[2] Selfish Desires

2.1 - Conflicted

            I sighed and looked down at the Styrofoam lunch tray in disgust. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and I definitely wasn’t hungry. Plus, the food didn’t look appetizing at all. It looked like someone found a packet of old cheap ramen noodles lying on the street and decided to fry it up and cover it in salt, and it smelled even worse than that. Maybe everything sucked because I knew something was wrong with Jake. He was sitting alone at another table, and no matter how badly I wanted to sit with him, he said he wanted to be left alone, and so I let him be.

I turned away from Jake’s direction for a second and noticed that a boy with dirty blonde hair and green eyes sat down next to me. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No, I’m ok,” I lied. I barely knew this kid. There was no way I was going to tell him why I was sad. Even if he was trying to be nice, it wasn’t his business. It probably wasn’t even mine.

“I’m Leo…” he said, reaching out his hand.

I looked up. “Oh, I’m Jewel.”

Leo smiled, “Do you want to come sit with us? It’s not very fun sitting over here by yourself…” Leo asked as he pointed to a group of people sitting at another table. A girl with blonde hair waved at the two of us.

“Sure,” I shrugged. Leo was right; the last thing I needed to do was sit alone and wallow in my own pathetic misery. I noticed Jake and Nathan talking at the end of his table, which made me feel a little better. At least he wasn’t by himself anymore.

I followed Leo to the other table and put on my best happy face. “Hi,” I said in a shaky voice. I was nervous around new people, but these two seemed really nice so I had nothing to worry about. The blonde girl smiled at me and twisted her fork in her salad. Leo sat down beside her and across from me. He patted her on the back and rested his chin in the palms of his hands.

“This is Callie,” He told me. I nodded and looked down at everyone else who was sitting at the end of the table. Most of them wore glasses and had on some kind of video game shirt. “Great… the geek’s table…” I thought, and then realized how much of a douche I was for even thinking that. At the other end were the nerds, who were discussing last night’s calculus homework and quizzing each other on the test they were going to have next week.

“I’ll be right back,” Leo smiled.

“You better be,” Callie winked at him. I wondered if they were dating, since they seemed to flirt a lot. They were either dating, about to date, or just really good friends. They were in the “Phoenix” stage. Ugh, why can’t I stop thinking about that?

Callie pulled a pack of Oreo cookies out of her purple lunchbox. “What’s with Jake? He looks depressed,” she asked.

I looked up. “Oh…I don’t know if he wants me to tell you…” She looked confused, but then the smile came back on her face.

“Jake’s like a brother… sort of,” she laughed, “Well we used to be friends but we don’t have any classes together anymore. I had to get into these special honors programs and now school is awful.”

“Honors programs aren’t too bad, are they?” I pretended to be smart since Sunset Christian was such a prestigious school.

“Mr. Dean’s class is nearly impossible,” Callie explained, “He’s my calculus teacher and I don’t even understand how to find the volume of a bullet yet. You probably had calculus last year, maybe you could help.” She reached behind into her book bag and sifted through some folders.

“Gulp…” I thought. I’m still in Algebra II. I don’t even know what a derivative is. I was an A and B student at Andrews High but this stuff is ridiculous. How was I supposed to pretend to know this stuff already?