“OK css,” Mr. Hanson called out as the bell rang for lunch. “Remember that the rough draft of your short story is due on Monday. Have a good three-day weekend.”
Picking up my bag, I shoved my notebook and pencil case into it. “Hey, Christian, what did you bring for lunch today?” came a soft voice from my left.
Gncing at the girl, I finished zipping up my bag as I responded, “Just a tuna fish sandwich. How about you?”
“My mom packed me some hamburger steak and a chicken burger.” She said as we joined the river of students flowing through the halls and into the lunchroom.
“Sounds tasty, but are you going to be able to handle waiting in the line for the microwaves?” She always seemed hungry. Eating snacks throughout the day while still having a rge lunch. Sometimes even begging me for food during one of our csses at the end of the day. Not that you could tell that she ate so much. Victoria was skinny enough to make me want to feed her anything and everything I could get my hands on. Not that I had any money to do such a thing.
“Nah, it should be fine.”
“No, you need to heat both of those up. Neither of us wants you to get food poisoning.” Not that I had ever heard of her getting sick. Quickly checking that the school minders were looking away, we ran to the microwaves. Lucky for us, one of my friends stood at the front of the line. Just about to put his food into the microwave.
“Hey, Chris,” he said. “She need the microwave again.” What could I say? This wasn’t the first time I had had to do this.”
“Do you mind, Bret?”
“Nope.” He said as I took the two containers from Victoria’s hands. Quickly adding it next to his one, he turned the microwave on. “So, are you ready for the math test?”
“Hell no.” I said while Victoria proudly said, “Yes.”
“He says he is not while you say you are. Remind me, who has the better grades in css?”
“Christian does. Or at least he did. I think I will finally beat his score on this test.” Seeing her smile caused something in my chest to ache while her challenge brought out my competitiveness.
“We will see.” Was all I said as he held out her heated-up food. As a group, we made our way through the throngs of students to the table we typically sat at.
“So, what story did you end up writing for Mr. Hanson’s css?” I asked Bret.
“The world from a worm's point of view. It was harder than I thought it would be, given that they don’t have eyes. How about you?” He said as he took a bite out of his pizza.
“A story about a fighter in a tournament and the challenges he faced.”
“That sounds like you.” He said before turning to Victoria. “Do I even want to ask?”
“I wrote about an elf fighting a dragon over and over again until the dragon demands to know why.”
We both smacked our heads against the table upon hearing this. It was Bret that said, “You do remember that the story was supposed to be realistic, right?”
“What? That is realistic. In fact, it was based on a story my mother used to tell me as a kid.” She was always like this. Always coming up with these wild stories that were either too fantastical or too dark and saying that each were true. All of us had given up on calling her out on it. Even the teacher had given up and just graded her on everything but the content of the story.
“Hey, Chris,” Gabriel said as she passed our table. “Are you going to the competition this weekend with the team?”
“Competition?” Victoria asked.
“The local Kali academy is participating in the regional competition this year.” I said before answering, “You know my parents won't let me.”
“Did you even ask them? Do they even know how good you are compared to the rest of the academy? Seriously, when was the st time you were even taken down?”
“Last week, and they don’t care. They insist that I only fight when I have to and not for competition.”
“Last week, you mean when we were practicing takedowns, and you were the live dummy? That doesn’t count.” She turned to leave as she said, “Well, at least ask them. It would be nice to see you fight someone not from our academy.”
“How did I not know you practiced a martial art?” Victoria said through a mouthful of chicken sandwich.
I lightly thumped her head as I said, “Don’t talk with your mouth full. Also, where do you think I go two nights out of the week?”
“I thought you were hanging out with some other friends or something.”
Bret burst out ughing at that. “You think the beanpole here has any other friends than the two of us?”
“Hey,” I cried, “I have other friends.”
“Really, name three that you hang out with outside school or such?” At my ck of answer, he continued, “That’s what I thought.” He and I both knew that it wasn’t my fault I had no other friends. If my parents had their way, I wouldn’t have any friends. Just go to school, practice Kali, and practice with various weapons against the both of them.
In fact, one of the more serious fights with them had been over me wanting to go over to Victoria’s house for her birthday party. They had locked me in my room to keep me home. If only they hadn’t trained me as well as they did. I escaped through my window and stayed over at her house for the entire weekend. Multiple attempts to keep my home had failed one after another until they finally gave up on keeping me from my two friends.
A warning bell went off just as Victoria was stuffing the st of her burger into her mouth. “See you both Monday?” Bret said as he got up to head to css. Tossing the pstic bag from his lunch away.
“Yeah. Have fun on your camping trip.” I said. Victoria just waved as she chewed her overly rge bite.
Swinging my bag onto my shoulder, we walked down the hall and into Ms. Mitchel’s room. Taking our seats just as the bell rang. “Settle down, settle down.” She called out as students talked about this and that. Slowly, the chatter died down. “As you all know, we have a test today.”
A number of students groaned as she started to pass out the test. “I told you about the test st week and even gave you a couple of days in css to study and ask questions, so there is no excuse if you fail.”
As I got my test, I whispered to Victoria, “Good luck.”
“You too.” She said as we both focused on our test. I had expected the test to be retively hard, given the limits and sums, but it was disappointingly easy. I finished the test pretty early on and went back over every question to check my work. Finally shrugging and turning it in. Victoria following me up as she handed it in right after me.
Returning to my desk, I pulled a book out. It was a fiction that Victoria had lent me containing dragons and magic in the modern world. She took out the book I had lent her. At various points she ughed or snorted at whatever she read. Sometimes, I wondered just what she was thinking and how she saw the world.
