Those Brunette Boys

Chapter 6 - Those Terms

Sage Dunwoody

I was in line at the cafeteria, waiting for the processed mashed potatoes to be smacked down onto my tray. The school food was absolutely disgusting. In the mornings, I would usually pack my own lunch or get something from outside, like Subway. But, since I was running extremely late, I had to skip that.

After getting my tray full of false food, I looked around the cafeteria for a place to sit. I really had no designated seating area. I sat down where there was room and that's it. My eyes skimmed across the room, searching. There was a huge blob of about 70 people taking up three of the tables. Those were all the popular people. There was a lot of them. They were right in the center of the room as if they were the base of the cafeteria. Big groups like their's made me feel uneasy and crowded.

I saw an empty table in the in the corner of the cafeteria. I began walking over there. When I was passing by the popular table, a heard my name being called out. I turned my attention behind me, seeing who it was. It was Ryder. He was motioning me to come over and sit with him with a big smile on his face.

I knitted my eyebrows together and vigorously shook my head. No way was I going to sit there, even if I were invited. I finally began to realize why I never saw the boys before. We never had any classes together and if they were with the popular people, they were in the middle of the huge glob so I wouldn't be able to see them. I knew this because after I declined his offer, he pouted and went back inside the mob of populars.

I turned around again and walked over to the table I was going to sit down on. I plopped onto the hard seat and looked at my, so called "food", in disgust. Calling that specimen a curly fry would be a disgrace to every potato ever born. I took my plastic fork in hand, and poked the soggy chicken with it. Oils squished out and I cringed. I pushed aside my tray and pulled out my phone and earbuds, deciding to listen to music because my food was inedible.

I clicked on the song AM by One Direction. Yes, I am a fan of One Direction. Don't judge me. Their music was really good and they were really good looking too. Music was a big part of my life. It helped me get though a lot of times and it understood me no matter what. I had specific taste as well. If someone random went though my playlist, they would be surprised to find One Direction and G-Eazy right next to each other.

I was lightly humming to the tune and tapping my foot against the floor. I decided to scroll through Tumblr to pass the time. I ran an anonymous blog account. It was primarily relatable posts that I came up with most of the time. I had 12K followers, which made me really happy knowing that I could bring a smile to people's faces. As I scrolled through some posts, I reblogged a photo of a fat squirrel stealing a pepperoni pizza. I captioned it, "my spirit animal."

As my eyes were focused on my phone, I didn't realize that a few particular boys had sat down with me. One of them pulled out one of my ear buds and I jolted up, snatching it away from them. If my ear buds are in, don't talk or mess with me.

"Hey!" I exclaimed. I saw that it was Ryder who had pulled it out. I rolled my eyes and smacked him in the back of the head.

"Ouch!" he whined, rubbing his head. "That's not nice to do to someone who caught you from dying." he blackmailed. That statement made me remember to ask them about the whole "incident" this morning.

"Speaking of that," I pointed. "Have you guys been telling the whole school about what happened this morning? Everyone has been looking at me weird lately and I don't know why."

Ryder and Grayson exchanged worries looks to each other. Xander shrugged and put his hands up in surrender, having no part in the situation. I folded my arms over each other and waited from an answer. I noticed that even more people were looking at my way now. I shrunk back in to my seat. I wanted all these judgmental eyes to stop looking at me and stop doing what judgmental eyes do: judge.