Jewel

In math class I once learned that three minus two equals one. Music taught me that one is the loneliest number. Throughout life, I’ve discovered that I am inevitably always that last said one. In history, I’ve learned that nobody likes the Germans, and nobody necessarily appreciates Hispanic people. Being that I’m both, I’ve never been insured a very promising future. And in English class, I learned to write away the pain. I think you can guess where this is going. Lonely sixteen year old meets lonely sixteen year old and then tries new things with that other lonesome, pathetic soul. No. I’m not a sixteen year old, and I’m meeting much too many people who are not lonely, who talk too much, who think they can say whatever they desire to.

“That’s a weird name,” a girl from the end of the blue, metal lunch table states. “It sounds like a girl name.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I shrug.

“I think it’s fine,” another girl, who’s sitting kitty corner of me, says. “It’s cool. What language is it?”

“Uh, Spanish.”

“What does it mean?” a third girl asks.

And there’s too many girls in this school. And I don’t know their names. Life is just one inconvenience after the next.

“Oh, um…” I trail off, scratching the back of my neck. “Nothing.” “It means nothing?” the second girl asks, a small smile playing on her features. “Wow, I thought nothing was ‘nada.’”

I laugh awkwardly and look away. I’m not good at talking to girls. I don’t understand why, being as there’s no logical explanation. I’m not getting on this topic. Now, I’ll explain my current situation in this cruel reality we call life. I’m stuck at a private Catholic school, professionally known as St. Albert. My name is Joya, and I’m a fourteen year old in an eighth grade class of twenty. I’m new to this school, and it’s the five hundred and sixty sixth day. Technically, though, it’s the second. That’s my excuse for not knowing these people’s names. ‘Do I want to?’ is the real question. I’m not sure of that answer just yet.

“Did you go to the public school a few miles that way?” a guy asks from across the table, grabbing my attention.

I look in the direction he’s pointing as if I can see through the walls like the perverted superheroes can, and nod.

“I don’t think I know you,” he says. “You might know me, but I don’t know you. I used to go to that school, and I was really popular. Like, everyone knows who I am.”

He has a decently handsome face, but the blond hockey hair is throwing me. Yeah, he’s definitely the kind of douche who’d be popular back there.

“Oh,” is my only reply.

“Have you heard the name Cole Slaw?” he asks, keeping this awkward conversation going.

“Yeah, actually, I have,” I answer him.

“From who?”

“From the lunch menu,” I reply, smiling sweetly.

The girl kitty corner of me snorts, so I look at her, but she’s looking down to her food.

“I don’t know any of your names,” I state.

“I’m Cameron,” the first girl introduces.

“Amber,” the third girl says.

They slowly go through introductions like that. We’re all sat at a table in the top left corner of a small, crowded cafeteria -- if there even is a top left corner. I feel crushed between two guys, but that’s certainly fine.

Okay, yeah. I didn’t want to know any of their names. However, I’m taking an interest in two of them in particular. I would’ve rather died than gone up and asked for their names, though. No, I don’t want to make introductions in one-on-one contact. Definitely not. I zoned out again, and I’m only brought back into reality when someone hits my arm with the back of their hand. I look up and around. I meet the eyes of the brown eyed, tall, striking boy. Crap, what’s his name? What’s mine?

“What?” I ask, and he laughs.

“How’s the school treating you?” he inquires, sounding as if he’s repeating himself.

“Oh, just great,” I reply, hoping the sarcasm is evident in my tone.

“Well, you haven’t really gotten the full St. Albert experience yet, but you probably don’t want to,” he laughs, and looks away.

Well, that sounds promising. I look back down to my food, and pick up a chicken nugget. I’m about to put it in my mouth, when I’m stopped by Sawyer’s voice. She has short hair, the kind that flips to the side. The other side is buzzed. It reminds of the hair the men had during the Neo-Nazi epidemic, excluding the curls.

“I suggest you don’t eat that,” she says, and holds up a torn nugget.

It’s basically all pink -- except for the breading, of course. I set it back down in disgust. The St. Albert experience is looking great so far. A few of the people around me get up, and I watch them as they do. Do I follow? What’s going on? Are they all in some satanic cult that was an option to join at the beginning of the year or something? Wait, no; there’s recess here. So, yeah; there’s a cult. I don’t know if I should go with them. Cole, Jesse, and three others are getting up, leaving a fourth of the table empty.

“Are you coming?” Jesse -- the striking boy -- asks, slipping on a black light jacket and looking down at me.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” I answer, fluently speaking English.

Standing up from the table, I almost fall out of the bench. At my old school, there were stools. I quickly and embarrassingly walk away with the styrofoam tray in my hands. To the garbage I go, throwing the whole tray away. That’s when I look over and see there’s a place to stack them. Does it really make a difference? Are they planning on reusing them or something? Are they going to wash off the crumbs, ketchup, mustard, coleslaw, and all of the weird, gross concoctions that the girls make? It’s a private school, I guess. They don’t have the resources for trays.

“Stop staring into my home, Joya,” Sawyer says, walking up next to me and throwing her food away. “It’s creepy.”

“What?” I ask. “I’m looking into the- Oh.”

She raises her left eyebrow at me, and heads to the door.

I saunter out the same door. Where am I going? I catch a glimpse of Sawyer running up the stairs, skipping every other one. I think I’m supposed to go that way. And so I do. I walk up the four steps, then the rest. I’ll count them later. I turn to the left, still following Sawyer’s fleaing form. I go out the doors to the cool, September air.

