Growing Pains

Chapter 9 - I had lunch with no one

L U K E 

I was not an aggressive person, not at all. Exhibit no. 1) just this morning someone had stepped on my foot with the chunkiest combat boot I had ever seen, and I had apologized. Exhibit no. 2) every other day, someone bigger than me asked me to buy them lunch, and I did, not because I was worried about their nutrition, but because I liked my teeth. A lot. Exhibit no. 3) a guy called me a fucking loser the other day, and I said, okay. I thought maybe this would hold up in court, but I wasn't too sure.

Someone tapped my shoulder.

"Are you his boyfriend?" I turned around to the person behind the voice, a nurse not a year over thirty, smiling at me with a file in her hands.

"What?" Did she really just ask me if I was Jason's boyfriend? "No. No, I'm not his boyfriend. I'm not even his friend."

I was pretty sure Jason had been the one to call me a fucking loser the other day. I was pretty sure we were not friends. I was also pretty sure I didn't have to tell her that, and that I would carry this idiotic interaction home and tuck it in bed with me tonight.

She frowned, "Oh, okay, well, Jason will be alright. He has a fractured leg and a few scratches, but he should be good in a few months."

"Fuck." The world left my mouth before I could stop it. The nurse's frown grew deeper. "Can he still play football?"

She smirked, "With a broken leg? No, I don't think so."

"Fuck." Oh my God, what was wrong with me? Fucking stop swearing!

"I'm sure he won't mind having a few months off for himself," she said, pressing the file against her chest.

"I don't think so." I really didn't. Jason's only personality trait was that he liked football. His whole life revolved around it. I suspected he had an altar in his bedroom with a football as the centerpiece. He was good at it too, second-best in the team, after Jacob, the captain. I thought of the two of them as slight variations of the same person, parallel-universe versions of each other. The similar name was the cherry on top of the cake. I hated cherries. And cake.

I had wanted chips. I had gone to the vending machine at school only to watch it swallow my dollar and spit nothing out. I had been living on an empty stomach since breakfast at 7 a.m., courtesy of today being one of those days where I bought someone else lunch instead of myself, and so these chips held more emotional value than usual.

And I really wasn't an aggressive person, but I had shaken that machine like I was. Usually, this meant me burning the calories of a Zumba class while the machine stood there, unmoved, unbothered, having swallowed my money and kept my lunch. Today, I saw it coming down for me. I wasn't the sharpest pencil in any box, but I was still considerably sharp, so of course, I stepped out of way.

Not Jason. He had been standing behind me, waiting impatiently – I was sure if I had taken a little longer, he would have slapped me in the head and told me to get lost – and the machine had come down for him instead. Correction, for his leg.

"Right," the nurse said. "You can go see him if you want."

I didn't want to go see him, but I felt like I had to. I had, after all, second-handedly broken his leg.

"Thank you." I watched her walk away and then turned around to walk into Jason's room.

He was sitting down in a hospital bed, looking angrily at the new cast on his leg. I suspected Jason did everything angrily. I once watched him fight a door like it was a person when his jacket got stuck on the handle.

"Jason," I started. Was it weird that I knew his name, but he probably didn't know mine? "I'm so sorry. I didn't see you behind me. I was just trying to get– It doesn't really matter. How are you doing?"