Robin, Boy Virgin: Original Series

At lunch, I sat at my usual table in the cafeteria. I wished that I had money and a car: I'd have left school for lunch. Hell, if I had money and a car, I wouldn't come back to school ever again.

Harold Song came over and sat at my table. Well, our table. Harold and I are friends.

"Hey man," he said sympathetically to me. What's with that tone in his voice?? He's a virgin, too, the asshole.

Oh right, that fact about him is still his private business.

"Hey," I said tiredly.

"Dude, don't look so miserable. That which doesn't kill us only makes us stronger," Harold said. Harold enjoys the works of Nietzsche, Bach, and the Violent Femmes.

"How do you know this isn't going to kill me?"

"Because, I have good news," he said, opening up his thermos. His grandma had made him steamed flat noodles with pork. It smelled good and looked more appealing then the ham sandwich I was nibbling at.

"What's that?" I asked skeptically. What could possibly be good news?

"The herd? Is moving on," Harold said, sweeping his arm outward.

"Really?" I asked, bewildered.

"Well, they're starting to. At least, something new has come up to gossip about."

"What?" I demanded. I realize it's totally stupid and contradictory, but some dumb part of me was a little offended that they had moved on so quickly. As much as I wanted to disappear, I didn't want to be invisible to everyone. That... doesn't make sense, I realize that, but-

"Um, oh her over there." Harold pointed to the other side of the cafeteria. A new girl? An automatic gossip wild fire igniter. "She just moved here from California. People say she got kicked out of her school there over drugs," he informed me while he poked his plastic chopsticks into his thermos.

"Huh," I said, blinking. I couldn't see her well at all. All I could see was that she had brown hair and was wearing a black jacket with jeans.

"Hey. What are you looking at?" said a voice next to me. Max and his girlfriend, Clarissa, were just sitting down at our table, thus rounding out my repertoire of friends.

"The new girl," I said.

"Oh I heard she ran away from California," Clarissa said, shaking her bangs out of her eyes.

"She ran away?" I asked.

"Yeah. Isn't she like on the run from the law? She stole a car, I heard," Max said, opening his pop can. It fizzed over a little.

If I was skeptical before, I made up my mind to deliberately not believe any more gossip about this new girl. No one knew, for sure, a damn thing about her. Except maybe that she was from California. That could be true.

I managed to finish my ham sandwich and then stood up to leave Max and Clarissa to their lovey-dovey couple-y-ness and Harold to his Nietzsche book "The Gay Science".

As I walked by the popular tables, I averted my eyes, just in case. Those guys and girls took up more than one table and had, once again, shown that they had the power to change anything they freaking wanted. They'd stuck their tongue out at the conformities of the high school cafeteria and had pushed two long tables together so they could all sit with each other.

"Careful Rob. Don't trip and accidently break your hymen," Jenni said. She was not the smartest of the popular group.

"Only girls have hymens, you dumbass!" Katie-Ann giggled. They all laughed, loudly and musically, at both Jenni and me.

I take back what I said about being offended when I thought that they had moved on. I wanted nothing more then for them to just hurry up and move on and leave me alone.