Ticktock Love

[4] Can't Buy Me Group Work

Amber stabbed the stringy cheese and raised her fork up, up, until the fibrous monstrosity she'd created was higher than the top of her head. Seated at the other side of a rectangular table, Julia stopped chewing her own slice of pizza and made a disgusted face.

"Why do you hate me?"

"I just want to see how long it can get," Amber shrugged, already in the process of twirling it around the fork like spaghetti. She turned her head right, automatically looking for approval from Grace, but her usual spot was devoid of her ever-supporting presence. Grace had always been driven, there was no doubt about that, but tutoring Spanish during the lunch break was formidable even for her.

We were a week and a half into the new school year, and our first-day predictions hadn't come true. Jeffrey never slackened the rules; on the contrary, he seemed to have turned into a tyrant. I'd already been pulled aside twice, and even though nothing came out of it, every morning I took extra ten minutes just to make sure I wasn't breaking the code in any way. Still, I mostly flew under the radar, which probably said more about me than my outfits.

The braver people decided to talk back: Julia got dress-coded a few days earlier just for wearing a cartoonish t-shirt that had 'Gay Vibes' printed over a rainbow. The teacher smugly pointed to the "No political messages of any kind" section and tried to give her a written warning, but Julia argued that she was simply promoting a positive, happy outlook on life, and that there was no way he could punish her for that.

She then got both the warning and detention.

Now dressed in a monochromatic red blouse and simple blue jeans, she glanced at Amber's food experiment, ceremoniously dropped her half-eaten crust, and nudged the plate away.

"I've officially lost my appetite."

"Don't be such a baby." She then noticed me pushing my macaroni around, with such listless effort that you'd think the food was poisoned. "Really? Et tu, Brutus?"

I sighed. "It's just so... bad. Why is the cafeteria food the equivalent of slasher movies?"

"Both are horror. You just answered the question yourself."

Amber's cheese string broke off at that moment, and she dropped the fork like a microphone. The sound of the metal hitting the cheap ceramic never properly reached my ears – instead, the spacious room suddenly reverberated with laughter, and our heads immediately snapped toward the source.

Two purple bulls in football jerseys pranced into the middle of the room, their arms raised like they just won a game. Their outfits matched, but their heads didn't – one of the bulls paraded shorter, less curved horns and a shinier coat, and I immediately recognized it as the costume which had scared the bejeezus out of me ten days earlier. The other must have been our real school mascot, visibly worn-out and scruffy, like a twisted mirror image of the former one.

"Alright, everyone," Aiden stepped in front of the bulls, his grin radiant. "Are you ready?"

The overzealous crowd cheered. As soon as I realized what was happening, I surreptitiously sank into my seat to hide, Amber leaned forward in interest, and Julia lazily lifted her eyes from her phone like it didn't really concern her.

"Are they shooting a TikTok video?"

"Apparently," I replied. A familiar song started playing on Manuel's phone, and Aiden held his own one up, pointing the camera at the bulls.

Amber squealed in excitement and almost rocked her chair. "Hold me back, Liz, they're doing the Laxed Siren Beat challenge!"

My hand reached out to stop her, but I was too late – she'd already joined the crowd.