Face the Curtain with a Bow

Three - Unditched

- So okay, I know this doesn’t sound that bad so far. But I kind of had to explain all that first before I get into what actually happened. I mentioned that sometimes a few of the guys would skip 5th hour lunch to go get high. Well, the day that this all started, that’s exactly what they were doing. And not just a few of them, all of them. And they didn’t even text me to let me know or anything.

The bell rang for 5th hour just as Scott descended the west wing stairs and into the caf. His eyes trained automatically on his friends’ lunch table in the back of the room, scanning for the familiar faces of his team. As he weaved through the other tables full of other students talking and laughing, however, he quickly saw that his table was empty. Which was weird. At least half the table always got there before Scott.

Approaching the deserted table, he took his usual seat on the other side facing out towards the rest of the students, slinging his backpack onto the table.

Even though no one was really paying any attention to him, he felt like every eye in the caf was on him.

- So I was eating lunch alone that day like a total loser. That was November 12th.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he sent Jake a text. Did Coach call a preseason meeting I didn’t know about?

Hey where are you guys?

He took his sack lunch out of his bag while waiting for a response. His mom woke up sick that morning, so he made his own lunch. He could have gotten away with packing a shitload of junk food and snacks, but he had to keep his weight down for tryouts next month. He unwrapped his food and was just about to take a bite out of his sandwich when Jake replied with Snapchat.

Huh, Scott thought as he opened the snap.

It was only set for three seconds, but it was Jake taking a selfie with Todd, Jeremy, Matt, and basically the entire team. It didn’t have a caption. Scott recognized the setting to be outside by the gym entrance, their usual smoke spot, and sure enough, he spotted a joint in between Jake’s fingers before the timer ran out.

He was about to dismiss it as whatever, before he tried to recall everyone who was in that snap and then matched them mentally to their spot at the table. Slowly, he realized that literally every single one of them had ditched him to go smoke and no one told him.

- I know I said I had all that resentment or whatever on the back burner of my mind, but eating lunch alone that day kind of pushed it to the front. I was sick of being treated like an invisible, second-class friend just because I didn’t do drugs.

He didn’t reply to Jake’s snap.

Eating his sandwich in silence, he felt like an elephant in the room. Every once in a while, someone from another table would break away from their individual conversation to gawk at Scott sitting alone. He felt like a total fucking loser. AKA, like shit.

- But you know what else pissed me off about it? That with all my friends from the team gone from lunch, I realized I had no other friends to go eat with. That’s right, none. I’m such a goddamn loser that I can’t even make friends outside the varsity team. And that’s probably what I was angry about the most that day. I was pissed about the team ditching me, obviously, but I was pissed at myself for not branching out more when I knew my friends weren’t on the same page as me.

After a while, he noticed that the same person at the same table on the adjacent side of the caf kept looking back at him. He waited for them to do it again until finally, he caught the full glimpse of their face and saw that it was Kirstie Maldonado.