Brayden's POV
The swarm of people comes again when lunch begins, and the hallways turn into a tide. I wait on edge of the current, beside the cafeteria doors, for my friends to meet me. Kelsey and Linny break out of the river simultaneously, joining me with their lunches.
"How was the first half of your first day?" I ask them both.
"Uh, well, I spilt paint on my dress in art," Linny replies.
She glances down at her sage green dress, which now has a navy blue splatter on the waist.
"Why didn't you wash it off?" Kelsey questions.
"I was too nervous to ask the teacher if I could."
"Oh, Linny," Kelsey mumbles.
"I just want to eat," Linny states. "Can we get a table?"
She steps around me and through the cafeteria doors, stopping the instant she enters the cluttered place. All three of us scan the rows of tables. Cliques laugh together, all of them looking significantly older than me. I do see Jayda and Andreas at a table. Jayda leans her head on Andreas's shoulder while she scrolls through her phone, and their friends around them make a racket, one of them tossing a bouncy ball across the room to another group who takes videos of the exchange. Among the chaos, not a single table sits unoccupied.
"This school seems a tad overpopulated," I state.
Up from behind us, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
"Brayden."
I turn to see my cousin, Hazel, with her cream-toned backpack hanging off one shoulder. She's added dangly, beaded strawberry earrings since I last saw her this morning. They look like something she could've made during a class, and perhaps she did.
"Hazel, hello," I say.
Kelsey and Linny spin around after me, marking their first encounter with my cousin ever. Linny flinches slightly when she sees Hazel standing here, and Linny's eyes grow as she looks over Hazel, from her dark hair to the hem of her daisy-printed dress.
"Hi," Hazel says to my friends. "I'm Brayden's cousin."
Linny doesn't speak, but Kelsey responds, "Hey."
"You looking for a place to eat?" Hazel asks.
"Unsuccessfully," I answer.
"I figured. Follow me."
She starts down the hallway, and without any other options given, my friends and I trail behind her cluelessly as she takes a stairwell downward. She pushes heavy doors open into the basement of the school, the first floor. Apparently, this level comes alive at lunch, for the wide halls are embroidered with students on either side, lining the corridor that we walk down.
This has a distinct form of liveliness from that of the cafeteria, which was rough and intimidating. Down here, it's intimidating too, but not due to socially-adept cool kids, but instead because of black fishnet tights, neon hair, and unique hobbies taking place. Two friends, one with a septum piercing, and the other with a stud in her cheek, are drawing with whiteboard markers on the lockers behind them. A little farther down, a group of six kids are all attempting to deepthroat a banana. Next to them, two girls have a toaster plugged into the wall and are currently cooking a bagel in it.
At the rounded corner wall of the hall, three kids sit together. These are the ones Hazel stops at to sit down. She leans her back against the brick wall and slides down beside a curly-haired boy I remember meeting briefly at some point, then she looks up at me.
YOU ARE READING
The Good Hair Family Sitcom
Fanfiction{4 seasons and complete} Tyrus, Ambi, Muffy, and Wonah are adults now, but growing up and having families brings new kinds of challenges. Through the complications of them and their kids, their life-long friendship is the one thing they can always r...
