Caught in Between

-5-

It was the next day at school, and it was lunchtime where the three of us: Zach, Debby and I, sat in our usual booth eating the dreadful lunch our cafeteria served us. "So, did you do anything else while you were in Hawaii?" I asked Zach, trying to spark up some conversation to avoid sitting here in this awful awkward silence. Debby and Zach hadn't spoke to one another since their disagreement and as always, I was caught right in the middle.

"No, not really. We actually wanted to go visit Pearl Harbor, but they closed it on our last day there, so we were pretty bummed out about that. We did a lot of eating," he said with a grin on his face as he scooped beans into his mouth. "And their food was delicious."

"All you ever think about is food." We joked around for a bit while Debby continued to remain silent. "Oh, Debby, which language class do you take again?" I wanted her to join us, because even though she was sitting with us, it was almost as if she wasn't there. Normally, she wouldn't act this way either. Even if she got into a fight with Zach, which she did a lot, she would still talk to us, at least to me anyways.

"Spanish." Her answer was so quiet and so fast, I was about to ask her to repeat it. Debby actually wanted to be a nurse, like my mother, and she wanted to go help out in South America where thousands of people couldn't good healthcare. That was a primary reason why she wanted to learn Spanish.

"Oh, right," I said with a nervous laugh. "I've been taking Dutch for the last two years and I still can't remember anything. All I can say is: 'Hallo' which means 'hello'." It was mostly true, I couldn't remember anything else that I had learned in that class. And our language classes at our school aren't even legit ones with a teacher, we actually just sit in front of computers and learn through a language course that is paid by the school. We also got tested, but it's mostly because the teacher went online, pulled up a pre-made language test with the answers, then tested us and graded us with whatever the answers he found online.

The bell rang and Zach and I groaned. "Speaking of language class," Zach said as we all grabbed our trays. Zach also took Spanish, so Debby and him were in the same computer lab while I was stuck in a different one that kind of combined all the other people who took a little less commonly chosen languages. All three of us dumped our trays and parted as we went our separate ways to our classes.

I smiled happily as I entered my class as I saw Georgia and two of my other teammates: Chelsea and Diana. They saw me and all waved at me. I waved back as I waltzed over to my seat next to them. "Hey guys," I greeted them as I stopped right in front of them. We each gave each other a hug.

"We were just talking about Keith and Kaleb. Which one would you pick?" Chelsea asked with a giggle as she looked over to Diana who also giggled with her. They were always talking about the Korren brothers, before school, during school, after school. They were completely obsessed. "Diana thinks Keith is hotter, but I think Kaleb is a lot more charming."

"Yeah, uh.. neither." Both. I shook that thought immediately out of my head. I was not going to choose both of them and I thought that was insane of me to even think for a slight moment that I would. Chelsea and Diana both looked up at me in shock and then gave me a look as if I was a senile person. Which I probably was at this point.

"Are you serious?!" Diana exclaimed as she covered her mouth with her hands. I thought she was glancing at me, but when I turned my head around, I saw the Korren brothers standing side-by-side at the door. I rolled my eyes as I went to sit down at my seat. Chelsea and Diana were whispering furiously with each other and Georgia faced me with a grin on her face.

"With them two in our class, Chelsea and Diana are going to go wild," Georgia said with a joking tone. We both rolled our eyes and then laughed. We knew that they were going to speak about them twice as much now. After the Korren brothers were finished speaking with the teacher, they both sat down in the empty two seats to the right of me.