From A To Z

Chapter 1

What is the worst thing to have happened to you?
Come on, be honest.
Don't hold back.
You don't feel like sharing? You don't know me well enough?
Ok, I'll go first.
My name is Zoe Wallis.
On that Monday last year, I was sixteen and oblivious to the fact that my life was about to change.

It was May 3, a day like any other in Bruler, Washington. Clear skies and temperatures in the high sixties. Spring, the season of love and hay fever. But also a Monday, the dreaded start of yet another school week. A time of tests and quizzes, barbs and burns, gossip and goons. Little did I know that by the time this month was over, nothing would ever be the same.

I was poking around the salad I had brought from home. My mom made us identical lunch boxes every day. Always something wholesome, never something I would have picked myself. It was her way of showing she cared about how I turned up. Today it was diced kale topped up with sliced apples and a sprinkling of pine nuts. I stabbed at a leaf and twirled my fork like a baton. "Don't play with your food," I heard her voice inside my head and twirled harder.

Opposite me, Marisol was slurping on some kind of a protein shake. I hadn't seen her consume solids in public ever since she got her braces. She was terrified of flashing a green smile at Victor. It wouldn't have mattered one bit if she had strands of pasta hanging from the wire, he wouldn't have noticed. All he had time for was basketball and the promise of an athletic scholarship in college.

Victor was having the lasagna and so was Cody. Both were pink-faced from doing laps outside during their free period. One of them, I couldn't say who, had showered in Axe. They were dissecting a basketball game with the kind of passion usually reserved for matters of life and death.

I was listening to them with half an ear, wondering what was keeping Sienna. My phone was face down on the table. It buzzed once and I flipped it over. 1-1-2. Sienna's text was to the point. 1-1-2. My phone's entire body was trembling with excitement.

"What's that?" Marisol tilted her head to one side, so she could see my screen. "Is Sienna texting in code now?"
I clicked the message away.
"It's not a code. 112 is the European 911."

Marisol was unimpressed. I could tell from the way she chewed on her straw, and I understood. Sienna's European play-pretend was fun in third grade, amusing in fifth, and barely tolerable in seventh. She should have grown out of it by now. Instead, she was doubling down.

"What do you mean, the European 911?" asked Victor, forgetting about his convo with Cody. He was wearing his Bobcats basketball jersey which made his shoulders look even wider. His father was Bruler's sheriff, so any reference to law enforcement and his ears perked up.

"It's the number to dial in Europe if you have an emergency," I said and pocketed my phone.
"What happens if you call 911 instead?" he asked, working his fork like a shovel.
I braved another bite from my salad. Everything in my mouth crunched. I felt like a rabbit.
"You die," snickered Cody. "Game over, bro." Cody was short but fast, which was how he made the basketball team in the first place. His voice had already matured but his mind hadn't. He still acted like a clown even if he no longer sounded the part.

Victor towered almost a head above him and whatever he put in his mouth only made him grow taller. Unlike Cody, he was considerate and responsible to a fault. Their friendship was built on the premise of opposites attract. Kind of like mine and Sienna's.

"I better go find her," I said and closed the lid on my lunch box.
High school cafeterias were like departure halls; places where no one would want to linger. The noise, for one. The crowds. But also the smell. Equal parts mop water, sweat, ketchup, and burnt grease. I would have recognized it anywhere.