Bea & the Broken Record

Chapter 6: The Amazingness of Lunch Food

I took a seat at the lunch table with my tray in my hands. The only person there was Grayson who was too caught up in eating his food and texting to notice I was there.

"What girl are you talking to now?" I asked Grayson. He looked up at me and glared, keeping quiet as he went back to what he was doing. The rest of the guys were soon there all eating their amazing lunch food. Cooked peas with broccoli and some spaghetti that tasted like cardboard.

"What happened to you and Bea last night? You just disappeared after Shawn set off the fireworks," Ben mumbled with spaghetti noodles hanging out of his mouth. I always asked myself - is there ever a time when he wasn't eating?

"I took Bea home," I said with a sigh. I wasn't exactly in the mood to talk about it. Ben wiggled his eyebrows at me.

"Is sex the only thing you think of? Besides food, of course?" I asked Ben seriously. He chuckled and took a sip of his milk.

"Is being sexually attracted to this orange a bad thing?" Ben joked and held up his orange. I couldn't help but laugh. Even Quentin laughed at that.

"There's your girl, Asher," Grayson suddenly said with a sneaky smile on his face. I turned around and followed his gaze to see Bea leaning on a table in the middle of the cafeteria. She was talking to a bushy curly-headed boy that sat at the table with the rest of the Gameboy-playing boys. The smile on her face was lighting up the whole cafeteria as she talked to the boys. Her arms were moving around and she even picked up a card at one point. She glanced up and our eyes met for less than a second.

I watched her pay the boys shoulder and say what assumed was goodbye before walking towards the back of the cafeteria - where I was. At first I thought she was going to sit with us. But when she passed our table without giving us a glance, my hopes crashed and burned. With her backpack hanging low on her back and her sketch book in her hands, she pushed the doors open to go out into the courtyard, biting her lip nervously. Without even thinking about it, I walked out the doors and found her sitting against a tree with her sketch book on her lap as she doodled.

A few other students were sitting at the table out in the courtyard eating their lunches and chatting. I could only focus on those beautiful loose curls of Bea's.

"Bea?" I asked and her head snapped up. She smiled and closed her book while patting the ground beside her to get me to sit down. My eyes lingered on her hands gripping her sketch book. She was really protective over that thing.

"What's up?" She asked once I sat down. I laced my hands together and rested them on my knees.

"Nothing much... um... listen, about last night..." I trailed off, not sure what to say. I'm sorry for saying yes to eating at your house?

"If you think I'm mad or something, I'm not. Promise," she piped up. She moved herself so she was sitting Indian-style facing me.

"Why did you seem upset then?" I asked her. She bit her bottom lip again.

"Remember what I told you about my parents last night?" She asked. I nodded my head. "Well, I don't want them... I don't know... judging you," she sighed heavily and buried her face in her hands.

"Bea," I said as I pulled her hands away from her face. "Aren't we always being judged? What difference would it make if it was a classmate instead of your parents?" I knew there was a little bit of a difference, but I didn't care.

Bea pulled her wrists out of my hands. "You don't get it, Asher. A classmate would stare at you and throw lame comments at you for wearing black converses," she shook her head. "My parents would ask you why you wore them and who made you choose those type of shoes," I stared at her for a moment.