Chapter 36 Lunch At The Window

Chapter 36 Lunch At The Window

Wren

The whispers started before I even made it to my first class.

I heard my name twice in the hallway, low and pointed, from girls I had never spoken to. I kept my eyes forward and my hood pulled up and told myself it was the photo from the game. It would die down. Things always died down at Westbrook because people had short attention spans and someone new always gave them something else to talk about.

By third period I knew that wasn't happening this time.

A girl in my AP English class turned around before the teacher came in and looked at me with this slow smile that meant she already knew something I hadn't been told. I opened my notebook and stared at the blank page until she faced front. My pen didn't move.

In the hallway after second period a group of boys I recognized from the football team walked past me and one of them said something under his breath and the rest of them laughed.

I kept walking. At my locker, someone had written the word nobody in small letters on a sticky note and pressed it to the back of my padlock where I would see it when I opened it. I peeled it off and put it in my pocket and didn't look around to see who was watching.

At lunch I picked the table farthest from the main crowd, the one near the windows where nobody usually sat because the sun came through too hard in the afternoon. I set my tray down and opened my book and decided I could survive forty minutes if I just kept reading.

I was three pages in when I heard the footsteps.

I didn't look up straight away. I finished the sentence I was on and then I looked up because the sound had stopped directly beside my table and there were too many of them for it to be one person.

Jade was standing at the end of my table with four girls from the cheer squad behind her. Priya was on her left.

They all had their lunch trays except for Jade, who had nothing in her hands, which meant she hadn't come here to eat.

"Wren Davis," Jade said, the way you read someone's name off a register. "Always sitting alone."

I looked back at my book.

"She's ignoring us," one of the girls behind her said. Someone laughed.

"That's fine," Jade said. "We just came to say hello properly. Since you've been living in the Hensley house and all. We figured we owed you a welcome."

I turned a page.

"We brought you something," Priya said.

The sound happened half a second before I processed it. A wet, heavy slap as someone's lunch tipped across my tray and spread over my book. Orange juice soaked into the open pages immediately. I looked down at the pasta sitting on top of my food and the spreading stain and I didn't move.

"Oh no," Jade said, completely flat. "That was an accident."

The girls around her laughed, not loudly enough to pull the whole cafeteria in but loudly enough for the two nearest tables to look over.

Jade stepped closer and lowered her voice. "Cole looking at you at that game was also an accident. He was watching his siblings. I need you to be very clear on that, because I think you've been letting yourself believe something that isn't real."

I stared at the orange juice spreading further into my book. The pages were already warped.

"You're quiet," Priya said. "I thought you'd at least try to say something."

"She has nothing to say," Jade told her, but she was still looking at me. "Because she knows I'm right. She knows what she is here. She knows exactly what Cole thinks of her, even if she won't admit it."

I pressed my hands flat against my thighs under the table.

"I'm going to say this once," Jade said, leaning down slightly so her voice stayed between us.

"Leave the house. Find somewhere else to babysit. Stop making yourself into something that's going to get humiliated over and over until you get the message. I'm being honest with you right now. That's more than most people would do."

"She's actually trying to help you," Priya said, and one of the others laughed again.

"That photo is everywhere," Jade continued, still low, still just to me. "And people are already asking questions I don't want asked. So let me be clear, the moment you step out of that house for good, all of this stops. The lunch thing, the notes, the hallway stuff. It all stops. I'm giving you a way out."

I looked up at her for the first time. She held my eyes like she had been waiting for it.

"You're not doing me a favor," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected.

Jade tilted her head slightly. "Excuse me?"

"I said you're not doing me a favor," I repeated. "You're asking me to quit a job so you feel better. Those aren't the same thing."

The girl to Jade's right made a small noise. Priya's expression shifted.

Jade looked at me for a long moment without speaking. Then she straightened up and her face went smooth and unreadable again.

"Okay," she said. "Have it your way."

"You don't belong in that house," Jade said. "You don't belong at this table. You don't belong anywhere near Cole and the fact that you're still showing up every day like you do is honestly something."

She said it like it was almost impressive. Like she was watching an animal do a trick it shouldn't be able to do.

I kept my eyes on my book. The words blurred a little and I blinked until they sharpened again.

"Say something," one of the other girls said. "This is weird. Just say something."

I didn't.

"Okay," Jade said. "We're done here. Enjoy your lunch, Wren."

The footsteps moved away. There was more laughter from behind me, further now, fading toward their usual table. Someone at the next table over said something I couldn't make out and a boy laughed.

I sat there with pasta on my tray and orange juice still spreading across the pages of my book and I did not move. The cafeteria was loud and bright around me, I kept my hands pressed flat to my thighs because I did not trust them yet.