chapter 3

I scanned the lunch room looking for Javier, but he was sitting with Claire and the ***ing Pretty Posse. He looked at me and our eyes met. He looked away and started talking with Claire.

I hadn't eaten lunch alone in so long. I didn't think I had ever eaten lunch completely alone, but I didn't have anyone to sit with. I probably should have made more friends. I sat in the grass in a small area outside of the lunch room.

"Alone? Where's Javier the stuttering hi-hi-hippopotamus?" I grabbed my bag and left the grassy area. A.J. Keilman was totally anti Reese/Javier. A.J. was in the Pretty Posse, probably on his way to the lunch room.

He probably hadn't seen Javi yet. Javier was bigger than he was now. I wished that he was there. He would have told him off and I wouldn't have had to run away like some punk.

Javier convinced me to take home economics, and then when we picked kitchen partners he paired up with Claire. He looked at me again like I hadn't noticed how dickish he was acting and went back to talking with Claire.

"Can you pass me that knife?" asked Frieda Luna. She ended up being my kitchen partner. "Reese?" She was the same height as I was in flats and she was always very grouchy.

"Sorry..." I passed the knife to her and she sliced an onion. I had been creeping on Javi and hadn't even been paying attention to anything that was going on in the classroom.

"Why aren't you partners with Mr. Suddenly Sexy?" she asked. "I mean, you two are like...Batman and Robin." I sighed.

"People change," I said.

"That's quite apparent," she said in a matter-of-fact sort of way. "If you look at Javier, he looks like a completely different person. Did he say you were holding him back or something?" She started slicing a carrot.

"Holding him back how?" I asked defensively, already knowing what she was getting at. "Do you think I would be holding him back?"

"That's for you and him to decide. Would he throw away years of friendship to get an STD from a slutty girl?" Would he? I didn't think he would. I hoped he wouldn't.

After two weeks of nothingness I couldn't take it and went to see him at his mom's restaurant. "What's up man? Javier's been acting all funky since you've stopped coming around." That was Carlos and he held a large platter filled with a bunch of dishes. He was about 5'6" and had the same dark hair as Javier.

He had two kids, but wasn't married to their mother. They'd been engaged for nearly two years and he had been saving up for their wedding. "Is he here?" I asked, taking a large stack of plates off of the tray, making his job a bit easier.

"No, he left just ten minutes ago with some blond girl." He stopped. "She looked kind of...whorey," he said as we entered the kitchen. I was pretty sure it was Claire.

"Oh...well...could you tell him I stopped by?" I asked.

"Yeah, of course I will." I jingled my keys in my hand as I made my way out to my car. He was out with Claire. It was Friday and I wondered if our movie nights/sleepovers would cease to exist.