SARAH FLOATS THROUGH THE MORNING classes, then joins the rest of the students in watching the clock as lunchtime approaches. She tries to be casual with her glances. Someone’s stomach growls loudly, and there is sudden laughter. The clock hands tick slowly on. Other stomachs begin to growl like a slow-gathering chorus of frogs. The one good thing about environmental collapse and reduced food supplies is that there are way fewer fat kids.
At 10:57 A.M. the first lunch bell rings. The students lurch up from their desks, and she joins the giant snake of bodies speed walking to the cafeteria. Last year she hardly ever ate the school’s lunch; and when she did, she was never in any hurry. This year she walks fast and keeps others from cutting ahead of her. Lunch is serious now.
At the counter a woman wearing a hairnet and clear plastic gloves dishes out spoonfuls of a cheesy hot dish that has clumps of mystery meat. The next woman in line piles on soggy, limp green beans. After that it’s the potato woman—whose face looks like a potato. But any food is a nice change from river fish and rice. The other students in line carefully watch the cafeteria women dish out their food.
“Hey, he got more potatoes than me!” someone says.
“Keep moving,” the potato-scooper woman says.
With her tray, Sarah turns toward the crowded cafeteria tables. Always the big question: where to sit. She doesn’t see Mackenzie’s group. She drifts along, looking for an open space on the benches.
Ray O’Keefe is seated at a table with kids of many colors: a peroxide blond Latino boy; a skinny Gothy girl with long black hair with cherry-red streaks; a couple of black-haired Native American boys; two white girls in dreads and tie-dyed T-shirts; one fat girl between two scrawny, bushy-haired white boys. Ray has a sketch pad open and a pencil in his hand.
“Sarah—here we are!” calls Mackenzie. She is moving along with a tray, and uses it to herd Sarah away from Ray’s table. Sarah glances over her shoulder helplessly at Ray.
He shrugs and turns back to his friends.
“You weren’t actually going to sit by him, were you?” Mackenzie says, plopping down her tray.
Sarah stammers, “I—I just heard someone call my name, you know....”
“Gawd, imagine having to sit through a whole lunch period with those freaks,” says another in girl.
“Torture,” another says.
“So what’s your deal with Ray?” Sarah asks Mackenzie.
“Nothing,” Mackenzie says.
“You’re just mad because he’s never asked you.” One of the girls giggles.
“Asked what?” Sarah says.
“To pose.”
“Pose?” Sarah asks.
“Like, model—so he can draw her.”
“You mean a life model?”
“Huh?” one of the girls says.
“Nude,” Sarah says.
The table full of girls shrieks with laughter; one of them coughs up food, which only brings more laughter.
“No, not nude!” Mackenzie says when the girls quiet down. “Though that’s probably what he really wants.”
“He’s an amazing artist,” one of the girls says softly. “I mean, it was fun letting him draw me.”
“Me, too,” another says. “He’s gonna be famous someday.”
Mackenzie turns to them with a long glare; they quickly look down at their food.
“So what did you do in Park Rapids?” Mackenzie says to Sarah. “Any sports?”
“Not really,” Sarah says. “I was homeschooled, actually,” she explains, and rolls her eyes.
“So why’d you come here?” Mackenzie asks.
“I told my parents I’d sue them if I had to stay at home another year,” Sarah says.
The girls giggle.
“Well, since you’re here, you clearly need to know stuff about this school,” Mackenzie says. She looks around the cafeteria. “See that cute guy with the buzz cut over there? That’s Django. Isn’t that the coolest name ever? He’s really good at basketball, and we, you know, go out once in a while.”
“They’re going steady!” one of the girls says, and everyone laughs.
“And next to him, that guy in the red T-shirt? He’s Derek.”
Sarah lets Mackenzie rattle on and concentrates on her lunch. She scarfs down everything. She was never part of the clean-plate club BV (Before Volcanoes), but now, even bad cafeteria food is too precious to be tossed. She puts her tray on the conveyor belt, where all the other plates and dishes are as empty as if a dog has licked them shiny.
Ray catches up with her in the hallway. “Nice lunch?”
“Sort of.”
“So you’re friends with Mackenzie now?”
“Maybe.”
“I gotta say, they just don’t seem like your crowd.”
“What’s my crowd?”
“I don’t know yet,” he says. His dark eyes probe hers; it’s as if he can see all the way through her. He reaches out and puts a finger on the ancient, faded NOFX patch stitched onto her backpack—and also brushes her arm. Her bare skin tingles.
“So what’s your crowd?” she replies quickly. Her arm burns where his hand touched her, and she feels her face go hot, too.
“Probably not this whole school,” he says quickly with a glance around them. “I’d really like to be at the arts school in Minneapolis; I have my application in.”
She laughs.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “I mean, you do seem sort of … artsy. A guy who wears kilts.”
“It’s my disguise,” he says.
She’s totally warm and blushing and very short on words.
“What’s yours?” he asks.
“My disguise?”
He waits for her reply.
“What makes you think I have one?” she throws back.
“Everybody does,” Ray says with his killer grin.