“You should start bringing a lunch,” I suggest, lifting my glass container.
“Tofu?” Camila asks suspiciously.
“I’m not going vegan or whatever you are,” Charlie adds.
“It’s lemon chicken. I eat meat—occasionally—as long as it hasn’t been raised in a factory. Come on, try some.”
Emerald spears a small piece with her fork and chews precisely, as if this is a formal dinner, then dabs her perfect mouth like her napkin’s made of cloth. “This is amazing,” she says. “Why don’t you cook for me?” She takes another neat little bite, and this time she hums around it.
Charlie gives the two of us an annoyed look, so I wave a piece in his direction. “You sure you don’t wanna try? This food’s much better for you. It makes you stronger, gives you more energy—”
“Exactly what you need,” he interrupts. “More energy.” Everyone laughs, which seems to make him proud, because he doesn’t get a lot of laughs. Then he takes a deliberately huge bite of his pizza. “I shouldn’t have to bring a lunch. They shouldn’t be here.”
“LET IT GO, MAN.” Jesse’s voice is too loud, probably because an earbud is still stuck in one ear. He leans forward, his latest growth spurt making him look like a scarecrow, and he sets his drumsticks on the table. He carries them everywhere, but he gets away with it since drums are the one instrument you’re allowed to play and not get called a band nerd. “It’s been like a month.”
“Come on, Charlie.” I grin. “Don’t you think they’re just a little bit adorable?” I ask this knowing he hates kids even more than the word adorable. He looks like he’s tempted to punch me, but then he always looks ready to commit an act of violence.
He was, in my opinion, irrationally livid when he found out we’d be sharing the cafeteria with the freshmen. Last year a group of concerned parents complained that their kids didn’t have time to eat, so this year instead of four lunch periods—one for each grade—we have two. Longer lunches, yeah, but twice as crowded, and for people who actually eat school food, now half their time’s spent in line.
We were told that putting the freshmen and seniors in the same lunch period was purely a numerical decision. We were the smallest class; the freshmen were the biggest. A few days into the semester I started to suspect a more deviously brilliant plan.
The cafeteria was chaos. Freshmen were running around like kindergartners. Worse maybe, because even kindergartners know to stay in their seats and not write on their tables in ketchup and pull each other’s hair. It didn’t take long for unrest to rise among the seniors. We all wanted sanctity restored, but the faculty just stood there looking traumatized.
Naturally it was Charlie who confronted them. He Terminator-marched to a table that was having some kind of green bean launching competition, and told them to sit down and shut the fuck up. As they looked up at him with fear and awe, they reminded me of a cage full of big-eyed, terrified mice, and I know exactly what that looks like.
My career as a pet store associate lasted less than a day. I got to work early, stoked and ready to play with dogs—I never got to have one, since my mom’s allergic to every type of fur—but I soon found out my job was to clean up shit. The liquidy shit of anxious animals. I did my job, then removed a couple of the sadder puppies and rolled around on the floor with them to cheer them up.
I got yelled at by the manager—an old man who looked a lot like Santa Claus, only his beard smelled like cat pee. He ordered me to clean up more shit, this time from a pissed-off cockatiel that clawed and cursed me.
All in all, my day was going okay till a guy came in and asked me for a mouse—a nice plump one. I thought that was weird, then he added, “It’s for my boa constrictor.” I’d only been working there for, like, five hours at that point, but I already felt responsible for the collection of smelly, caged animals in my care, and these were the smallest of all. Santa told me they were in the glass case in the storeroom, and sent me off with the awful task of deciding which one was going to die.
When I opened the lid, a hundred mice with huge round eyes stared up at me. I stuck in my hand, grabbed a little white one. Cute and trusting with tiny ears. I held him for maybe a minute before I stuck him back in the case and watched him burrow under all the others.
What happened next was like a time warp where you’d swear you didn’t do it—or at least you didn’t plan to do it. But I guess sometimes, without thinking, you find yourself tilting over glass cases full of mice. One interesting fact: scared mice are fast.