Touch: Saving Ai | ✓

2

Behind the old gymnasium, where the kids who label themselves punks and delinquents have made their base, is a small pavilion that most students don't know exist. This pavilion houses an old, white, cast-iron table and a matching set of four chairs. It's quiet and enclosed, hidden behind crumbling brick walls that are covered in crawling ivy, in the shade and safety of an old oak tree that someone keeps trimmed. I have no idea why it's there, but it's the perfect place to eat lunch without everyone looking at me like I'm something that belongs on the plate rather than holding it.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the student body would want to eat me - and if they did, it certainly wouldn't be because I look like I'd be tasty. But if we were trapped in the school and cannibalism was our last resort, I'd be the first person to end up as dead meat.

Usually when I eat here, I eat alone. The times when I don't, it's because Ryo annoyed his mother and needs to scavenge some food from me. On this day, however, the pavilion had two occupants when I arrived and neither of them was Ryo.

An unusual occurrance indeed.

The first looked up and smiled. 'Hi, Evelyn. Hope you don't mind us joining you today.'

If we were trapped in the school and cannibalism was our last resort, this would be one of the few people who wouldn't try to murder me.

There are very few genuinely nice people in the world and I'd always believed that Gwen Leganne was one of them. She treated everyone equally. Jocks. Geeks. Delinquents. Populars. Unpopulars. Even social outcasts like me. Blonde-haired, green-eyed and blessed with fine, fair features, she was the type of person who never spoke to anyone unless she had a smile. In fact, the only time I'd ever seen her without one was when I shook her hand in 7th grade and told her that she was going to die from heart failure in about fifty years time.

Twelve-year-old me wasn't very clever either.

To her credit, Gwen didn't react like most people did when my mouth bypassed my brain and blurted out their fate. She just blinked for a moment or two and then the smile was back up and she was telling me about some TV show her father watched that investigated unsolved murder mysteries. I was, and still am, not quite sure what to think.

I wouldn't call us friends exactly but it was nice to have someone other than Ryo treating me like a person instead of a plague. Where everyone usually whined and kicked up a fuss, Gwen didn't seem to mind partnering me for school projects or activities, saving me time and time again from being shoved into a group with people who loathed me, or awkwardly paired up with the teacher. Admittedly, she never volunteered for the job, but I never took it personally. Gwen rarely put herself forward for anything, but she also never said no when people nominated her instead. Whether it be captaincy, student council representation - or looking after a certain red-headed transfer student named Ai.

I'm not sure if I believe in God, but I could swear he has it out for me.

Moving my facial muscles was like trying to move a mountain range. I plastered on a smile and said, 'No, it's fine.'

There was an awkward thirty-second silence as I pulled out a chair and sat down. Of course, it was only thirty seconds so the awkwardness may have been something only I felt. I don't blurt out imminent death prophecies anymore, but I haven't quite worked out an alternative way to greet the soon-to-be-dead either. Instead I just... stared.

The next two minutes went by in silence.

Looking from me to Ai, then Ai to me, Gwen cleared her throat and took the initiative. 'Ai,' she said, speaking slowly, as all people seem to do when they encounter someone foreign, 'this is Ryo's friend, Evelyn. Evelyn, this is Ai. She's a new transfer student.'