Early Bird | ✓

10 | dove

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Lizzy | Mario

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THE next day, Lizzy had returned into the swing of things, nestled back in the groove of routine, and she was already praying for another illness to afflict her. Yesterday was much easier—lying around all day, sleeping whenever she pleased, warm pajamas adorning her body. Now, a bucket load of homework that she missed yesterday weighed itself down on her shoulders both literally and figuratively as Lizzy was about to collapse under the burden of her backpack.

"Watch out!" someone exclaimed when she accidentally barged into him because of the bulk on her back and the exhaustion in her mind. Lizzy almost tipped over but luckily the person assisted in steadying her. Lizzy's tired eyes finally adjusted and realized that she had plowed into Reece, her fellow peer, coworker, and friend.

"Oh, hey Reece. Sorry about that," Lizzy apologized, adjusting the mass on her shoulders. She altered the balance of weight too far forward and almost tumbled headfirst into Reece but he helped her stay fixed with two stable feet on the ground. "Thanks," she told him, her hand finger-combing her curly hair nervously.

"No problem. I'd never let you fall to the floor." Reece drove his glasses further up on his nose, a blush creeping onto his cheeks. Lizzy was just about to turn around and head to her next class when he blurted, "I never see you around in school. Do you want to—I don't know—sit next to each other at lunch or something sometime?" Lizzy whirled around like an awkward ballerina, her backpack causing her to lean too far to the right. Again, Reece aided her until she found her balance.

"You want to have lunch with me?" Lizzy asked dubiously. It wasn't that she didn't like Reece; in fact, she considered him one of her good friends. It struck her odd, however, that he desired to hang out with her especially since he shared in the smarter, richer side of the school's social hierarchy. He and Lizzy belonged to two vastly different groups with only their jobs at Once and Floral linking them together.

"Uh, yeah. But only if you want to." Reece rubbed his neck sheepishly, his skin blotchy and rouge.

"Sure, why not?" Lizzy was in the mood to defy the social structure of her high school. Besides, Reece could possibly be the perfect buffer for Mateo and Teagan's eventual outburst, delaying that fight and maintaining peace for a little while longer. Reece's eyesight finally met hers (he usually avoided her gaze whenever they conversed together) and such an intense delight radiated from it that Lizzy had to take a small step backward. She didn't know that simply accepting his offer for them to enjoy lunch together would create such a reaction from him. His exhilaration was so infectious that Lizzy couldn't help but grin as well.

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The homework continued to pile on, a perpetual stack of assignments and papers wadded inside of her backpack. For a while, the clock's hands were ticking by so slowly that Lizzy wondered if lunchtime would ever arrive. Sure enough, it did and Lizzy was grateful to shove her Nike backpack into her locker and forget about her homework even if it was for only a half an hour.

Lizzy recognized Reece, a sore thumb standing awkwardly in the middle of the lunchroom, a tray in his hands, the only student unsure of where he was supposed to be. When he spotted Lizzy, relief clouded over his features and Lizzy pointed to the open rectangular table at the far end of the room, away from the obnoxious jocks in leatherman jackets and the strange, sketchy group of students that were constantly up to no good.