Letters

Lunch and a Couple Important Realizations

The rest of the weekend went by too fast and before I knew it my alarm was waking me up. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Bryce, Nathan, Mia, Bryce, football, classes, football. By now I was back to fully talking to Bryce and Nathan, and even Mia if I was in the right mood. Outwardly I felt like nothing had changed, but for some reason I felt like something had shifted imperceptibly. It was like before I had been on one track, and now I was on a slightly different one. The track was running parallel to the one I had been on previously, but I was slightly separated from my friends, caring about different things, noticing different people. I had a feeling the change was permanent and had been that way since Homecoming. Things would never be exactly the same as they were. Too much had changed.

Katherine was a whole other story. For every fake, irrelevant word that came out of Bryce's mouth, I itched to hear one of hers. Simple, comforting, caring, and real. Our only contact since Friday night had been waves in the hallway when we saw each other and afraid that we wouldn't have anything to say, I hadn't texted her. By Wednesday the itch was becoming painful.

"I can't believe Karen," Mia said, announcing her usual greeting; a complaint. "She's being so bitchy. Today in History I went to answer a question and she corrected me in front of the entire class." She slammed her tray down next to Bryce, who was playing a game on his phone. I pushed a french fry with my milk container.

"That's so stupid," Bryce agreed, sliding his phone into his pocket. I pretended not to see him give her a kiss on the cheek. "I don't know how you were ever friends with her."

I bit my lip to keep from reminding him that he asked her to homecoming and pushed another french fry off my plate. "What did you do in history?" Nathan asked from beside me.

"Stupid crap." Mia took a chip off Bryce's plate. "We're learning about Reconstruction." She paused for a second, ignoring Nathan about to chime in, and changed the conversation. "You know who else I hate? That one girl Holly is such a pot head she—,"

The conversation began to fade into a buzz. I was so sick of it. Hate this, hate that, this person did this to me. The words Katherine had said to me over a month ago came back to me. You know you could always come hang out with Amy, Macey, and I. They wouldn't mind.

"And rumor has it she stole Sophia's boyfriend—," I couldn't take it. Before I knew what was happening I had stood up, and all conversation at the table had stopped.

"Zeke? You all right man?" I heard Nathan asked.

I nodded, swallowing, and picked up my back pack and lunch tray. "Yeah I'm fine. Got to go talk to someone about something."

I knew they would talk about me as soon as I left, but if I didn't leave I was going to explode. Plus it was too late now. Trying to pretend like I didn't know the whole cafeteria was watching me, I dumped my lunch tray in the trash and walked over to where Katherine was sitting with Macey, Amy and a couple other people I didn't know.

Immediately just seeing her made me feel better. "Hey is anyone sitting here?"

Both Macey and Amy had their mouths practically gaped open in surprise, and all the other conversation at the table had stopped. Only Katherine seemed to have recovered although her face was flushed. I'm sure mine was too. "Yeah of course. What's up?"

I slid into the seat next to her and jokingly pretended to pull my hair out. "I swear to god they are killing me. If I have to spend one more second over there listening to Mia talk about all the people she hates, I think I will literally explode."

Katherine laughed and just the sound of it made me smile. "I am so sorry. That sounds horrendous."

"It truly is." For a second all the thoughts of what I wanted to say flitted out of my head and I wished that I could just talk to her about stupid things, complain about Mia and Bryce, ask her what she was reading. I shook that the thought out of my head. "Oh, but hey that's not the only reason I came over here. I wanted to talk to you about how we should go see Miriam."