Battle of the Captains

troublemakers

I never liked the cafeteria. I didn't think anybody did.

The cafeteria stench smacked you upon entry, pervading the overpopulated area of the school. The smell of sweaty, hungry teenagers mixed with last week's meatballs and a bunch of other foods the cafeteria lady loved to serve just wasn't appealing to me at all. Then there were the lines that went for miles, which were dreadful when you were as impatient as I was. I made it a point to bring my own lunch a few times a week but a girl could only take eating Nutella or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch for so long before she got sick of it. Apparently, dads weren't the preparing lunch types.

The loud buzzing of the students got way too loud sometimes to the point that I could barely here myself think so usually, my friends and I tried to eat outside whenever we could where there was fresh air and less noise and less cafeteria smell and less annoying people– or more specifically, Austin Collins.

Today, there were no available tables outside so my friends and I were forced to endure the cafeteria longer than usual.

I ate lunch with the rest of the cheerleaders only occasionally when it was important but I tried to avoid it as much as possible not because I didn't like them but because I already had to deal with their non-stop chatter and gossiping during after school practices. After all, we all had our own group of friends.

Elizabeth Cooper had been my best friend ever since I could remember and we had stuck together until the present time. Liz was wise beyond her years, being able to give the best advice and being able to help me think about things more objectively, but that didn't affect how we were together. Though sometimes she was more motherly than sisterly, together we would do the craziest things and talk like young teens forever and that was something I hoped would never change. Unlike a lot of friendships, ours was practically impossible to break especially since we were still interested in common things and we agreed with each other on almost anything so we barely had room to break apart. Liz was a cheerleader. When I tried out, I begged her to try out with me because I was the scared freshman who didn't think that she was capable of anything. She would have definitely been my co-captain if she didn't have other responsibilities that called for her more, not to mention the time she had to reserve for Clay.

Partners-in-crime Max and Jimmy joined our group in middle school after they played a prank on two random girls in some park one summer day who cried a river after being covered in the brightest colors of paint (don't even ask what two middle school boys were doing with paint). Without the money to make it up to us and with them obviously knowing my reputation with Austin, they followed us around waiting on our hand and foot, doing whatever we wanted. We hit off well after that.

When we got to high school, it turned out that Max and Jimmy were both good at football and they joined Austin's team. I could only pray that they didn't stop being my friend for him. I didn't like the idea of it, but if my friends really wanted to play for the football team, who was I to stop them.

Ashley sat with us at least once a week but she was really friendly and I wasn't surprised she had at least five groups of friends to attend to.

The last person added to our regular lunch group was Clay, Liz's boyfriend of almost a year who was yet another boy from Austin's football team and I pretended not to mind because I loved my best friend.

Sometimes I wondered if it bothered Austin that people close to him hung out with me because I knew that I didn't particularly like it when any of my cheerleader friends would fawn over him like he was some kind of star. It was a sad, sad thing.

I scanned the cafeteria for him, not knowing why I was doing so. When I found him, I found myself rolling my eyes. He was speaking to some pretty blonde girl who was obviously flirting with him. Poor girl. She had no idea what she wanted.