ℂ𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖘 𝕻𝖚𝖕𝖕𝖊𝖙

The Girls Table

He took a seat beside me, and a hushed silence fell over our group as everyone's attention shifted to the newcomer. Oddly, he remained silent, his gaze fixed on something in the distance.

His head rested in his hands, his elbows settled on the table. There was something off about him. He carried no backpack, no books, no anything. His clothes weren't tacky, his hair bland. The face he made neutral and boring. This guy seemed like the kind of person who would blend into the background. If he wasn't so clearly out of place, sitting at a table full of girls while he was singled out as the only male.

He didn't reach for food or anything of the sort, just sat there watching nothing.

Feeling the weight of curious eyes, my closest friend, Georgie, elbowed me in the ribs discreetly, and I shot her a questioning glance. She subtly nodded toward the boy, signalling that I should talk to him.

Cautiously I tapped his shoulder unsure what to expect, but he seemed distant from the world around him. Far gone in thought. Lost.

So I tried again, harder. "Hey!" I exclaimed, garnering stares from nearby tables. Still, he didn't acknowledge us. Growing impatient, I gripped his shoulder and forced him to face me.

His vacant eyes met mine, and he muttered, "What?"
The boy's voice was hoarse and unused. It made me cringe in my seat.

Once I had finally garnered his attention however the audience that had gathered lost interest and turned away. Focusing back on their own tables.

I scrutinized the boy, my eyebrows furrowing. "Why are you sitting here? This table is taken,"

My friend Jemma chiming in from the other end of the table, asked. "Are you new? We haven't seen you around."

Ignoring Jemma, the boy replied, directing his words solely at me, "I was told to sit."

Perplexed, I blinked at him. "Well, you can sit somewhere else. This is a girls only table."

He raised an indifferent eyebrow. "So?"

"So we want to talk about girl stuff without some boy eavesdropping on our conversation."

"I'm not a boy. Not really anyway. Never feel like one." He explained with an off handed shrug.

He deemed this the end of the conversation and turned away again.

"Urg.." Jemma scowled. "Just ignore him Josephine, we can still plan Liane's birthday gift, it's not like he's going to tell her our plans."

I nodded, turning away from the strange boy, refocusing on my friends and our plans.

Liane was with her family today and hadn't come to school, this gave us bountiful time to plan her surprise as she was turning seventeen in two days time.

"I have gift cards for a nail salon! We could take her out to get them done?" Makalia suggested.

Jemma raised an unimpressed eyebrow, "Which salon, because if it's for Legacy's Nailz, absolutely not, do you know how they ruined my nails the last time I went there?! They literally ripped my lunula off my Eponychium. It hurt like hell for weeks! I don't believe I've ever written a worse review in my life." She ranted, to the table of girls.

Everyone here knew what her experience with the nail salon was because when it first happened, she would not shut up about it, her finger was bandaged up and pictures of the wound were posted all over Jemma Estella's social media.

I shuddered at the thought of that much pain. Makalia feeling sheepish tucked her mousy brown hair behind her ear and mumbled an apology for the suggestion.