wife one day, and she knows it.
“Their love was passionate and intense, but quiet and delicate at the same time. It was...beautiful.” Huxley says her words slowly, since nobody will dare interrupt her.
“Nicely put,” Ms. Hardwick says. A tidal wave of nods flows across the room. Even Greg Baylor and his jock crew in the corner agree.
“It was so amazing. Even reading the synopsis gave me chills,” Shana says, not missing an opportunity to score brownie points with Huxley. And the teacher, too.
“They were the pinnacle of true love,” Huxley says. Does she realize that 90 percent of what she utters is straight-up cliché? Probably, but the class eats it up anyway.
I roll my eyes. Killing yourself because you can’t date someone seems a tad overdramatic.
“Care to comment?” Ms. Hardwick asks someone. Then I realize she’s looking at me. Now so is the whole class.
“What?” I ask, my palms slick with sweat.