Lunch was peanut butter and pickle relish, a small side salad, and a tiny tub of low fat "ice cream". Nobody in their right mind ate the "ice cream". It never melted. That can't be normal food. It was a pathetic lunch, but it was mine, all mine. I hunched over to guard my tray, protecting it from jostles intentional and unintentional alike. It might be the only semi-decent meal I got that day.

Foster mom Ann Simmons had me on a cabbage soup diet to melt away the pudge and hopefully make me more attractive to boys. I thought I'd been a little more attractive in general before she hacked my hair off, but I didn't dare say so. As I passed the football jock's table, I dropped my tub of Mellorine in the middle and kept on walking while they howled and fought over it. My place was with the band misfits.

There's a pecking order, yes, even in nerdland. I was chum. My friends were Tobias, trumpet player and weird kid whose parents were both psychologists, Gabby, another member of the drumline, and Harv, who wasn't in band but liked to eat lunch with us anyhow. From the outside we might have looked like a pair of couples, only in our cases, nobody was interested in dating any of the others. I might have dated Gabby if I were into girls because at least she was moderately cool.

Gabby was big into classic punk rock and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes (half tobacco, half weed) behind the massive vent stack of the school laundry. She claimed that the steam from the vent covered her smoke. It sounded ludicrous to me, but for our whole three years of high school so far, she'd never been caught. Today she was wearing ankle-length red plaid pants and a vintage Blondie tee shirt. Black, of course. Her hair, which spent the summer as a glorious tangerine sunset orange, was now close-cropped blonde to adhere to the school dress code of only "natural" hair colors. Of course Gabby's hair wasn't naturally platinum, but somehow her terrifying middle management mom had bullied the principal into accepting it as a "compromise".

Tobias liked outer space stuff and Boy Scouts. With his dark olive skin that looked actually green in a lot of lighting, he was perfect for both hobbies. The cool kids called him "Spock" which they thought was a hilarious insult but he took as a compliment. He was tall and skinny and looked like he couldn't harm a fly. Rumor had it that three of the previous senior class tried to jump him in the boy's locker room and that he somehow managed to turn the tables and leave them hog-tied for the janitor to find. He did have his Boy Scout knot badge, but would only shrug and smile when asked to confirm or deny the high school bondage incident.

Harv was just Harv. Even though he had eaten lunch with Gabby and Toby and me every day since Freshman orientation, we knew little about him. He was a tall, overweight kid with medium brown hair and blue eyes who got straight A's in everything but gym. He had done "extra credit" (helping the janitor with the locker rooms) to raise his gym grade to an A. He claimed his sole goal in life was to go to an Ivy League (preferably Princeton) and 'stick it to the man'. Nobody had any idea what he meant by that and I was afraid to ask.

Harv grunted and pointed with his fork as I sat down, turning Gabby and Toby's eyes to me.

"She's wearing that shirt again, Gabs," Harv said around a mouthful of lasagna. As a regular student not on lunch aid, Harv got the 'deluxe' school lunch tray.

"Kel! What did I tell you? You look like a soccer mom trying to hide 10 pounds of baby weight in that thing." Gab slammed her milk carton down so hard some milk shot out the straw. "Were you wearing this in band? I don't remember this in band!"

I looked down at the loose blue floral mumu style top. "No, I was wearing a black tee shirt then. This was in my backpack."

"Why in Dog's Name would you wear this if you have a perfectly acceptable black tee on you?" Toby asked.

His attention was already back on the poster he was coloring for his and Harv's A/V club. The poster already looked like psychedelic vomit, but the point was to not get new members since the club itself was just a front for their college applications. They didn't want the club to take off and require them to spend any actual time on it.

"Mary Beth." Foster mom Ann insisted that I wear this 'flattering, fat-hiding' top, and Mary Beth was acting has her enforcer. As usual.

"Ah," my trio said in unison, and then returned to food shoveling and poster coloring.

"Harv, switch with Kel," Gabby suddenly ordered.

"Oh god, not this again," Harv muttered as he picked up his tray.

"Yes, this again. The stench of your dead animal flesh casserole is making me want to puke!"

"It's vegetarian lasagna, Gabs. Calm down," Toby said, head still bent over the poster.

"Cows were still enslaved to make that disgusting concoction!"

"Gabby, chill," I ordered. "Harv's almost done and we only have five minutes of lunch left. Don't you have some dope to smoke or something?"

"Naw. I'm giving it up for Lent." Gabby ate her last bite of vegetarian sushi, brown bagged from home.

"You're not Catholic. It's not Lent." Toby stowed his sharpies.

"Everybody knows that, Tobs!"

"Don't call me that!"

"Ugh." Gabby jammed her lunch bag back into her skull adorned backpack. "Why is everyone so over-sensitive today?"

"Kelsey?" A new voice intruded into our four way back-to-school senior year jitters row.

Gabs threw herself between me and Kaiden.

"Get away from her, you creepy perv."

"Down, girl. I'm just here to set up my tutoring session. Mr. Jervis insisted. If I don't up my grade in Statistics, I might not be able to march at the first game."

I squinted at him suspiciously over Gabby's tiny shoulder. He also was an honor roll student. It seemed really unlikely that a B or whatever in Statistics would pull his grade down far enough to knock him out of extra-curriculars.

"You wouldn't be marching at the first game anyway," Toby pointed out. "You'd be warming the bench with the rest of the football team. Home game and all that."

"I'm not playing this year," Kaiden said with a shrug. "I'm still working out with the team, but my mom prefers that I 'concentrate my energies elsewhere'."

Even Gabby nodded sympathetically at that last bit of parent-speak. The pack moved off toward the trash cans and tray racks. As they departed, I could see Gabby mouthing 'we've got your back' and pointing, two-fingered, at her eyes and then at Kaiden. Toby gave me a weird thumbs-up, and then they were gone.

"You have really intense friends," Kaiden said.

He flashed me a smile that warmed me all the way to my toes. Although I knew it was all orthodontia and false charm, it still worked on me. Five seconds later, I reminded myself that I might be a pathetic foster kid starved for attention, but I certaintly didn't have to act like one. This football jock homecoming king nominee was just another rich kid slumming for the fun of it, and I'd better never forget it.

A quick comparison of our schedules came up with the same dismal result. The only time we both could get free was during football practice after school. If I wanted Mr. Jervis off my back and my $15 an hour, I'd have to join the girls who hung out under the bleachers and tutor him between skirmishes or whatever it was football people did. Be still my heart if that wasn't the last place on the school grounds that I'd like to be. But my treacherous eyeballs still watched his butt wiggle as he hurried away to his next class.

* * * * *

Kel's already in over her head, and she's only half-way through her first day of senior year. If you're reading this, thanks so much. I hope you enjoy!