Once

Seven

For about five whole seconds the new guy had the look on his face of someone who has just walked in on an orgy. At last he turned to Elle and spluttered out:

"Sorry - I don't think I - er - understand."

Elle shot a look at Russell, who was arching a smugly amused eyebrow at her.

"Ignore him," she said. "You'll soon learn with Russell not to take a word he says seriously."

David dropped his backpack onto a chair and said, "Nice to meet you, Russell."

"The pleasure's all mine, I'm sure," Russell said, grinning wider still.

Elle found herself wishing she hadn't brought David here. She wished she'd just sent him on his way. She loved her friends more than anything, but it wasn't fair to him to expose him to them on his very first day.

Besides, she suddenly wasn't sure she wanted them exposed to him. She was still slightly wary about him. What had happened to her this morning wasn't normal, and whether it had actually been anything to do with David or not it was impossible not to be a little on edge now that he was actually in the room with her. It was like being in a cage with a tame lion. No matter how much the handlers tell you it's completely safe, it would take a stronger constitution than Elle's to be entirely at ease.

Even so, she said to the room at large:

"Everyone, this is David. David, this is Jax, Maggie and Sellan."

Maggie and Sellan were perched up on a table by the wall, flicking through something on Maggie's phone - probably scrolling through Tumblr, which was a pastime that occupied about two thirds of their day. They both looked up briefly and Sellan gave a little wave. Maggie still had her hood up, and the phone illuminated her pale face with an eerie bluish glow. Elle hadn't seen Sellan yet that morning. He had on his olive-green beanie, and his shaggy, shoulder-length hair was poking out from below it and hanging limply down round his ears.

Jax was on the other side of the room. She was standing on a chair, carefully unpinning students' paintings from the walls; there were neat piles on some of the desks of ones that she'd already taken down and sorted. When David and Elle had come into the room she had paused, some Year 7 kid's painting of a bowl of pears dangling from her fingers and a look of expectant interest on her face.

Only now did she resume what she was doing, carefully laying the painting down among the others - but she kept a slightly watchful look on Elle and their new companion as she did so.

"Is it your first day?" Jax asked.

"Yes, that's right." David sat in a seat opposite Russell and fished a box of sandwiches out of his bag. "I just bumped into Elle here and she said it would be alright to come and eat with you guys. Oh - providing that's alright with all of you, of course."

Jax flashed him one of her genuine and incredibly sincere smiles.

"Of course it is," she said, and sounded like she meant it.

That was the thing about Jax; she was so sincere and heartfelt that she could disarm you in a second. David returned her smile and cracked open his lunchbox, taking a meditative bite out of one of his sandwiches.

"So you guys eat in here everyday?" he said.

"Usually," Elle replied. She dropped into a chair next to Russell, mostly so that he couldn't keep staring at her with that supercilious, amused look on his face.

"It's because of Jax," Russell said. "Best artist in the school, y'know."

"Stop it, Russell," said Jax, in the self-effacing way she always responded to compliments.