Say You Won't Let Go

Wrong Doings & Wrong Words

"Don't you ever worry about turning into a banana?" Normani asks me, leaning over to the table to see my face.

"Nope. I already am a banana." I grin, taking a bite of my yellow fruit. I do a little dance in my chair, bouncing my shoulders up and down. "I'm a banana, oh na na."

"Your heart is definitely in banana." Dinah murmurs, bumping Lauren in the side. She just shrugs, her eyes glazed over. She isn't paying any attention to us.

I would giggle at Dinah's remark but my gaze is locked on Lauren. She looks so out of it today. I wonder what happened.

After Lauren left Normani's last night, we ate our milkshakes but Lauren's just melted on the counter. I helped clean it up. We played one game of war before everyone left. When I got home, I tried texting Lauren but she didn't respond.

"Yo, are you finished with your lunch, Mila?" Normani asks, wiggling her eyebrows mischievously.

I take the last bite of my banana and throw my peel into my lunch sack. "Yep, why?" I answer.

"Because now everyone is done and we all have a spoon, right?" Normani inquires the lunch table.

"Yeah?" We all, except Lauren, reply in unison.

"Oh! I have a deck of cards from Mr. Larson's class. We needed them for our study break yesterday." Ally pipes up. "We could play spoons."

"Yes! See, someone gets me." Normani beams, grinning widely. "But someone needs to not put their spoon in the middle so someone will be missing one."

"I'll keep my spoon out." I volunteer, raising my hand.

"I'm not playing." Lauren announces, her voice extra raspy from not using it. She grazes each of our faces, except mine, before looking back down at the table.

"Come on, Lauser." Dinah pleads, nudging her friend who sits between Normani and Dinah.

"Not right now, okay?" Lauren sighs, her nostrils flaring as she runs her hand through her hair.

"Fine. Fine." Dinah mutters, picking up her spoon and placing it in the middle.

Once all the spoons are in the middle, Ally clears her throat. "Everyone knows how to play, right?"

"Yes, you pass around the cards and try to make a hand of four of a kind. And when someone gets a hand of four, they can grab a spoon. Once someone grabs a spoon, anyone can. The person who doesn't have a spoon at the end loses." Dinah sums it up, shrugging. "Lets go."

"Okay, here we go." Ally deals out four cards to everyone playing randomly, putting down the stack. She then starts to pull one up and hand it to the next person.

That one card goes around everybody's hand, each checking it to see if it matches any of their cards. I take it from Ally, checking the numbers. It's a six and I have two sixes so I keep it and pull out a card I don't need and hand it to Dinah.

The game goes on, the stress getting to me. I keep getting cards that aren't sixes. I find myself not even looking at the cards, just watching the spoons. No one has grabbed one yet.

Surprisingly, we play games a lot during lunch. Lunch is very long and normally we all finish our lunches before the bell ring. Sometimes, it's just 'rock, paper, scissors'.

I hear the click of a spoon, so I immediately shoot my hand forward to grab a spoon. Normani groans when she lunges forward and there is no more spoons because everyone already grabbed one.

"Who got the hand first?" Normani asks, pouting because she lost.

"Me, of course." Dinah places her hand on the bottom of her chin, grinning giddily.