“I don’t think so, the spaghetti is the best thing to get,” Hannah said.
Being sure to avoid the veggie wrap, burgers, and spaghetti, I picked up a foil wrapped baked potato and loaded it with toppings.
Viper looked at my lunch. “Are the potatoes any good?”
“I enjoy them,” I said keeping my eyes straight forward. I feared what the other three might do to me if I made direct eye contact with him.
“Works for me,” he said. He picked up a potato and put it on his plate, too.
I delighted in the shocked expressions on the girls’ faces. Their pride in the food selections they stood behind wavered.
I couldn’t help but smile when I paid for my lunch and I walked toward an empty table. I glanced at him and noticed he was following me. Emily and her gang hurried to the table that they usually sat at and put their trays down. Luckily it was far enough away from my table that I felt safe to take a seat.
I watched Viper try and figure out what to do. He opened his mouth to say something just when Emily shouted across the cafeteria.
“Hey, Viper,” she said. “Come sit over here; there’s an open spot.”
He looked from them to me. I raised my eyebrows. I was shocked that the situation was proving to be such a dilemma for him.
“No, that’s okay,” he said. “I’ll sit here with Emma.”
And he sat down. Right next to me. Just like it was nothing. As if it were something everyone did all the time. The thing was, it wasn’t. No one had sat with me during lunch since… Well, let’s just say it had been a very long time.
I sat there staring at him. My eyes were so wide they were probably in danger of popping out of my head.
“What are you doing?” I said through my teeth.
He looked up at me from the baked potato he was smashing with his fork. He gave me a questioning look.
“What do you mean?”
I couldn’t believe I was about to ask it, but I did: “Why are you sitting with me?”
Viper put his fork down and looked straight in my eyes. “Because I want to,” he said slowly and with emphasis on each word. “Why? Is it against the rules or something?”
“Yeah,” I said. “If you haven’t noticed, people don’t sit with me during lunch. Ever.”
“So it’s a custom of yours to sit alone?”
I continued to look at him over my untouched baked potato. “You know, when the most popular girl in school asks a guy to sit with her, he usually does.”
“Well, now’s a good time to break tradition, don’t you think?” he said. “Are you going to eat all that cheese? I didn’t get enough while I was over there.”
“No, really, Viper.” I ignored his cheese comment and continued. “Why are you doing this?”
I was starting to become extremely concerned for his reputation. Though, looking the way he did, there really wasn’t a need to bother.
“What are you doing sitting with me?”
“Okay,” he said, putting his fork down again. “You really want to know why?”
I was taken aback by the serious expression on his face, but I nodded.
“It’s because you seem like a really cool person.”
The statement didn’t do my shock any good. I opened my mouth to say something, but he continued before I could say anything.
“You were the first person at this school that talked to me before you knew what I even looked like. You talked to me without knowing anything about me. You didn’t ask me to answer a million stupid questions; actually, I think I was the one that asked
you
all of the questions. I didn’t have to be someone for you to give me the time of day.”
I started turning red again, but he kept going.
“When I talked to you, I didn’t feel like you were talking to me because of the way I looked. That never happens to me and I was glad when I felt that way around you. That,
Emmeline
, is why I’m sitting with you.”
I listened and wondered why he was being so straightforward with me. But it was easy to recall that I more or less had asked for it.
The look on his face softened and he smiled. “So, about that cheese…”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I said.
Now he looked amused. “Because you asked.”
Looking at him was like looking at the sun. I felt like if I didn’t keep averting my eyes he was going to damage my sight in some way.
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Do you want me to leave?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that—”
“Then we’re okay here?”
The prospect of a friend seemed so foreign to me. It also became more appealing as the seconds passed.
I slowly nodded my head and smiled at him. “Yeah, we’re okay.”
He smiled, too. His smile made his eyes seem deeper blue. If I weren’t careful I was sure I’d fall into them.
