The Juliets'

It wasn't long before lunch made its way around, and the food looked just as repulsive as Isabella remembered it. A slice of pepperoni pizza spilled buckets of grease onto the cold french fries that sat beside it on her Styrofoam tray. As she stood in line, she made a mental note to herself to remember to bring her own lunch from then on. The sight of the "food" on her tray made her lose her appetite. But when she had finished paying the overly-high price for it, she realized that the taste of it was the least of her problems.

All of the tables in the cafeteria had already been occupied by assorted cliques that shared the school. In the far back, the popular kids flooded a table where they laughed and flirted with each other. Just the look of them intimidated Bella, she had always been shy. The new few tables after them were taken by different groups of what looked to be average joes, but they all seemed to know each other and she'd be way out of her comfort zone to ask if she could sit with them. She continued her inspection of the lunchroom, ultimately finding that there was no where she belonged. She sighed at the realization that this year would be exactly like her last had been.

She didn't have friends, at least outside of church. She didn't count them though, because she secretly hated all of them. It wasn't that she wasn't good looking, she knew that wasn't the case, but it was the fact that she was awful in social situations. When she did start conversations, people thought she was weird and wanted to keep their distance. She couldn't figure out for the life of her what that was.

Isabella carefully handled her tray as she made her way to the girls' bathroom at the opposite hallway of the cafeteria. Even she knew that sitting alone at lunch was social suicide, so she didn't see another option but to sit alone in a bathroom stall. The thought used to disgust her, but after years of eating alone, it didn't phase her anymore. It seemed to be the drill, just the way things were. And that was fine with her.

She pushed the door open with her back and made her way into the bathroom. She thought the handicap stall was her best choice, considering the size was much bigger and she wouldn't have to sit on the toilet while she ate. How disgusting. She balanced her lunch with one hand as she locked the door with the other.

Nearly as soon as she had made herself confortable, the sound of a slamming door made her jump in her own skin. When she heard shoes clacking on the tile floor, she chose to ignore them and continue her focus on her sloppy pizza. but when she heard the sound of whimpering, she forgot about lunch. she stooped to the ground, and saw black combat boots on the ground two stalls away from her she knew exactly who it was.

"Eve?" Isabella called out, as soon as the words escaped her mouth, the crying stopped and the only sound that was made was a soft sniffle.

"Who the hell...?" the girl began to reply, there was a crack in her voice.

"Isabella, I met you this morning." She told her. There was a blanket of silence between them for a moment, until Eve's voice rang through the room again.

"Oh. Hey." She said. Isabella wondered what the girl had been upset about, she looked like she had a pretty thick skin. Hearing her cry in the bathroom isn't what she would have expected from a girl who looked like her.

"Are you alright?" Isabella asked, there was obvious concern in her voice. Eve definatley heard it.

"I'm fine, I'm just using the bathroom. How did you know who I was?" she asked. Isabella shrugged, even though she knew Eve couldn't see her through the walls inside her stall.

"Your boots." She answered, becoming shy. She could sense that the girl found her irritating, but something about her made her feel the need to keep talking to her.

"Oh." She said. There was a long pause between the two girls, a long awkward pause. Isabella assumed that Eve was finished speaking to her, until she voice came through her ears again.

"I wasn't crying. Just so you know." She tried to convince Bella, who knew she was lying but decided to go along with it anyway.

"Alright." The only words that came out in a response, beginning yet another deafening silence. The sound of a stall door unlocking ran through Isabella's ears, followed by the farmiliar clacking sound of Eve's feet slapping the floor underneath her. When she looked down, they were directly on the other side of the door. 'What is she doing?' she wondered to herself, standing up. She abondoned her half eaten pizza on the tray.

There was a knock on the stall door. Bella unlocked it immediatley. When the door swung open slowly, Eve struck her a look that insisted she knew exactly what Isabella was doing in that stall.

"How did you know?" She asked, Eve knew exactly what this question meant.

"It takes one to know one. I've spent every lunch period since the seventh grade in a bathroom stall." She told her. Her face was a pinkish color, and the skin underneath her eyes were slightly puffy. The kind of puffy that happens when you've just got done crying. "Can I join you?" She asked.
Isabella nodded as she sat back in the spot she had been sitting earlier. Eve made herself confortable with her back against the wall directly infront of Bella.

The rest of their lunch period together was spent in silence, but it was a good silence with the occasional glances at each others smiling faces. That was until Eve took Isabella's hand out of nowhere, writing on it with a black pen she had taken out of her bag. Before she could ask what she was doing, Eve left the stall and disappeared into the hallway. Isabella tried to follow her, but she couldn't keep up. She had a phone number on her hand. Yet again, she was left dumbfounded by Eve's mystery.