My First Dance (& Other Tales from Highschool)

In Which We Build A Pizza Tower

When springtime starts to roll around, students start getting bored. The monotony of having nothing to do and nothing coming up weighs on us. We start to get stir crazy in classes and yearn for summer to take us away to better times. That's when people try to come up with ways to have fun in school. That's when people start doing stupid things. I'm a shining example of that one.

My friends and I were sitting in the cafeteria on one of those long, boring days. This one was long and boring especially. In my classes, nothing particularly interesting had happened all day. We didn't really even do anything. The most I had to do all day was having to take notes as my teachers lectured, and even that was tedious work. Of course, because the universe hates us, time felt like it was inching forward as we sat in the cafeteria staring at our plates. I would have done anything to cure my boredom. We all would have.

"Carrie," Sienna started, desperately looking between all of us, "Vick. Syd. Guys. We have to do something. I'm dying here. Do any of you have any plans for the weekend, or something coming up? Anything. Just throw it out there. I can't handle having nothing to talk about."

"We're taking our cans to the recycling center this Saturday," Vick offered, getting stares in response, "Yeah, sorry. I guess that's really not.. Entertaining." She seemed embarrassed so I gave her a pity pat on the back.

"I wish they had games or something in here for us to do," Sydney groaned, slumping down in her seat, "Like, if this school actually cared about us, don't you think they'd give us some entertainment in here? It's so awful to sit here and stare at nothing all day. Like, come on." Just then, a brilliant idea popped into my head. Well, as you'll find out later in this chapter, it wasn't actually a brilliant idea. In fact, it was one of the worst ideas I'd ever come up with, but I thought it was brilliant at the time.

"Why don't we make our own game?" I offered, grinning.

Apparently, my friends were not on the same wavelength as I was. In fact, I think we were on opposite ones, because as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I got stares of disbelief. "What are you talking about? How would we do that?" Syd huffed.

"Like.... This!" I began to stack up our slices of pizza like a Jenga tower.

"Okay, so that might work," Sienna agreed, nodding her head, "But I don't think we have enough pizza for that. I mean, we have what? Four slices? Wait, no. Syd didn't even get lunch today. We only have three." I puffed out my cheeks, shaking my head.

"We don't have enough now, but I'm sure there will be some good folks that are willing to donate their food to our cause." That there were. It turns out that the school pizza wasn't exactly a favorite. Our own classmates were more than willing to hand it over, and even some upperclassmen joined in on the fun. Of course, there were questions asked about why we needed so much pizza, but we kept that to ourselves. We didn't need everyone trying to join in, of course.

When the stack was done, it was literally taller than me. Okay, maybe not literally, but it was still pretty big. I'd say we got around ten slices or so in there. It swayed anytime someone bumped the table and was definitely not as stable as the usual Jenga tower. In fact, we really couldn't play with it at all. Still, it'd been fun building the tower, and lunchtime was almost over by the time we finished it anyway. Things seemed like they were going perfectly fine, until they weren't.

"Girls! Why are you wasting food?!" A voice barked from behind us, leaving us all startled. We turned around to face what any student at my highschool dreaded. It was Mrs. Snider. She was the upperclassmen math teacher as well as one of the lunchroom monitors (apparently, her shift was today and nobody had warned us). She was strict, like make-the-principle-look-like-a-friend strict. You could get in trouble for showing your tank top strap under your shirt or being a minute late to her class. Nobody wanted to mess with her, and now that her anger was directed at us, my heart sunk into my stomach.

"I'm sorry-" I started, hoping that sucking up could help, "We didn't mean it. We'll-"

"We're not wasting food at all. We're going to eat it," Syd protested, cutting me off, frowning, and crossing her arms, "We're just having a little fun while we're at it." I looked over at her, bewildered, and Vick and Sienna did the same. Did she just stand up to Mrs. Snider?! We were all dead for sure!

The teacher called her bluff and crossed her arms too, looking between the four of us with malice in her eyes. "Then go on," She huffed, "Eat it. You have five minutes before the bell rings." I looked between my friends, panicked. I didn't want to get in trouble and I didn't want them to, either. Making the worst decision in my life, I picked up the entire pile and took a big bite. And then I chewed, and chewed, and chewed, until nothing but the crusts remained. My friends looked horrified. Other students were staring at us in disbelief. Mrs. Snider seemed flabbergasted and walked away with a flushed face. Before I could say anything, the bell rang, and off everyone went to next period.

Needless to say, I got sick off the pizza one period later and my mom had to come pick me up. To say she was displeased would be an understatement. I thought she was going to ground me for sure, but when we got back to the house, she just told me to do my homework and returned to her computer. I guess she thought the embarrassment of hurling in the middle of class was punishment enough. I agreed.