I sat with Katie and Christina at the blue table and they were my very best friends. I didn’t have very many, being as the class I was in had a very small number of students – 12. They used to fight in the bathroom sometimes, over who was more my best friend. The day that Christina and I came to class wearing the same coordinated outfit (a white tank top and white shorts with big fuchsia polka dots), Katie didn’t speak to either of us for the rest of the week.
This day, all of us wore different things, and we were getting along fine. In P.E. we had practiced running the mile for the President’s Physical Fitness test and we were tired and famished. “Stupid presidents and their stupid fitness tests. Girls can’t do pullups and climb ropes.” Katie huffed and puffed. “María could” Christina retorted. Katie didn’t say anything but looked sullen as she started opening her milk carton. “Only climb the rope. And one pullup.” I offered. My grandfather had built me a jungle gym in our backyard when I was in California for the summer as a surprise and I’d developed quite the upper body strength over the past few months. Katie still frowned as she she drank, pulling the carton down and revealing a chocolate mustache. She saw me looking at it and wiped it away with the back of her wrist.
My grandmother had packed my lunch that day, but I wasn’t sure what she’d given me. Probably fried bologna I complained to myself. My lunch box was plastic, yellow with a fading Charlie Brown scene painted on the front. It came with a thermos, which I opened first, happy to find apple juice, still cold. I poured some into the lid of my thermos which was also a cup and pushed it aside. I had a bunch of grapes, some with their stems still attached, of the red seedless variety. My sandwich was peanut butter and grape jelly, on whole wheat, and some plain Lay’s potato chips were in a small bag underneath it. What did I have to do to get my grandmother to buy some chips with flavor? I really wanted to try those sour cream and onion ones, but, all in all this was a good lunch.
We ate in silence, waiting for Katie to lift herself out of her mood since Christina and I had learned that it was impossible for either of us to do so.I finished my food messily and rabidly. By the time I was finished I had crumbs all over my shirt and peanut butter spread over my chin. Christina finished her cafeteria spaghetti, or as much of it as she was willing to stomach. The class was lining up to go back alreadyso we decided to leave Katie where she was, still poking her fork in her pizza, eating only the little cubes of pepperoni off of the top.
She was standing behind us soon enough, smiling from ear to ear because Jonathan Crutchfield asked her if he could have her sugar cookie and their fingers touched when she handed it to him.
#2.
