Chapter 2

Throughout the day, I saw Ashley in every single one of my classes. She was my partner in Chem. She sat in front of me in Trig. She sat behind me in English. And she also sang in choir. I couldn't believe it. She was always around, and I never noticed. How did I not notice?

"Dick, I can't believe it," I said, sitting at our table and eating my food.

"Can't believe what, Chris?" he asked me, putting his fork into his mouth when he had finished talking.

"There's this girl, and I keep seeing her in every single one of my classes," I said, staring at my food. "I never even saw her before today."

Abigail's ears perked up. "A girl? What's her name?"

"Ashley," I said. "Do you know her?"

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "I met her a few years ago, and now we're friends. Did you meet her at the meet-up?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "She was outside on the balcony-" I stopped, because Abigail was looking at me with those eyes that made me slightly uncomfortable. I knew that look: She was disappointed.

"Did you not talk to other people?" she asked, sounding slightly disappointed.

"I tried to," I said. "But they ignored me whenever I tried to enter a conversation. It even happened after I came back inside. Eventually, I-" I stopped again. I sighed. "Listen, I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing you, but you need to hear this. I don't just talk to new people that I meet. For some people, it's easy, but it's not for others. And those other people? We're called introverts, and just talking to new people is a skill we don't have."

Abigail looked at me, then back at Dick. I could see the gears turning inside of her head. "So...you need time to warm up to people, is that it?" she asked me. I had to give it to her: She caught on to things very quickly.

I nodded. "Like I'm doing with Ashley, I guess..." I said grudgingly.

She smiled at me brightly. "So, you did make a new friend."

"No, I talked to somebody that wasn't you or Dick," I said. "We're not friends."

Abigail muttered something, and I swear that she had said, "Not yet."

"Well, that's a start at least," Dick said, patting my back. "Good job, Chris."

"Thanks," I muttered, focusing again on my food

"You know what?" Abigail said, standing up, and looking around. "I'm going to bring Ashley over to our table, so that way you can warm up to her more."

I was drinking some water when she said that, and I almost choked. "Wait, what?" I said, once I had managed to swallow my water. "You're joking, right?"

She just smiled at me, then turned and walked away. I turned to Dick. "She's joking, right?"

"Nope," he said. "When she has something in mind, she won't stop until she does it. It's one of the things that I love about her."

"Really?" I said, looking at him out of the side of my eyes. "That was so cheesy. Don't do that again."

"I'll try not to do that in front of you," he said, raising his hands in the air. "But I can't guarantee that it will stop."

I stared at him. He caught me staring and said, "What? I do say a lot of cheesy things. Most of the time, though, you don't listen to what I say."

"Sounds like me," I said to myself. Dick heard me, though, and he gave me a smile.

A minute later, Abigail walked back over with Ashley in tow. She was chatting with her a lot, but Ashley didn't say much. She just nodded and mainly focused on her food. She sat down, but Ashley stayed standing. "Come on, Ashley, sit down!" Abigail said. "Don't be shy."

"Mmmm... fine..." Ashley said quietly. She still had her hoodie up. She sat down at the table. "Hi, everyone..." Her voice was so quiet it was a bit hard to hear her. She had her head facing down at the table as she spoke. Somebody else sitting at the table muttered, "Why is the freak here?" It was said loud enough that everyone could hear, including Ashley. She tensed up a little bit, then she scooted further away from the other kids and closer to our small group.

"Hi," I said. I looked down at my food, trying to figure out what exactly they served me. Some days, the food was amazing. It was like the food that you would see in five star restaurants, and there were so many things that you were able to get. And on other days, the food looked like they had been scooped from the bottom of a trash can. This was one of those days.

I looked at my plate, and I studied my food. I took a bite of what appeared to be mashed potatoes and then gagged. I managed to swallow, and I immediately reached for my water. "Oh, that's just gross."

Dick turned to me. "What'd you get?"

I took a big gulp of water. "Broccoli."

"Ooh," Dick said, wincing. "That...that doesn't even make sense. How could the broccoli look like mashed potatoes?"

"You're telling me," I said, still gagging. "I absolutely hate broccoli." I took a small bite of what appeared to be nuclear waste. "Hmm...this is mashed potatoes...am I going to have stomach issues later?"

"And that's why I bring my own lunch to school," Abigail said smugly, taking out her lunch pail and pulling out a sandwich.

"Ha, ha," I said dryly. "Looks like you're the only smart person here at this table." I turned to Ashley. "What'd you get?"

Ashley took a small bite of hers. She coughed after she swallowed. She grabbed her water and drank. "Ewww..." She shook her head. A bit of her light brown hair was hanging out of her hood. It looked like it kind of glowed with the sunlight on it.

Ashley kind of brought up her head and looked at me. "Somehow I think I got something like a tomato..." she said, a disgusted look on her face. She took another drink.

"Ouch," I said. "Personally, I don't mind tomatoes that much. But that must be pretty hard for you."

Ashley nods. "It's gross..." She tried the nuclear waste. "Wow...this does taste like mashed potatoes...why does it-?"

"No idea. I just hope that when I'm gone from the school, I don't have any medical issues from this food" I took a bite of what appeared to be meat, and I spit it right out. Everybody at the table looked at me. "Sorry," I said, trying not to gag. "I...just give me a few moments." Once I had gotten the taste out of my mouth with a lot of water, I said, "I...just don't eat the meat...well, the thing that looks like meat."

Dick looked at his food. "Suddenly, I'm not hungry." He pushed the tray away from him.

"Want some of my food?" Abigail asked him.

