Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter Six: Keeping Waltham Weird

“Alabama?” Colonel demanded, obviously insulted. “Tomatoes, you say you’re from the south?”

“A southern state,” I corrected, pursing my lips up at him. “No one in Florida has an accent, unless they’re in the Everglades, and I’ve been there a grand total of twice. I’m from the suburbs.”

“Don’t you be blamin’ geography for this,” he told me. “Geography ain’t done nothin’ to you.”

“Mississippi?” I guessed instead of responding.

“You make my heart break to pieces, Tomatoes. Shattered like a baseball through a window.”

“Why can’t you just tell me?” I moaned. “I suck at guessing. I think you’ve figured that out by now.”

If he hadn’t, I would be a little concerned—seeing as I had been trying to place his accent since the beginning of second period, it was on the verge of two hours of just random guessing by now. He just kept sighing and shaking his head as I guessed incorrectly each and every time, and then going the extra mile to ridicule my guesses. He went on for at least twenty minutes after I guessed Alabama, so wherever he was from, being mistaken for someone from Alabama was something just short of calling his mother a heifer. Not that I would anyway, and that was not just because I’m not capable of being so mean, but also because Colonel already confided in me that his father owned this gun shop on the other side of town, and no matter what state he was from, I knew about southern boys and their guns.

That southern boy was looking at me now with an amused smirk as we made our way through the halls, dodging students scattered in every which way possible as we made a trek to where I was assuming the cafeteria was, since Colonel hadn’t told me I was going in the wrong direction yet. My first three classes had gone without a hitch, but that was probably because Colonel was in all three of them and he had this uncanny ability to get us in trouble, look at the teacher scolding us and turn on the charm, and suddenly all was forgotten and forgiven, which I had a feeling was really going to come in handy in the future. Although I had known the boy for less than three hours, we got along like peas and carrots.

“You’re sure it’s not Alabama?” I asked him, and he narrowed his eyes at me before I grinned. “Come to think of it, you do kind of have a Forrest Gump accent. . .”

“Don’t you be insultin’ my intelligence now, Tomatoes,” he scolded me as kindly as he shall. “I may wear me a pair of cowboy boots and I might be able to wrestle a boar, but this Alabama talk has got to stop.”

“What’s so wrong with Alabama?” I demanded. “It doesn’t seem that bad there.”

“I’m not from Alabama,” was all he said, and that was that.

I shrugged, letting it drop for now as he led me around the corner and down yet another hall before suddenly stopping at a pair of concrete double doors with no windows on them, looking like they led outside. I braced myself for the cold of the Bostonian midday in January but it didn’t come—the doors opened into an Olympic-sized cafeteria with high ceilings and maroon designs for the mascot (the hawks, which was only a small step up from my previous school’s eagles). There were about four different food lines with slightly different collections of food, and one of them looked like an ala carte. My eyes went all wide. If there was something in this world that I loved more than knee-high socks, it was an ala carte.

Colonel glanced over at me when I didn’t move, his eyebrows pushing together in confusion. “You alright over there, crazy?”

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

“What, the cafeteria? It’s actually kinda gross; have you taken a good look and these here tabletops? Crawlin’ with disease, Norma says.”

“No, not the cafeteria,” I replied, blinking out of my daze. I tilted my head to look at him. “I meant the ala carte.”