The Choices We Make

Chapter 2- Second Chances and Broken Hearts

The smell of mashed potatoes and gravy wafts through the air as I push open the white double doors. The usual dingy cream walls are glossed over with a new layer of paint. Clean tables. Polished floors. The sunlight beaming through the spotless windows giving a bright and airy feel to the room.

Everything looks and feels new. Like the first signs of spring.

Such a shame it won't last that long. It reminds me of the birthday and Christmas presents I receive every year. So much love and effort placed into each calculated fold made on the wrapping paper. Each tying of the strings and centering of the bows. Just to be ripped apart and discorded. Overlooked and underappreciated.

The room is full beyond its capacity, bursting at the seams as Isla and I weave our way through the thicket of starved students. A line had reached the back of the cafeteria, and the only way to our seats was to barge our way through it.

"Look out! Bloodzilla coming through!" Isla shouts as she shoves a freshman out of the way.

"Really?"

She let out a laugh, tugging me towards one of the wooden tables situated in the middle of the room. "You know it's true."

"Yeah, yeah," I grumble, pulling out a granola bar from my bag. That was all I could stomach at the moment. The pain in my lower abdomen had increased tenfold and I was beginning to feel nauseous.

"Hey, have you seen Matt today?" Isla asks, her eyes darting around the room in search of his messy dark mane.

"Nope." I lay my head onto the table, my eyes becoming heavy. "Maybe he's in a meeting with the lacrosse team."

She mumbles under her breath. Something about keeping his side of the deal, but I'm too tired to decipher what she means.

The rest of the day goes by in a haze. I sleep through all of my classes, vaguely remembering Isla dragging me towards our history class with Mr. Maxwell; him snapping his stubby pale fingers beside my ears in an attempt to wake me up, and me waving him off while falling back into a deep sleep.

What could he do? Give me detention?

That's exactly where I am at the moment. Stuck in a classroom with the devil himself for the third time today. He's busy erasing the scribbles on the chalkboard. Tiny specks of the white dust whipping into the air, some onto his face, as his hand moves back and forth against the green paint.

"Love the new look, Mr. M," I compliment him as he returns to his desk with his powdered face, giving him the appearance of a very disfigured and hairy snowball. "Just go a little lighter on the nose and I'm sure the entire population of snowwomen would be all over you."

"And I'm supposed to listen to some impressionable teenager, who wears pants tight enough to cut off the circulation in her legs? No wonder you've been walking around like an opossum in the state of tonic immobility. Maybe that's the male population you're trying to attract."

"Humph," is the only response I can think of in the moment, and that's only because I don't know the meaning of 'tonic immobility'. But it certainly can't be a compliment.

I take my attention off the smirk residing on the old man's chubby, and whiter than usual, face and glance towards the clock, slightly croaked and perched on the wall above the chalkboard.

3:08pm.

They say time flies when you are having fun. I guess it decides to take a leisurely stroll when you're not.

I spend the rest of my detention lightly tracing a finger over the sketches littered across the wooden canvas before me. Misshaped flowers. A crooked heart with the initials 'L.K + C.H' in the center. A tornado. A sun wearing sunglasses. The words 'Diggy waz here' etched into the top left corner in blue faded ink.