The Last of It

As soon as they did, Mr. Everett stood up abruptly. Cynthia looked terrified. Dylan not so much, but he felt unsure. What is he going to do? What is he going to say? Before anyone could see what was happening, Mr. Everett announced that it was lunchtime and that everyone should go outside. So people slowly grabbed their lunches and made their way to the door. Cynthia grabbed her Hello Kitty lunch tin; Dylan pulled on his sweatshirt. He forgot his lunch at home. This guy is totally crazy, he thought.


As he was walking over to Luke’s classroom to have lunch with him, he noticed Luke was standing outside. Maybe he was waiting for him.

“Hey, man, I left my lunch at home, can you share?”
“I guess so, yeah. So what’s up?”
“My teacher went crazy earlier; he was yelling and throwing stuff around. He was yelling at this girl Cynthia who is the best student and never talks. It was bizarre.”
“Oh man, really? That sucks.”
“Yeah, I tried standing up for her.”

They walked over to the grass and sat down. Luke had brought steak today. It was cut up into little cubes. They set it on a paper plate on the grass and ate. A few minutes later Cynthia walked over with Hello Kitty by her side. She sat in the middle, behind the plate.

“Hi.”
“Hey”
“Are you in seventh grade?”
“No, eighth.”
“Cool.”
“I heard what happened in your classroom earlier. That sucks.”
“Yeah, it was pretty scary, but I’m ok.”
Dylan then spoke, “you want some steak?”
“Ok.”

Cynthia was relieved. This was one lunch period she wouldn’t spend studying. She hoped it would turn into something slightly more permanent, maybe once a week she could enjoy her lunch in the company of a person, rather than her notebook.
The three of them sat together that afternoon, the afternoon after that, and pretty much for the rest of the year. When Luke left to go to high school in the fall, Cynthia and Dylan had lunch together. She usually had a turkey sandwich and he usually had chicken. They would eat and talk about life.