Grace

1. Pickle Macaroni

One year and four months later...

Jordan Emmerling plunked his lunch tray down at a crowded table next to his friend Ian. Then he sat down on the cold metal bench and let the sounds and smells of the McKinney High lunchroom roll over him: the lunch ladies shouting to each other from the kitchens, Adele crowing out her woes to the world from someone's mp3 player nearby, and the discordant buzz of hundreds of adolescent voices talking at once. The place smelled of hand sanitizer, kids who (tragically) forgot to put on deodorant that day, and fried food.

Jordan opened his carton of chocolate milk, then took a big satisfied bite of his hamburger. Immediately he made a face. Pickles. Why did they always have to put pickles on hamburgers? The things completely ruined the taste of whatever they were on. He set his burger down on his lunch tray and peeled the offending vegetables off.

"Hey, man, you gonna eat those?" Jordan's friend Ian was eyeing the discarded pickles with a ravenous gleam in his eye. He was weird that way. Teenage boys weren't picky about their food as a rule, but this guy was like a human trash compactor. He ate anything and everything, so long as it was halfway edible.

Jordan nudged his tray towards the other boy. "You can have them."

"Thanks." Ian scooped up the pickle slices and sprinkled them on top of his macaroni. Then he loaded his fork with a generous portion of both and shoveled it into his mouth.

Jordan raised his eyebrows. He could understand his friend's enormous appetite, as they were both serious soccer players and so burned large amounts of energy, but pickles and macaroni was taking things a little too far.

"Dude, how can you eat that stuff?"

"Mmf," grunted Ian. He swallowed and shoved another bite of pickle macaroni into his face.

"So were you at the game on Saturday?" asked another teammate, Adam, who was sitting on Jordan's other side.

"Yeah, it was awesome," Jordan said enthusiastically, "We beat the Bobcats 4-1 in the final half. Coach says a couple more wins like this and we could advance to State."

Adam shook his head in admiration. "Wish I had been there."

"Yeah, man where were you? Would have been an easier win if we'd had you in defense."

Adam grimaced. "Parents made me go on this church retreat. Really boring."

Jordan grunted in sympathy. "That's the worst. You're Baptist, right?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "My parents are. I'm not. I have better things to do, like, in the real world."

Jordan nodded in agreement. To him, anyone who believed in a god was a shirker who tried to escape the realities of life by pretending they believed in some old dude in the sky. Beyond that, he never thought about religion; like Adam, he had an actual life to live.

Adam rolled up his slice of pizza and took a bite out of it. "But get this: dad paid me fifty bucks to go."

Jordan looked at him incredulously. "Fifty bucks? You serious?"

"Yup. I'm gonna get a new ripstick."

Jordan was about to ask if he could come over and try it out sometime when Ian nudged him and jerked his thumb to the next table. "Hey check it out, cute girls, twelve o'clock."