“Good.” He took a bite of his potato. “So is your hair naturally that red? It’s not often you come across a person with such red hair and green eyes.”
I blinked and turned a shade of pink. “Oh. Yes, it’s natural,” I twirled a finger around a strand that had fallen over my shoulder.
I sprinkled some of the cheese on my potato. I handed the rest of it to Viper.
“Thanks,” he said.
He took the cup and dumped the rest of it onto his mangled potato remains.
“It’s really pretty, you know.” He looked up at me again. “Your hair,” he clarified without me having to ask. “Most gingers have reddish-orange hair. Yours is … really red. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s always been that way,” I said. “You’d think it would have been lighter when I was younger, but my mom has so much documented evidence that it was just as dark red.”
Viper nodded while he continued to stare at my hair.
I cleared my throat. “So what class do you have next?”
“Biology,” he said, looking at his schedule. “Happen to know what lab I need to go to for it?”
I looked at him. “I have biology next, too.”
He smiled. “I guess I can just follow you then.”
* * *
“Good afternoon, class.”
Mr. Night began every class with that assumption, but for once it was true for me; the cutest guy in our class was sitting right next to me. The down part was that the three most egoistical girls had swallowed up the desks around him.
The front of the classroom was made up of desks, and the back was where the lab stations and equipment were. We always sat in the desks unless there were lab experiments to be done. I was sitting in the second desk from the back and Viper was in the desk to my left. One second after we sat down, Emily came in and sat on his left, Hannah grabbed the seat in front of him, and Madison was stuck with the seat behind him. All three of them were glaring at me, though I really couldn’t have cared less.
“Today,” Mr. Night said, “we are dissecting frogs. Just like I promised.”
There were scattered bursts of clapping and groans. I was still unsure of my feelings toward the experiment. I was terrified and fascinated at the same time.
Everyone started getting up and moving toward the lab tables in the back of the room.
“So grab a lab partner and your usual lab gear,” he said.
At the mention of a lab partner Emily grabbed one of Viper’s arms and put her arm around it. Madison did the same thing with his other arm.
“Hey, Viper, why don’t you be my lab partner?” Emily said. “We can get to know each other a little better while we dissect the worms.”
“Duh, Emily,” Hannah said. “We’re dissecting
frogs
. I think Viper should be my lab partner. I obviously already listen better than you do.”
“No,” Madison said, “Viper wants to be with me, don’t you, Viper?”
At that the three of them started arguing with each other. Each tried to convince Viper to be her partner so loudly and with such enthusiasm that I was amazed Mr. Night let it go on for so long before he called Viper to the front. He told him he wanted to catch him up on what had been going on in class. When Viper left, Emily, Hannah, and Madison continued their dispute and everyone around them, of course, stopped whatever they were doing to watch.
When Mr. Night was done talking to Viper, they were still going at it so I was sure he felt that he had no choice but to do something about it.
“Okay, since partnering up is turning out to be such a problem, I’ll do it for you,” he said to the class. He started naming everyone in pairs.
I was all right with this until he actually got to my partner.
“…Jacob and Madison, Emily and Emma, Hannah and Viper. Now gather your things and take your places at the lab stations.”
Hannah squealed and jumped to Viper’s side. I, however, was in total shock. Mr. Night had put me with the one person in the room that I could not stand in the slightest.
“Damn, this is going to put her way ahead,” Emily hadn’t taken her eyes off Hannah and Viper since the lab partners had been announced. I was trying to figure out what bad karma I had put out into the world to be the one stuck next to her.
“Oh God, please just get over it, Emily,” I said. I was not in the mood to deal with her “problems.” “I really don’t want to have to hear about it all class period.”
Emily glared at me for a second but then put a smile on her face. The change happened so fast I thought I would get whiplash just from watching it.
“So you sat with Viper at lunch, I’m sure you two were able to talk quite a bit.”
“I … I guess we did,” I said.
