Ironclad Love

Chapter 5

After fourth period ended, Elaina quickly returned to the girls locker room and changed out of her PE uniform and back into her regular clothes before grabbing her backpack and rushing to the cafeteria lunch lines in hopes of beating the crowd.

Unfortunately, she wasn't so lucky. While she did manage to beat most of the crowd, she was still beaten by a considerable amount of people, so she still needed to wait a reasonable amount of time.

Elaina waited in the ever-long lunch line. When she got to the front, she asked for the chicken nuggets with chocolate milk as she punched in her student ID number into the punch pad.

Unfortunately for Elaina, unlike Ms. Duanos, her fifth period teacher was often out during lunch, so she could only wait outside in the hallway while eating and working.

Elaina flattened her navy blue skirt as she sat down on the floor outside of her fifth period classroom and started eating her lunch alone.

Even though this was an everyday occurrence for her, she still couldn't help but feel lonely at spending all her time in isolation while surrounded by her peers talking and laughing within their friend groups. Even though she had metal arms. She was still a human being too. Despite the constant chatter and noise surrounding her, she ate her food in lonely silence and couldn't help herself from glancing longingly around herself at all her peers.

She paused for a brief, but extended moment on Thomas who was eating his lunch from home while eagerly chatting and laughing with his friends before she caught herself and hurriedly returned to her own, school-bought lunch as she sighed sadly.

Thomas felt like someone was watching him and looked around just as Elaina got back to eating her food. As he looked around, he noticed Elaina eating all alone, and seeing her eat once again reminded him of their date the previous day and he couldn't help but blush when he again remembered her feeding him some of her yogurt parfait.

'Come to think of it, doesn't she eat alone like that everyday? Is that a school lunch? Those are like nasty,' Thomas thought to himself as he stared at Elaina.

"Oooooh. Someone got a crush?" Jason teased Thomas as he saw him looking at Elaina, "Guess that date did do wonders after all, huh?"

Thomas rolled his eyes.

"In denial?" teased Josh as the rest of Thomas' friends all started to tease him for it too.

"You guys are so annoying," Thomas said as they all laughed.

"No, we're just great friends," Peter joked, "When you fall down, we'll help you up. But only after we're done laughing of course. And maybe posting it on insta. If it's not on social media, it never happened."

"Jack*ss," Thomas said dully, but smiling slightly as he rolled his eyes again, "And this is why you can't land yourself a girlfriend."

"I can't land myself anything with you around. I'm too busy cleaning up after all your messes to even have time to do anything else."

"But speaking of girls," Josh interrupted as he glanced over at Elaina, "Let's get back on topic. Last I checked, you got the lowest score on the history quiz too, didn't you Thomas?"

"Oh shut up. You're not any better with one point more."

"Two out of five still trumps one."

Thomas rolled his eyes yet again as he sighed. He had no way to dispute the facts.

"So?"

"We did have another bet, didn't we guys?"

"Oh yeah!"

"F*cker! No, no, no, no, no. Not again!"

"Yes again!"

"Do it, do it!" Thomas' friends continued to advance the situation.

"It's your own fault you entered the bet, so you gotta do it now dumb*ss," laughed Josh, "Go ask Elaina out again."

"Hey, not again!" Laura exclaimed, "He needs to go on another date with that armless cripple?"

"Jealous?" Jason teased Laura.

"Oh shut up fat*ss!" Laura said as she pushed his hand off her shoulder.

"And let's make another bet right now too. When Thomas gets the lowest score on our third quarter finals, he'll need to date her for the rest of the fourth semester!" Todd said, trying to rile everyone up more.

"This is bullying!" Thomas exclaimed in protest at their unfair demands, "Besides, how do you even know I'll be getting the lowest score? Shouldn't it be whoever gets the lowest score plays the punishment game?"

"Of course, but we all know it's going to be you," Josh laughed, "It is every time."

"Yeah, like literally every single time," Jason said.

"Better study hard if you don't want to wind up last again!" Todd taunted.

"Even just one percent less is still less. Remember that," Josh said as Thomas performed yet another perfectly executed eye roll.

"How the hell am I even friends with you guys?" Peter questioned from the sidelines, sighing as he finished packing up his lunch, "It still confused me to this day."

"Well, putting aside that optic for now, Thomas here still has a girl to ask out!"

"Hurry up man. Better do it fast!"

"Are we really making him go through with this?" Laura protested. "He already went out with that cripple once. Isn't that enough?"

"Not for us!"

"Fine," Thomas said, "I'll do it tomorrow then."

"Today!"

"I said I'll do it tomorrow. Deal with it," Thomas said seriously, causing his friends to back off, realizing they had gone too far.

"Alright then, tomorrow," they conceded as they apologized for how irritating they knew they had been just moments before.

"You really going to do it then?" Laura asked, her eyebrow raised.

"A bet's a bet."

"Well then, good luck," Laura said sarcastically, clearly annoyed as she packed up her lunch.

Thomas couldn't help but glance over at Elaina again as he packed up his lunch.

When the bell signifying the end of lunch rang, Thomas quickly ran up to Laura and grabbed her arm.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"So about before, it's just one bet. Why are you so p*ssed?"

"I'm not," Laura obviously lied.

"Okay then... So hey, I was wondering if you could help me study for our Q3 finals so I don't end up losing this dumb bet again?" Thomas asked Laura, near pleading, as well as looking for an excuse to spend more time with her.

Laura rolled her eyes at him.

"Go find someone else. I'll be busy studying for mine. Go ask Peter or someone. He always helps you out, doesn't he?" Laura scoffed at Thomas as she walked away.

"Ugh," Thomas sighed as he dejectedly walked to his fifth period class.

Thomas made it through his fifth and sixth period classes with little trouble, but any information he was supposed to learn was completely lost on him.