"Sure," he said, sighing in relief. He immediately scooted right over next to her and laid his head on her shoulder. She giggled a little bit, and she put a piece of food into his mouth.

I looked at Ashley. She looked back at me. We both reached a silent agreement, and then we both quietly stood up and left the table to go sit somewhere else together. It was hard to find an empty table because there were a lot of tables occupied by students. I almost gave up when Ashley nudged my shoulder and pointed at an empty table. "How about there?"

"Sure," I said, and we both sat down. On the way over there, though, I had dumped my tray of stuff into the bin. Thankfully, none of the teachers noticed, because they'd go on about how lucky we are to be eating the food here, that the food was free, and that there were people in Africa that are starving, and that we shouldn't be wasting the food, and on, and on, and on.

Bullshit. I had to pay for this food. And if the school was really worried about people in Africa starving, then shouldn't they be donating to the Red Cross or some other organization so that they could go and help out the starving people? Because the last time I heard, they kept every single penny of the tuition that the people were paying to come here. (Wow, I went off tangent really fast)

Ashley looked at me. "That got weird quickly," she said softly. "Love is a strange thing, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said, looking over at Abigail and Dick, who had barely noticed that they had left. I turned back to Ashley, a question in my mouth. "So, uh...I have a question I want to ask you."

She tilted her head a little. "What's the question?" she asked, a little confused.

"Uhm..." I shuffled in my seat. "Why do you have bruises on your arms?" I asked, my voice getting quieter with each word.

Her face instantly changed moods. She looked away from me. "I was just working in my room, and I accidentally hit my arm a few times! That's all..." she said quietly.

"Oh. Okay..." Something told me she was lying, but it was clear she didn't want to talk to me, so I just shut up and stared at the table, wishing I actually had some good food to eat.

She looked back up slowly. "Sorry if that was rude..." she said apologetically.

"No, it's okay. It's a touchy subject for you, and I will respect it." I looked back up at her. "I won't ask about it again. So...I'm sorry for bringing it up."

She nodded softly. "It's alright...no need to apologize..."

After that, the air was awkward between us, and so we didn't say anything to each other after that. We still walked with each other to our other classes, but we said nothing to each other. It was like that until we parted ways when the school day was over.

Later that night, I was sitting in my room, working on some homework. Every class at school always gave out homework, even on Fridays, so that meant that we had a lot of homework, and I wanted to tackle it all.

A knock came at my door, and I paused long enough to say, "Come in."

The door opened, and my mom stepped in. She was a thirty-year-old, single mother after my dad just upped and left her for another woman. She had to juggle several jobs to pay for my career, and the reason she was home right now was because she had an entire hour before she had to leave for her last job of the day. If I ever got the chance to meet my dad, I would probably punch him hard in the face for doing that.

"Hey, honey," she said, leaning over and kissing my forehead. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," I said, not taking my attention off of the homework.

For a few moments, neither of us spoke. Then she asked, "Have a lot of homework?"

I nodded absently. "I don't know when I'll be finished. But you should be resting, Mom. You'll need all of the energy you can get for work."

"No," she said firmly. "I'll be okay. And I want to talk to you."

I set down my pencil and turned to her. She smiled at me, but I could see weariness in her eyes. "Mom, you have to rest," I said, standing up. "You could fall asleep while working-"

"Honey, don't worry about me," she said. "You should worry about yourself and your homework. It looks like you have a lot."

I wanted to insist on her resting more, but then I noticed the pleading look in her eyes. It was almost as if she was asking me not to worry with her eyes. Also, I think I was being a bit rude and hard on her. I sighed. "All right. So, you wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes, honey," she said, and she sat down on my bed. "Honey, how are things at school?"

I'd been dreading this question for a long time. "Things are going fine, mom," I said, putting on a smile. "Nothing bad happened today."

"Have you made any new friends?" she pushed me.

"Yeah," I lied. "I've made a lot of new friends." That wasn't exactly a lie. I had two friends, which was a lot more than my other school. And then there was Ashley. I wasn't exactly sure if we were...friends, but at least I was talking to her. So that has to count for something.

"That's good," she said, smiling, and I couldn't help but feel guilty inside as I lied to her. I had had a rough time growing up. My Dad had abandoned my mom and I when I was four, leaving us to fend for ourselves. I had to move schools constantly as we didn't exactly have the money in order to stay in one place at a time. My mom had barely gotten a good job to be able to pay for a house and for me to go to Hell School. But with all of the moving around, I had never been able to develop the skills needed to actually make friends. Another reason for me to be mad at my dad.

So, I guess my mom had to check up on me every once and a while to see how I'm doing and feeling. I also couldn't forget about that...incident. I guess she was worried that that separated me from people.

Unfortunately, she was right.

"Well, that's all," she said, standing up. "I just wanted to make sure that you're okay."

"I'm fine," I assured her, smiling, although I needed some assuring that I was fine.

"Okay," she said, smiling. She walked to my door, then she turned back to me before leaving the room. "I've made you dinner," she said. "It's on the counter."

"Thanks, Mom," I said, smiling at her. She smiled back, and then she left the room, closing the door behind her. I turned around and sat down at my desk and continued to work on my homework. Inwardly, I sighed. I was thankful that she hadn't pried, and I was pretty sure that she knew that there was something up with me. But she didn't pry, and I was grateful for that. I wasn't sure how I would explain that I was basically isolated at school.

But then I felt a sharp pain on my arm, and I winced. I looked at the spot where I felt the pain flare up, a little bit confused. I hadn't bumped into anything, but there was a huge, red bruise that was on my arm. It strangely looked like it was in the shape of a hand, too. But no one had slapped me, either. "What's going on?" I muttered to myself.