A Cringy, Cheesy, Cliché

Chapter 2

         Lunch is predominantly divided into three sides: the popular, the middle-class, and the band kids. You might go ahead and think what a small umbrella to fit under, but no, everybody falls under one. Thespian? You sit with the band kids. You drive to school as a junior? Okay hotstuff go and dine with the rest of your entitled kind. Hadley Davis and friends? You guys are just too cool for social cliques: middle-class. It's an unspoken rule where you sit at lunch and who can mingle with who. Popular kids can talk to anyone down the tier list, middle-class their own kind and below, and band kids just keep to themselves. So you can only imagine my anxiety having to break that rule and talk to Silas Black. A guy higher up the totem pole than me.

         He was eating with the lacrosse team, Andrew, his best mate, being one of them.

         "Hey."

         None of them were looking at me. Maybe it's not too late to back out. I throw a quick glance to Dani and Freddie and they shoot one back that says 'go'.

         I raise my voice a little higher. "Hey."

         This time a few of them look at me. When I said higher I don't quite remember hearing my own voice to decide if it was louder-higher or an octave higher.

         Andrew speaks up. "What do you want?"

         At the sound of his friend breaking conversation with him, Silas looks up to where Andrew's attention has been redirected. His brown eyes boring into my own and his expression unamused. And at the sound of the top two boys looking at me, I have achieved grasping all of the table's attention.

         "Silas, could I interview you for an English project?" It was the only sentence I could formulate without sounding like a loser. 'Hey Silas, could you please detail me about all of your relationships and how you managed to swoon all of your past girlfriends?'  Yeah, I don't want to sit with the band kids. I already stopped playing the saxophone back in fifth grade.

         He quirks an eyebrow in interest. "What on?"

         It was never in my head that this conversation would ever extend this long. In my thought of script he was supposed to say 'no,' but now what?

         "Ms. Chapman is making us write about highschool sweethearts and who a better candidate to get inspiration from than you!" 

         Half of the table is no longer listening anymore while the other half is anticipating his response. Me? I'm just trying to disassociate long enough so that when I get home I can skip this whole embarrassing ordeal and start relearning the sax.

         Andrew is first to break the silence with a stifling laugh that spreads onto Silas's lips breaking into a smile.

         "No."

         "Okay well thank you for your time anyways." I speedily make haste and sit back down where I belong (for now).

         "So?" Dani is waiting for me to tell her all the excruciating details (or lack thereof) of how Silas Black turned me down in front of all his friends. I look to see if Freddie will also tune in to hear my story but she's more interested in finishing french braiding her girlfriend's hair than my reply.

         "It went exactly how you thought it would! Silas told me how he's been waiting for me his whole life and even flexed his hand in desire of mine like Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice."

         Dani gives me a shrug that says 'who would've thought?'  Except I did. I had a preconceived thought and That's So Raven déjà-vu moment already explicitly giving me the run-by-run detail of my forthcoming rejection. I doubt I'll be able to sleep peacefully tonight.

         Finally home I jump in my covers and play whatever chick flick that appears first on Netflix. She's All That begins and I debate plagiarizing the plot of the movie into my essay: Silas Black makes the bet he can make Hadley Davis fall in love and what was a dare slowly becomes the truth.

         I shudder in cringe. Yeah nevermind. Then I turn off the TV.