There are three steps, then an area where my new classmates are playing four square. Kate, a girl whose safety blanket is her headphones, is standing on a sloping piece of cement, leaning against the bar. She’s laughing at the people arguing and running about like lunatics on the court. I go down and stand by her. She glances over at me, then back at the court. Sawyer is now king. Jesse is the pawn, laughing and smiling as he speaks.

“You can trust me,” he tells her before she serves the ball.

“I’ve known you since kindergarten, Jesse,” she replies. “No, I can’t.”

She serves the ball to the next person over, who spikes it into Jesse’s square. He tries to kick the ball, misses, and stomps off the court, pretending to throw a fit. The game continues on, everyone yelling at each other and calling Adam a bully whenever he would get anyone out. I’m pretty sure this game is biased, and all the girls are chanting ‘bomb them dead’ as they start to take over the squares.

Recess ends. I feel like a child saying that. We go inside after the door is unlocked, and I follow everyone up the stairs, by the chapel, down a hall, and to the math room, where we were allowed to leave our stuff. At my old school, we could never do that. It’d get stolen. The door is unlocked, and everyone gets their things. I follow the others to science, our next class. We don’t get to choose our classes, since there’s twenty people in the grade, in all. Actually, I’m not sure why, but that’s my best guess.

This class is agonizing; it’s only the second day of school, and we’ve started reading from our books already. We’ll get homework, we got homework yesterday from history, and I’ll have to do it. Like anyone who isn’t insane, I don’t like homework. Okay, I may be touched in the head -- mentally ill, according to my mother -- but I know that homework is of Satan. It’s Satan’s crap. We barely got any homework at my old school, but that’s because the teachers were slackers. They barely taught us anything. This school teaches us stuff. It’s nice, but I don’t like homework. And so science ends.

Now, we have Spanish. I guess. I don’t know, that’s just what the schedule told me. I’ve never taken Spanish before, and I didn’t plan on it. We don’t get an option with this, though. Spanish is in the same classroom with the same teacher as English class. Ms. Dorsey, I believe. We received assigned seats on the first day. I’m sitting by Olivia, a cheeky blonde who I won’t like very much. It’s been quite interesting. It may have only been for two hours so far, but it’s definitely been really, really, really weird. It’s mostly been her conversations with her friends, Riley and Sawyer, that have been the weirdest part.

Out of everything, the weirdest thing for the past two days has been… Crap. I forget her name. And I was doing so good up until now. Oh! Brittany. Whenever I look in the general direction of where Brittany is, she’s always staring at me. It creeps me out, and I don’t know if I should be scared for my life or not. She’s doing it right now. I feel her eyes penetrating into the side of my skull. I glance at her. She giggles and looks away. I’m terrified. What does that mean? No one has the common decency to tell me why she’s doing that.

+++

It’s the end of the day; school gets out at 2:45, and it’s 2:30 right now. People are off in their little groups, talking amongst each other. I’m standing by my backpack because that’s just who I am. People usually don’t choose to talk to me over other people, who are more interesting than me. I’m fine with that.

I pull at the neck of my red polo shirt, and yank up my khaki pants. I hate these uniforms. More than life. They suck. What is their point, anyway? To make kids hate everything? It’s definitely working, then. Not to sound stereotypical, but khaki pants do not fit my figure.

You know, it’s come to my attention that, if I want to make friends, I shouldn’t stand alone in a corner. That’s what drags me over to the big group of people talking. They’re laughing and talking nonsense. Is this all they do? Are these even people I want to be associated with? I’m not sure. Well, who else is there?

“I’ve been telling you since last year, Cole,” Cameron groans. “People would actually like you if you were nice.”

Okay, so Cole’s been here from at least the seventh grade. I didn’t know that.

“Oh my gosh,” Sawyer exclaims. “He’s not even that bad! You’re not even that bad.”

“Yes he is,” Brittany disagrees. “He totally bullied me last year.”

“I wasn’t bullying you,” Cole defends himself.

“He doesn’t know how to make friends,” Sawyer says. “He actually made progress, though.”

I don’t think I want to be part of this conversation. Being the hypocrite that I am, I don’t do hate. I stopped listening.

“I have seniority over you people,” Sawyer is saying as I go back into the conversation.

“Hey, I’ve been here as long as you have,” Jesse replies. “So has Joseph, and Rob, and Nick, and a lot of the class.”

“Either or,” she rolls her eyes.

“What does that even mean?” Cameron asks.

“Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense,” Amber(..?) adds.

“You know what,” Sawyer replies. “It makes sense to me.”

“But it doesn’t make sense.”

Stop questioning the lunatic. Sawyer doesn’t seem very mentally stable, so, if she says something means something, that’s how it is. Don’t question the crazy person. Someone brushes into me, and I step away. Human contact isn’t my cup of tea. I look over and see that Riley is standing next to me. How long has she been there? The whole time? Just a moment? Before space and time? No one knows.

“Sorry,” she apologizes. “I just totally bumped into you.”

“It’s fine,” I smile. “Barely touched me.”

She looks away, back to the conversation, its topic totally changed.

“No, no, no,” Sawyer is saying. “This is how you say ‘suck a dick’ in sign language. Yeah, you had it backwards.”

And these people say they’re Catholic?