“Can I eat with you?” I asked.
She arched an eyebrow. “No, Ash. It’s weird to eat lunch with teachers.”
“If I remember correctly, you called me weird about”—I checked the invisible watch on my wrist—“two and a half minutes ago. It sounds like lunch with teachers could be right up my alley.”
She didn’t reply, but she also didn’t tell me to piss off. I called that a win.
“Shouldn’t you be getting to your next class?” she asked as we reached her locker.
I glanced at my invisible watch one more time. “Ah, shoot, yeah. I guess I’ll see you at lunch?”
She giggled. It was softer than her last laugh. Cuter. Shy, even. “You won’t see me at lunch.”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “So I’llprobablysee you at lunch.”
“Probablynot.”
“Butmaybe?”
She grinned. That felt like a maybe.
“Bye, Ash,” she said. A shy smile found her. That was a new kind of smile that she gave me. Then she said, “Mrs.Rivers. I won’t tell you where her class is. You’ll have to figure that out on your own.”
“I’m a mastermind at figuring things out.”
“If you show up, you have to be OK with me ignoring you.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I’m already used to being ignored by you.”
She smiled,again.
She didn’t say anything else as she walked off toward her next class. I watched her leave for a little longer than I should’ve. I was officially late for my next class, but I didn’t care because I had cough drops for my throat—and Karla’s smile on my mind.
***
When lunchtime came, I gathered my tray of food, then headed to Mrs.Rivers’s classroom. I didn’t have her as a teacher myself, and it took all of study hall hour to figure out where her classroom was, using a bathroom pass to walk up and down the hallways, but I found it.
I knocked on the open door twice, and Mrs.Rivers looked toward me from her desk. “Hi there, can I help you?” she asked.
“Ah, yeah. I’m Ash. I was looking for a desk to eat my lunch at,” I replied.
I stepped into the classroom and glanced around to find Karla sitting at the desk closest to the windows. She held half of a sandwich in her left hand and a book in her right. When she looked up, her face turned beet-red before she looked toward Mrs.Rivers.
“I’m sorry, I’m confused,” Mrs.Rivers stated, setting her own book and sandwich down.
“Karla mentioned that she ate here, and she said that if I figured out...” My words faded off because I felt a little stupid for showing up to this random teacher’s classroom. I wasn’t one to get nervous normally, but for some reason, having both Mrs.Rivers’s and Karla’s eyes on me shook me up a little.
“He’s a friend of mine and he had no one to eat with in the cafeteria,” Karla chimed in.
Mrs.Rivers’s eyes widened with surprise. “A friend?” she asked.
Clearly Mrs.Rivers was stunned by this development.
“Yes,” Karla stated. “A friend. Is it OK if he eats here? Don’t worry, we’ll both read.”
“I don’t have a book to read,” I confessed.
Mrs.Rivers nodded toward the back corner of her classroom. “I’m an English teacher, Ash. You’ll always find books here. You can grab any one from the shelf back there.”
