Chex Mix

It’s lunch time and I’ve left my usual cafeteria table where I have some semi-friends that never come over, but I talk to at school because it’d be lonely without snotty girls who don’t like you and you don’t like back and so I’m just hanging around in the girl’s bathroom, drying off Abraham Lincoln’s face. One of my ‘friends’ named Jenny, who looks a lot like the rest of the girls at the table so I can’t really be sure if it was Jenny, decided to make fun of me studying all the time, even at lunch, and decided to slop some applesauce right on the picture of Abraham Lincoln in my history text book that I bought off Amazon for 100 bucks, so I'm a little angry at her. Needless to say, I stormed out, JennyandAshleyandSammyandAlly behind me, laughing. And then I wiped off the applesauce with a damp paper towel and am now holding the book under one of those little hand dryers in the girl's bathroom.

I sigh one of those ‘Ananda, you really need to get better friends’ sighs and look up at the ceiling that’s riddled with pencils that have been stuck through the ceiling tiles and florescent lights with dead winged insects. And then I start looking through my backpack for my carrot sticks. I hope I didn’t leave them at the table, that would really suck—

Found ‘em.

And then I’m crunching on some carrots and tapping my feet to entertain myself while my book dries off.

I wonder if carrots really help with eyesight. If they do, I’m gonna eat carrots more often so I don’t have to wear my glasses anymore. But I once heard that carrots turn your pee orange. Or maybe that’s asparagus and green pee—

My head whips over to the doorway when another girl enters the bathroom. She doesn’t seem to know I’m here because she’s closing her eyes and leaning up against the door. She looks oddly familiar too. I wonder why…

She opens her eyes and I realize she was in the nurse’s office. She’s the girl who wants to be healthy.

I offer up a small smile and she smiles back a little, but then remembers that she’s popular (she has that look about her) and then goes into one of the stalls.

Now, I hate being in a bathroom and listening to people pee because it kind of grosses me out and yet at the same time makes me listen harder, so I notice that she isn’t peeing, rather… doing nothing. Nothing at all.

Is she crying or something? Or maybe she’s sticking her fingers down her throat so she can puke up her lunch? I know that JennyandAshleyandSammyandAlly do that sometimes when I’ve been in the bathroom with them. It never seems to work though because they still think they’re fat.

“Are you okay?” I ask quietly, almost so quietly that I’m sure she didn’t hear it.

And then it gets really loud.

Like, seriously earsplitting loud.

So much that I drop my book and almost drop my carrot sticks.

The fire alarms are going off, beating around my brain and then fading and then coming back.

I didn’t know we were having a drill today.

The girl comes out of the bathroom stall and looks at me questioningly.

I shrug and yell, “Probably a drill.”

She shrugs back and sits down with her back against the wall between the sinks and the stalls.

For a while I think about evacuating with the others, but it’s still winter and I left my jacket in my locker so it wouldn’t be that pleasant. Besides, nothing bad can happen if it’s an imaginary fire.

So I sit down too on the opposite side of the bathroom and sprawl my legs out on the floor and look at my shoes until I think I hear something over the alarms.

I think the blonde girl’s saying something, but it sounds like a humming with all the loud noise. I shake my head at her.

“Dessi!” she shouts again.

Now, what could that mean—Oh! “Ananda!” I yell back.

She kind of smiles again.

And then we don’t say anything for a short while. “Carrot?” I hold out my plastic baggie with the carrot sticks in it.

Dessi looks at the bag carefully, with an immense amount of concentration and then shrugs to herself and crawls over to me and takes one of the carrots out of the bag.

“Thanks,” she says and sits beside me, nibbling on her carrot stick.

I nod.

Once again, quiet.

That is, until we hear frantic footsteps coming from down the hallway accompanied by hysterical yelling.

That doesn’t sound like a drill.

I shoot a freaked out look at Dessi and we both jump to our feet and run out of the bathroom, only to ram into someone.

Actually, some two.

I manage to hang on to the doorframe and keep my footing, but Dessi is on the floor with a brown-haired kid on top of her. He climbs off quickly and holds out his hand, “Aw, crap!”

“What the hell?” Dessi says at the same time and ignores his hand, getting up on her own.

“I didn’t see you!” The boy yelps, hopping from foot to foot.

He looks familiar too…

What?! The nurse’s office again.

And then Paulie’s right behind him.

This is too weird.

All this time Dessi has been yelling at that poor kid.

“No time for bickering,” Paulie says, pushing on the other boy’s back. “We gotta gooo.”

I follow along beside them and Dessi struts angrily behind. “What’s going on?” I ask.

“Uh… nothing,” Paulie says nervously.

I glance down at my text book and Honest Abe's applesauce face frowns.