“You know I was in the middle of feeling sorry for myself,” I said.
“Noticed. You do it very dramatically.” She seated herself and began to organize her lunch, placing every food item in a line. First her milk carton, then her fruit, then her sandwich and mixed veggie side, and last her pudding.
“I should warn you you’re risking social annihilation if you hang out with me in public,” I told her. “I’m a pariah, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“You aren’t a pariah. To be a pariah, you have to be despised and rejected by everyone, and I guarantee you most people in this cafeteria are entirely too self-absorbed to worry about anyone else. You’re exiling yourself.” She speared a mushy carrot and ate it. “You don’t bring lunch either?” With her fork, she pointed at my shepherd’s pie.
“Requires waking up early to pack a lunch,” I said.
“Or you could do it the night before.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I like cafeteria food. Mushy food is comforting. Why do you buy?”
She shot looks to the right and left, as if checking for eavesdroppers, then lowered her voice. “Because otherwise I’d have to bring homemade food, and I hate my mom’s tortillas.”
I laughed and then stopped. “You’re serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“But no one hates tortillas. They’re not hateable. Sourdough bread, yes. You can hate that. But tortillas? They’re like the mozzarella of the bread world.”
Gabriela leaned forward, as if she were sharing a deep, dark secret. Tendrils of her hair fell across her eyes. “Her flour tortillas taste like Elmer’s glue, and her corn tortillas taste like overcooked microwave popcorn. Please don’t tell my family I said that. My mother would be mortified.”
“What about other people’s tortillas? Fresh tortillas? Fried up with cinnamon sugar?”
She made a face.
I scooped up a bite of my shepherd’s pie and ate it. “How do you feel about wraps? Bagels? Donuts? I don’t know if we can be friends if you don’t like donuts.”
She sighed heavily. “I guess our friendship is doomed. I could never base a relationship on carbs.”
“That’s a shame, because I really need a ride after school.” I matched her sigh. “Can I at least hope you like ice cream?”
“Of course.”
I beamed at her. “Excellent. That’s something to build a friendship on.”
She grinned back.
Food is a universal relationship builder. It doesn’t matter if you’re wyvern or human, you can always talk about food and find common ground.
Except that, technically, no one was supposed to be talking to me since I was shunned.
Certainly no wyverns would have risked talking to me,about food or anything else—they wouldn’t want to face the same fate. Being shunned, losing your status in wyvern society…no one wants that. Cut off from Home, wyverns on Earth had had to forge their own society. Losing your status in it meant losing your definition of yourself.
Gabriela, though, being human, wasn’t risking as much by being friendly. Really, she was just sacrificing ever being buddy-buddy with Emma, Emily, and the rest. And since she hadn’t been friends with them to begin with…Over Gabriela’s shoulder, I watched my old wyvern friends laughing together at our old table. Carlos joke punched Jake’s arm.He must have said something funny. I wondered what they were talking about, and whether they ever talked aboutme.
“You’re going to see him again?” Gabriela asked. She didn’t have to name “him.” I knew exactly who she meant.
“We’re not back together.” It was a nice dodge, I thought.
She wasn’t fooled.
Twisting in her seat, Gabriela looked across the cafeteria at my old table and at Ryan. He was sitting between Emily and Rosario, who were talking with animated hand gestures per usual, but he wasn’t paying attention to either of them. He was looking across the cafeteria at me, and for an instant I couldn’t think or breathe. It felt as if the rest of the world had blurred. The voices blended into a buzz. His eyes felt as if they were boring into my soul.
“You’re still in love with him?” Gabriela asked.
The shepherd’s pie dripped off my fork as I stared at him, unable to look away. “He still loves me.” And I knew as I said it that it was true.
