Chapter 8 Chapter 8I had assumed it would be hard to start at a new school for my senior year. However, I had completely underestimated just how craptastic it really would be.
Within twenty minutes of walking through the door, it was clear to me that everyone there had known each other since birth. Most likely their great-grandparents had gone to school together a zillion years ago, shortly after having enjoyed their trip on the Mayflower. I had the feeling that the terms “new kid” and “welcome wagon” weren’t used very often around here.
When I walked into my first class, everyone turned around to stare at me and then began whispering to each other like crazy. Then they turned back around and looked at me again as if they were waiting for me to display some type of deformity or outrageous behavior. I went to the bathroom twice to make sure I hadn’t accidently written on my face with my ballpoint pen. I felt like a transfer student from Leper High with an uncontrolled case of Ebola. I had to fight the urge to run down the hallway yelling “BOOLA BOOLA BOOLA!!!” and waving my hands madly above my head just to give them a reason for all the strange looks.
I called Anita on my cell as I walked to lunch.
“It’s worse than I imagined,” I said before she even said hi.
“It’s just first-day jitters.”
“I’m not jittery. I’m miserable.”
“You were always my glass-half-full kind of girl,” Anita said. “A ray of sunshine.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re not here. You wouldn’t believe some of these people. In my calculus class there’s this guy …” I started to say before I realized that Anita was talking to someone else in the background.
“Sorry, what did you say?” she asked, tuning back in to me.
“I was telling you about this guy—”
“Cut it out!” Anita yelled, but she was giggling. Someone else was laughing in the background. “Sharon is being an idiot,” Anita explained to me.
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say. Sharon was in our class. She was one of those people who defined the term “class clown.” She’d do anything for a joke. If she’d lived in medieval times, she would have been a full-time jester with bells hanging off her hat and giant pointy shoes curling up to her knees. Anita used to find her really annoying, but apparently not anymore. “Sounds like you guys are having a good time,” I mumbled.
“It’s totally not the same without you,” Anita insisted. I could hear people laughing and a burst of conversation swirling around her. While it might not be the same, it didn’t sound like it was that bad, either. “I should let you go. Go make some friends. Call me later, okay?” Anita clicked her phone off before I could tell her anything else.
I followed the herd of students to the cafeteria and shoved my phone back into my bag. I didn’t know why I bothered to bring it. It wasn’t like anyone wanted to talk to me.
My mom had offered to pack a lunch for me, but instead I had taken some money and planned to buy something. That was a mistake. At my old school we had a huge buffet that always had at least three options, all of them edible. We also had a salad bar. But Nairne’s hot lunch program was a joke. Prison systems in flea-bitten third-world countries have better food programs. I’m not actually sure what gruel is, but I’m pretty sure that was what they were serving today.
When I got to the front of the line, I asked the lunch lady what it was and she said, “Hot lunch.” Apparently, that was as descriptive as it was going to get. It was hot and it was designed to be eaten at lunch. Other than that there were no words to describe it. There wasn’t even a candy/chip vending machine in the place, because some hippie contingent on the island had protested against it for being too corporate.
I looked around the cafeteria, but no one met my eye. I noticed nearly everyone had brought a lunch from home. I held my tray and waited to see if anyone was going to take pity on me, but it didn’t look like it. The place wasn’t that large, which meant I was going to have to ask to join someone else’s table, take my gruel out into the hallway and eat it there, or skip lunch altogether. Then I saw Nathaniel sitting alone at a small round table by the window. I wove my way through the other tables and plopped my tray down. Nathaniel looked up at me.
“Mind if I join you?”
He paused, and for a split second I thought he was going to tell me that I couldn’t. My throat started to tighten up, but then he pulled his tray back to make more room.
“Yeah, sure.” He looked back down at his lunch bag and didn’t say anything. I waited for him to ask how my first day was going, or if I liked my classes, or even to make some lame comment about the weather, but he just sat there contemplating his pile of chips.
As soon as I sat down I could hear a low-grade hum from the rest of the cafeteria. I turned around and everyone was looking at us. Some eighth grader one table over was sitting there with his mouth wide open while he stared at me. He was caught mid-chew and I could make out from where I was sitting that he was having bologna with that bright neon-yellow mustard.
“Problem?” I asked the kid, and he swallowed and looked away. I turned back around and poked my lunch. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it started to fight back. “Good day so far?” I asked, trying to demonstrate how social skills work in polite society.
“Okay.” Nathaniel shrugged.
So much for our big relationship breakthrough yesterday. He flipped through the book on the table, US history. He was either really into studying, fascinated by the Civil War, or ignoring me on purpose. I gave lunch another poke. In theory, emotional upset is supposed to make a person lose their appetite, but I was still starving.
This was stupid. I was going to dump the gruel, consider today a diet, and call Anita back. As long as I was going to be hungry, I didn’t need to be starved of human interaction as well. I would force Anita to tell me what tasty thing they were serving at my old school. If she didn’t feel like talking to me, at least she could hold up her phone and I could listen in on their discussion.
“Well, this has been fun, but I think I’m going to shove off.” My chair let out a shriek as I pushed away from the table and started to stand.
Nathaniel looked up in surprise. “Wait a second.” He glanced around and then gave a tired sigh. He spotted my tray. “Do you want half of my sandwich?” He held it out, and I had the sense he was offering more than turkey on whole wheat.
“That would be nice.” I took the sandwich from him and sat back down. It wasn’t much, but it was progress. “You can have some of mine if you want.” I pushed my tray in his general direction. He pushed it right back.
“No matter what you might hear, I’m many things, but not crazy.”
I laughed. I thought he was joking. He didn’t even crack a smile.