“Out of me, Hannah, and Madison, who do you think Viper would want to go out with?”
I looked at her, trying to figure out if she had really just asked me that.
“Now be truthful; I’m sure Madison and Hannah can handle the reality of the situation,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But can you?”
Emily looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Honestly. I don’t think he would go for any of you,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Really? And what makes you say that?”
“Just his personality,” I said with a shrug.
I took my scalpel and looked down at our frog. After a moment’s hesitation I made the first slit. The action made me gag slightly.
“And who
do
you think he would go for?” she said, refusing to drop the subject. “You?”
I lost my grip on the scalpel and nearly dropped it on the floor at the suggestion. I frowned at the crooked third slit but was glad that was all the damage caused.
“Is that what you think?” she said again. “That he would rather be with the most disliked girl in school, rather than the most popular?”
“Excuse me?” I took offense at that statement.
I put down my scalpel for good measure.
“I am not
disliked
,” I said through my teeth. “And that’s not what I’m saying—”
“Good because I can assure you that is not the case at all. I can hook any guy I want. I suggest you step away from him before he finds out exactly why you’re such a total reject.”
The nerves on my back twitched. The threat actually shut me up for a moment. Emily. Well, Emily had stuff on me. I suppose she wasn’t the only one that could provide the information, but if there were one person from whom I didn’t want it to reach Viper’s ears, it was her. I knew that he could find out at any moment since there wasn’t a person in our class that didn’t know. Not after Emily’s public service announcement last year, but I certainly didn’t want to speed the process along.
“There is no way he would choose you over me—” she said.
“Oh.” I couldn’t help myself. “Right. Because he would totally go for a painted up, overly tanned, dumb, bleached blond like you.”
For a blissful moment I thought my words had turned her to stone. I was immediately disappointed when I saw the color rising in her face.
“I do NOT bleach my hair. All of this,” she gathered all of the hair draped over her left shoulder and tossed it back, “is natural.”
“Ha,” I said. “Natural? Yeah, that hair is as natural as your personality.”
Emily slammed her scalpel down and grabbed my right arm. “That’s it,” she said. “Listen, bitch—”
But I never did find out what she was planning on saying after that. At that moment in time Emily made two mistakes. The second her acrylic nails touched my arm and the word “bitch” slithered out from between her glossed lips, I lost it.
There were a lot of things in the world that made me mad, but being called a bitch and being touched by someone that didn’t have my permission were at the top of the list. The instant she committed both crimes, her made-up face met my un-manicured fist.
Mr. Night was cool and was quite possibly one of my favorite teachers, but if there was one thing he didn’t do, it was pick favorites. I was in the front office waiting to meet with the principal faster than I could say, “She started it.” So there I was, sitting in a chair that I was admittedly quite familiar with while Principal Woodson had a talk with my and Emily’s mothers.
Emily was in the nurse’s office. The only thing that was going through my head was the hope that her perfect nose was broken. All I saw after the unfortunate incident was a lot of blood, but the nose can bleed quite a bit without being too damaged. I wasn’t exactly sure how much harm I’d caused. However, I did put all my weight into the punch so if anything it should at least have been fractured.
I looked down at the finger I’d slammed in my locker earlier, peeling off the pink bandage that circled it. I was worried that I had smashed my finger so hard that my fingernail was in danger of falling off. Under the bandage there was a small stain of blood on the gauze, but my finger and nail looked normal. Too normal, actually. It wasn’t so much as red or swollen. It looked like nothing had happened to it.
“Those are some nice anger management skills you have.”
I turned my head to see Viper leaning against the doorframe. He had a bathroom hall pass in his hand. The smirk on his face told me that he thought the situation was nothing but amusing.
I gave him a shaky smile. “Well, after one and a half years at this school, I’m surprised I didn’t do any worse.”
“So the punching is a daily routine?”
“Only for those that really deserve it,” I said.
“I certainly hope so,” he said. “What did she say that made you so mad?”