"Have you seen the new kid?"
I looked to my best friend, Ashton, over my Nutella sandwich.
"New kid?"
He nodded, "Yeah. Some kid just transferred into our class. Apparently you can't miss him."
"You can't," Our friend, Luke, said, "he's got this insane bright green hair."
"I think it looks cool." Ashton argued.
"Is green hair even allowed in the dress code?" I asked.
"Of course not," Luke's friend, Calum, said as he sat down, "Why? Are you thinking of getting a new look?"
I rolled my eyes, "We we're talking about the new kid. He's the one with the green hair."
"Good, green wouldn't suit you anyway. Better to stick with brown."
I resisted the urge to slap him for his comment by letting my eyes roam the cafeteria for any sight of green hair. After a minute of searching, they landed on a mop of messy, but somehow stylish, fringe rumpled atop a pale boy's head. I was genuinely surprised to see him sitting alone at a table across the room. Usually all the whores and jocks would be all over him by now, trying to induct him into their cult.
"Do you know his name? Maybe we can ask him to sit with us." I suggested.
Luke scoffed, "His name is Michael Clifford, and I'm pretty sure he prefers to sit alone."
Did Calum just flinch?
"Why do you say that?" Ashton finally spoke up again, also staring at the new boy- Michael.
"He made it pretty clear in bio that anyone who tried to be his lab partner would end up in some form of pain."
I almost laughed, "What does he think he is? Some kind of punk rocker? He looks like some colorful teddy bear you would get from Build-a-Bear."
"The only colorful thing about him is his hair," Calum deadpanned, "and even that will probably be changed to a reasonable color within a week."
I stuck my tongue out at him and he rolled his eyes in return. The two of us had never really gotten along well. And I probably didn't improve our relationship when I asked why he wasn't using chopsticks to eat his noodles when we first met. He didn't think it was very funny, and it turns out he's not even Asian. I will not be blamed for my mistake.
"I don't know," Luke mused as he ate his peanut butter and jelly, "he seems like the type who will get what he wants even it means serious punishments."
"He looks like he wants some pizza even if it means serious stomach pain later." Ashton retorted as Michael scarfed down his fourth slice of pizza in the past five minutes.
"I thought I loved pizza." Luke marveled.
"You love pizza," Calum said, "he worships pizza."
A few minutes passed in silence until Ashton finally spoke, "So if there's rain gods and cat gods and wheat gods, do you think there's a pizza god?"
~
It was a few hours later until I saw the green haired boy again. It was math class and the teacher had us lined up on the wall so she could place us in our seats going back in rows in alphabetical order. As she called names off her roster I zoned out, but only for a minute though, because suddenly the teacher called "Clifford, Michael" and the door swung open revealing the man himself, successfully jolting me out of my daydreams. The teacher scowled at Michael, but since it was the first day, she let his tardiness go, simply gesturing him to his seat that'd he be stuck in for the rest of the year. I hoped I'd be seated near him. Not the "I-have-an-obsessive-crush-that-rivals-my-seven-year-old-cousin's-love-for-Justin-Bieber" type of hope, more the "he-looks-kind-of-lonely-maybe-we-could-be-friends" type.
