Baghetti Jones: Can't Save Emily

Tuesday

Jones' teacher, Mrs. Sweet, was scrawling various algebraic equations on the whiteboard, asking the various students questions about how to solve them. Jones didn't really know what was going on; he had grown quite good at tuning out all the outside distractions! With all that pesky noise gone, he was able to focus on his doodling. He drew a crude picture of himself being a cool rockstar, in front of a crowd of adoring fans with his ballpoint pen with black ink. Jones liked the idea, but playing instruments was hard. He often wished his father forced him to play a cool instrument when he was younger.

"Jones?" A voice suddenly shattered his silence. He looked up to see Mrs. Sweet looking at him. Quickly scanning over the rest of the classroom, everyone was staring at him in anticipation of something.

"...what?" He asked.

"How do we solve the problem?" Mrs. Sweet pointed at the whiteboard at a problem that stated 2x-4=0. Jones stared at it, trying his best to come up with an answer! He blanked. Jones stared at the whiteboard for a bit longer, trying to make it seem like he was trying to figure it out still. Mrs. Sweet was no fool. She shot him a subtle look of, I'm disappointed, please pay attention more. He melted into his seat, slouching in a poor effort to disappear from existence. His face felt hot, his blood felt colder, and his hands felt a little shaky.

Jones looked around the room again to see if anyone was still looking at him. They weren't. However, Jones noticed something that he found kind of peculiar. He noticed a girl wearing a white t-shirt with blue denim shorts. Shorter than Jones' shorts, but not too short. She had fair skin, with a shoulder length, blonde bob with a black hairband. Jones found her kind of weird, he hadn't ever noticed her before.

Suddenly, she glanced over at him; presumably because she felt his gaze burning into the side of her face. Jones quickly acted busy, pretending to get something out of his backpack. She stopped paying him attention, and Jones began to look at her again. He determined that she had to be new. Should he say something? Would that be weird? What would he even say? All questions that he didn't have time to answer, as the shuffling of backpacks and people packing up their notebooks flooded the room. The bell rang a few seconds after. Jones jammed whatever papers he had on his desk into his backpack with the other messy, crumpled papers.

Squeezing through the exodus of students through the door, Jones caught up with the girl in the white shirt. She seemed startled for a moment, as Jones came stomping up to her from behind.

"You're new!" Jones blurted out, with a big stupid grin. She looked around for a second, and nodded.

"The names Jones. But people call me Baghetti Jones."

"Emily... why do they-" She spoke up in a soft voice, before being interrupted by Jones.

"Anyways, so where'd ya come from?"

"The east coast... I don't mean to sound rude but I have to get to my next class."

"Yeah, me too! Do you want to sit with me at lunch?"

"Oh, uh, sure."

"Cool! Enjoy your class!" Jones gripped his backpack straps and trotted off in the opposite direction Emily was headed.

A class or two later, it was finally lunch time; Jones' favorite time of the day. As per usual, Jones was the first in the lunch line to get his hands on a cheeseburger and milk. He sat at his usual concrete ledge, far away from most of the other kids. As he was sitting down, he saw Emily just entering the cafeteria area of the school. She was looking around aimlessly, when she looked his general direction. He waved her over frantically, and she began walking towards him.

She sat down on the ledge and joined Jones. She began unzipping her backpack, and took out a girly looking lunchbox.

"Cheeseburgers are my favorite." Jones said, grinning widely at her.

"Cheeseburgers are good." She replied, opening her lunchbox. There was nothing inside of it. She sighed.

"I guess my mom forgot my lunch again." She pouted, resting her head on her hands. Jones really loved cheeseburgers, but he figured he loved new friends more.

"Do you want to split my lunch?" Jones asked.

"No... it's okay, you don't have to." She politely declined.

"It's okay, my sister said that I have enough fat reserves to not starve for a long time! I don't know what that means, but it's like a superpower I guess."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course!" Jones handed her the still wrapped cheeseburger, "you eat half and then I'll eat the other half. Don't worry, I don't mind cooties."

Emily smiled, and chuckled a bit. The two sat in silence, observing all of the other kids. It was kind of interesting to watch. They all moved like ants, randomly yet with purpose. Even though Emily had been a complete stranger up until a couple hours ago, he felt like he knew her for ages. He couldn't explain it but he felt like he just connected with her. This was a shocking revelation indeed, Jones had never really interacted with a female other than his sister or teachers. It was nice though. He knew they would be good friends.