They were all there again, huddled together in a large mass of hulking bodies and rugged faces, each one enthralled in whatever blab piece it was today that had them eagerly squawking about like school girls.
They'd always been known as Jarell's Pack, a posse of ridiculously large, good looking boys, rarely ever straying from each other, always together, as if they sought a more efficient intimidation tactic by maintaining a significantly solid number.
There're five of them. Jarell Johnson, the Ring Leader, Anthony Calvetti, the Beta, Julian McKnight, the Newbie, Raj Anand, the Charmer, and the Mediator, my Ethaniel Pierce.
Heh, "my". That's funny. I have to laugh to keep from crying.
Especially when I see her, my best friend, Prudence, swooping in like Lady Death herself, to kill every last scenic moment of my dreams, and claw away at my heart with those splintery death traps she calls acrylic nails.
She sauntered her way to the boys' table, stopping in between Raj and Ethan, and then wiggled her way through their sides, settling into the space she'd carved between them, much to Raj's blatant annoyance—if the abrasive way he tore through his mixed greens with a fork while drilling holes into Prudence's head was anything to go by.
I slammed my plastic spork—a combination utensil of a spoon and a fork—back into the colorless mush that was supposed to pass as mashed potatoes, my hunger pulling a disappearing act.
Funny, I'd been ravenous by the time the lunch bell rang twenty minutes before, having found my Creep-O's at breakfast that morning less than fulfilling, especially after having dumped a quarter of it onto my shirt—a pleasant little transaction that ensured I wouldn't go unnoticed for the first time in my entire high school career.
Everywhere I went, there were comments about the dying cow that must've followed me into the school, and it only made me cross at myself for not risking a change of clothes back at the house, even if it meant Prue would've left me behind.
All morning long, I hadn't taken my uncle's windbreak off, and by now, I was sweating like a pig. So in just a few short hours, I'd managed to become human symbolism for two major barnyard animals.
Yee—flippin'—haw.
"Gawping like a mindless corpse at the same thing for nine years takes dedication, eh, Deity?"
I looked up to the table beside me to see Lenna Hoff, and her taller companion, Kendrick Olsen, both of whose undivided attention I'd evidently grasped. Kendrick stared for only an additional two seconds, before going back to shoving mystery meat into his eager gullet.
Both of them were of a Sitka High clique called the "Sataners," for obvious reasons. Every last student in that table was decked out in black, with sparse layers of neutrals in between.
Some of their hair defied natural hues and gravity. Spiked mohawks and mullets littered their heads. Like Kendrick's, whose own green mohawk with a rattail end was made to look like a lizard was clinging onto the shaven portions of his skull.
There wasn't a single face left un-pierced, not a one that wasn't splotched in dark layers of makeup or sporting wild colored contact lenses that gave them an utterly deranged mien.
"Hey, Venus," Lenna greeted with a nod of her own vibrantly dyed, hot pink hair, buzzed cut on one side of her head, "still on board that train to Hermit Ville?"
"My name's...Aphrodite." I couldn't fight back the cringe at the very sound of it. "But I go by Didi."
She shrugged, quick and uncommitted. "We know. It's easy hiding a face behind the colossal mass that's Prudence Livingston's head, but you aren't hard to miss when you choose lunch to show off your nerd-ridden Sheldon Cooper impersonation. It's pretty accurate—except, you know—he had friends."
"I have friends," I snapped, scowling at them from over my glasses that began slipping off in my abrupt up-turn. I shoved them back onto my nose and pushed my tray away, the force of it nearly toppling my milk onto me.
"Well, we couldn't help but notice you're communal repertoire being...a little less than stellar," said Kendrick Olsen, looking up again from his now empty tray. His voice was the stark opposite of Lenna's, poised and almost snooty. Like that of an uptown business heir from Manhattan.
"It's Wallflower's Disease, we all go through it at some point. The key is premature exposure. So you find it early, set the kid up with a few play dates with the neighbor's spawn, and voila, you're a social butterfly newly sprung from your introversion cocoon." Kendrick cupped his hands, and made a sort of blossoming motion, opening them up with an off smile and distant look on his face.
"It's like in the olden days when parents purposefully exposed their kids to chickenpox to immunize them," said Lenna, an elbow propped onto their table. "Same thing."
"I am not a wallflower." I turned to my horrid excuse of a meal to yank it back towards me, intent on making my peas my next victims.
"Then why are you sitting over here by yourself and not over there with your 'friends?' " was the pink-haired Satanist's monotone response.
Because I'd rather sit far out of the way like the loser I am, instead of crammed like a sardine in between a gang of the most un-gangliest boys I'd ever seen, where my best friend was busy cuddling up to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sucking faces, and running death trap fingernails through his silky looking hair right in front of me. Or maybe because it's NONE OF YOUR FRICKIN' BUSINESS, LENNA HOFF!
But of course, I didn't say any of those things. Never mind I'd never dream of opening up to a total stranger, but I couldn't even manage to suggest she kick rocks. As stupid as such rumors were, what if they ended up cursing me or something?
So instead, I responded with a half-shrug, dropped my spork back onto the lifeless glop of potatoes I'd assaulted, grabbed my disposable tray, and slid out from the empty side of the lunch table to dump it into the trash. I hated myself for doing it, but I couldn't keep my eyes from wandering up to the Pack's table across the room.
Each one of the boys had finished their lunches and was engrossed in small talk, Prudence was busy flipping her jet black tresses into Raj's chocolate milk, much to his apparent chagrin, a coy smile in place and her eyes as glued onto Ethan's as his were onto hers. I sighed, my shoulders sinking with the exhale, and pushed my way through the double doors, starting the early trek to History.