Trying to Find My Place (Kai)

[Camila Reyes]

The sounds of plates clinking, chairs sliding, and students chattering were constant. Many students sat in groups and seemed to enjoy the food that they ate or at least, the conversation they were involved in. Other students sat independent of each other, eating in silence or eating while listening to music. Some students had pushed their plates aside in favor of talking or doing homework. All in all, it was a typical high school cafeteria, save for the cliques sitting at specified tables like in that awful movie with a red-headed actress who spiraled out of control when her career took a nose dive. While there were no real “cliques” to speak of, the same people usually sat together all the time and, from any passerby’s perspective, spoke about the same things all the time. Of course, this was surely not the case, but students who did not care very much did not bother themselves with other people’s conversations.

A petite, fair female with her brown hair tied up into a ponytail walked into the cafeteria, looking around at all of the interaction going on around her. Her eyelashes fluttered as her sapphire eyes took in the scene around her. She let out a soft sigh and slowly headed over to an empty corner of the cafeteria where she could put her backpack under a table. She placed the book she had tucked under her arm on the table top, glancing at it for a moment. Brave New World was printed on the front cover in a simple, small text above an oversized pill with a city pictured in the top half and a dark sky blue bottom half. She tilted her head as a small smile crept across her lips at the thoughts bouncing around in her head. Someone brushed past her and she was shaken out of her staring trance. She moved over to the buffet area to look over the food and see what she wanted. She tried to keep a relatively straight face, but her nose wrinkled slightly at the look of the meat. Err, no thanks, she thought to herself, opting for a rather large plate of salad topped with carrots and croutons. She put enough dressing on it to give it some flavor, but not so much as to drown the salad in it.

She grabbed a fork as she passed by the stand that held them and went back to her table, placing the plate and fork down before heading back toward the buffet area. She reached into a metal cart and picked up an empty cup to fill up with ice, and then water before hurrying back to her seat. There had been someone else behind her waiting to use the machine and she did not want to lolligag, especially since she was not sure how people would react to her. She smoothed her skirt down before sitting in her seat and taking a sip from the cup of water. She picked up her fork and took a bite of the salad before pushing it aside. I’ll eat more when I’m hungry, she thought, bending over a little to pull her backpack onto her lap. She plucked a pencil from the side pocket and opened the book that she had left on the table. She started to read and annotate in the margin, largely ignoring the chatter around her. After a few pages, she closed the book and pushed it aside, twirling the pencil between her fingers. She looked around at all of the conversing students and hummed softly to herself, poking at the side of her plate with the eraser of her pencil.

“I will try to find my place in the diary of Jane…”

The lyrics slipped through her lips at a quiet volume, so as not to interrupt other people's’ conversations. Her sapphire eyes scanned the room once more before looking at the table again. Despite the amount of time she had been at Ashford, she still had not quite found her place yet. Sure, she had met two or three people, but she only met the one boy once and then never saw him again. I feel like that Stephen kid is following me... Though, to be fair, I think he and I are in the same grade, so our classes are bound to overlap, she thought, biting at the skin of her lip. It was a bad habit that she could never really get rid of, no matter how hard she tried. An approaching pair of footsteps made her look up from the table and she blinked, looking at the person who approached.

“U-um, hello… May I help you?”

[Mamoru Hongo]

It wasn't easy doing what Mamoru did everyday. He just broke up a fight near the woods and he was dead tired. But his hungry over comes his tired body and he waned to eat like no other. So while he could eat his cup or bowl ramen, he wanted more than that. So the best place to go was the dining hall of the school. He was still dressed in his school uniform but a little messy because of the fight he had to break up. So no much time to change his clothes into something more nicer but he didn't care that much for that.

As he walked in, he grabbed two trays and went to town. Piling food on food up high. Both trays of food was about almost a foot and a half tall with all kinds of stuff. But sadly for him, he doesn't have a place to sit. While holding the trays wasn't a problem, it was looking for a place. He then saw one table that only had one person. So he might as well see if it was free. Walking over, he smiled at the girl. Still holding the two trays in each hand. "Sorry. Is the chairs free or you waiting on someone?"

[Camila Reyes]

The young woman noticed that some people carried two trays as opposed to one. She blinked, tilting her head a little. Why did people around here eat so much? She looked down at her body, her brows furrowing a little. Well, if you ate as much as some other people do, you probably wouldn’t be such a stick… She shrugged off the thought, scurrying over to the salad area and picking up the ingredients for her lunch and scurrying out of the food area quickly. She was bound to run into someone if she did not move a little, so she headed back to her table after she filled her cup with water. Somehow, she managed to get back to the table without slipping on a banana peel, even though the school cafeteria was known to be clean, for the most part. The thought had occurred to her as a sarcastic kind of self-criticism and it almost made her laugh loudly; it sounded like a situation from a cheesy high school sitcom. We might as well be in a T.V. show here, she thought as she placed the water cup down on the table, I mean, we’re already a bunch of super-powered teenagers. That on it own lends itself to drama and comedy, be it intentional or not…

Her blue eyes widened when she noticed how high the two trays were piled with food. Her right eyebrow shot up and she continued to look at the trays before shaking her head. She let the pencil slip from her fingers and glanced at her plate, pulling it toward her. She was certainly not hungry by any means, but she figured he wanted to sit down. Her sapphire eyes glanced around the room, noticing that most of the other tables were full. She figured the young man nearly hidden behind the foot-tall piles of food had nowhere else to sit, so he came over to the empty table. She pulled the book next to her plate, as if to give the indication that there was more space at the table then there seemed to be. She snickered to herself, covering her mouth with a few of her fingers before shaking her head. She leaned against the back of her seat, letting her hand drop to the table. She tilted her head at his words and blinked, as if she could not believe what he had asked.

“Yeah. All the chairs at this table are free. I’m not the most popular person here, ya’ know.”

Her statement was punctuated with a casual shrug and a small smirk. She glanced at her fork, picked it up, poked the lettuce on her plate and placed the fork back down. She felt like a young child at dinner, being forced to eat vegetables she did not like. Of course, salad was one of the few things that she would actually eat at the school, so part of her wondered why she was not eating it. She glanced at the book again and opened it once more, though she did not pick up the pencil again. I think the homework was only to annotate those five or six pages before the chapter’s end. Now, I just want to read it. She started to hum softly while shaking her leg a little bit under the table. That was another habit that she had, even though this one actually helped her concentrate, even if it distracted other people. After a few pages, she glanced up at the young man, who seemed to be eating contently.

“How can guys eat so much in one sitting? I can barely eat an entire plate of salad by the end of the period…”