George's help

I was still standing there, still stuck on what just happened, when I finally made myself walk down to pick up my books. That was when George showed up. He came so fast I barely had time to look up before he was right there next to me, picking up my books with me.

"What happened to you?" he asked, looking at me like he already knew it was something bad.

I told him everything. The words came out messy, but he just listened. He didn't cut me off once. When I was done he shook his head like he already saw this coming.

"That's what I told you yesterday," he said. "Most people are going to fall short of what you expect from them. Every time. So stop putting expectations on people."

"That's a sad way to look at people."

"It's a good way to stop getting hurt." He stood up, handed me my last book, and bumped me with his shoulder. "You want to hear something that'll make you feel better?"

"Depends how bad it is."

"This morning I tried to open my locker with my roommate's key. I stood there for two whole minutes wondering why my own lock hated me before I looked down and saw I was holding the wrong key the whole time."

I laughed before I could even stop myself. A real laugh, the kind that catches you off guard because you didn't think you had one left in you after the morning I had.

"That is so sad," I said.

"Thank you. I worked hard on being that sad."

For a small moment, just a little moment, the hallway and the staring and everything else from that morning just went away. He put his arm around my neck and walked me to the cafeteria like he already knew exactly where we were going and didn't trust me to follow him on my own.

"Fries and ketchup," he said at the counter, like there was nothing else to even think about.

I didn't know what most of the food there even was, so I figured it was safer to just go with what he was getting. "I'll take the same thing."

We got a table in the middle of the room, and it didn't take long before I noticed how the whole cafeteria was set up. Not by accident either. It looked like somebody had drawn lines across the floor and everyone just agreed to stay where they belonged.

"Why does this place look like everyone already knows where to sit?" I asked.

George looked over to where I was looking and let out a small breath, the kind people give when they already stopped being surprised by something a long time ago.

"That's the hockey table," he said, pointing to the corner where a bunch of guys in team jackets were laughing loud at something. "The popular kids sit close to them too, or they try to. Then you've got everybody else in the middle, the kids nobody really pays attention to one way or the other."

"And the ones who keep to themselves?"

He didn't answer right away.

"They don't belong anywhere. So they sit wherever they can... if there's even a seat left.," he finally said. "Which by the time lunch starts is basically nowhere. So they end up standing, or they eat in the library, or they don't come to the cafeteria at all."

"That's awful."

"That's high school."

"That doesn't make it not awful."

He didn't argue with me on that one. I sat there picking at my fries, feeling angry in a way that kind of caught me off guard, because none of this really had anything to do with me and I still couldn't shake it off. Nobody should have to earn a seat just to eat their lunch in peace. Nobody should get put in a box before they even open their mouth to say one word.

That's when I noticed him.

Carlton.

He was staring at me, and not the kind of look where someone glances up and then looks away fast. His eyes were locked on me, not moving, and when I caught him doing it I actually turned around to check if maybe he was looking at someone behind me. There was nobody there. When I turned back to him, he was still staring, and there was something on his face I hadn't expected. His expression had softened, almost as if he regretted what had happened in the hallway. Or maybe I was imagining it. I couldn't tell.I didn't know what to do with that. He started to lift his hand a little, like maybe he was about to wave, or say something across the room, I couldn't really tell. But before he could finish whatever he was about to do, that same blonde girl from the hallway whom I guess is his girlfriend leaned in close and started talking to him, moving her hands around the way people do when they're deep into some argument about a game or a coach. Hockey stuff, probably. He turned toward her instead, and just like that the moment was gone.

"You good?" George asked, following where I was looking. "You just went somewhere else for a second."

"It's nothing," I said, even though it really didn't feel like nothing at all.

Was he really about to wave at me. After what happened in the hallway earlier, after the stunt he pulled that left me standing there with my books all over the floor while half the school pretended not to look, why would he even want to say anything to me now. Unless that guilt on his face was real. Unless he was actually about to say sorry, or at least try, before hockey talk pulled him away from it.

I kept turning that question over and over in my head while I finished my fries, and I didn't have any better answer by the time my tray was empty than I did the second I first caught him staring. George kept talking next to me about something, practice times maybe, but I only caught half of it. My head was still stuck on the look on Carlton's face, and the way his hand had almost reached toward me before it just dropped back down like he thought better of it.

We finished lunch not long after that, and the bell didn't give us much time to sit and think about any of it. George walked with me until the hallway split, then went off to his own class, still laughing at something he said two minutes earlier that only he thought was funny.

I walked the rest of the way alone, and I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever Carlton almost said to me back there wasn't done yet. Not even close. Ohad spent years imagining what my first real conversation with Carlton Fernandez would be like. Somehow, I couldn't shake the feeling that our story wasn't going to end with a hallway collision.

In fact... it felt like it was only just beginning.