Lunch Table Law

Hall A was so loud it felt like standing inside a drum.

Lockers slammed. Somebody was yelling Dylan across the whole hallway for no reason, over and over, like Dylan owed him money. The smell of the cafeteria’s breakfast burritos drifted in from the Commons: hot flour tortilla, browned cheese, and salsa. My stomach turned over. On any other Monday, I’d have been halfway to the line.

My head felt heavy. I’d slept nine hours, but I was tired in a way that didn’t make sense, like my bones had been swapped out for wet sand over the weekend.

I’d woken up twice in the night sweating through my T-shirt. I hadn’t checked my temperature again.

I opened my locker. The metal was cold under my fingers, and I stood there holding the door and staring at my Algebra II notebook on the top shelf like I’d forgotten what it was for.

My jeans slid down my hips. I hitched them up with one thumb, and my fingers found the space between the denim and my skin. I didn’t like how much space there was.

They were my good jeans, light-wash Levi’s 501s I’d bought in August because they fit perfectly, which, for jeans, is basically a miracle. Now they hung off my hip bones. I’d threaded a hair tie through the belt loop and around the button that morning, which is the kind of fix you do on a weekend, not a Monday.

“…and then he goes, Miss Noodle, why do you have so many teeth?” Noelle was saying, both hands in the air, reenacting her whole Saturday tutoring session. “For forty-five minutes, Sloane. And his mom paid me for that.”

I laughed a beat too late.

Noelle’s hands came down. “Hello? Miss Noodle? That was my best material.”

“Sorry. It’s funny. I’m listening.”

“You’re staring into your locker like it just broke up with you.”

The seven of us had lockers in the same stretch of Hall A near the English wing, so every morning started like the group chat come to life. Noelle was leaning against the locker next to mine in a cropped cream cardigan, golden waves still damp at the ends. Her eyes, the deep blue that made strangers ask if she wore colored contacts, went to my jeans, to the hair tie, and away again fast.

“I’m just tired,” I said.

“You’re always tired lately.”

“Volleyball season.”

“You’ve had volleyball season since sixth grade.”

I closed my locker harder than I meant to.

Down the hall, Stetson came around the corner at full volume with Chandler half a step behind him. Stetson had a Monster in one hand. He stopped in front of Noelle and did a double take he had definitely practiced.

“Is that a new sweater?”

Noelle went pink from the neck up. “It’s a cardigan.”

“It’s cute. For a cardigan.”

“Wow. Thank you. For a compliment.” She laughed at herself, big and bright, and smacked his arm.

They looked at each other one second too long, then both looked away fast. The entire sophomore class had been waiting on those two for about three years. They were the only holdouts.

Chandler leaned against the locker on my other side. He looked at the hair tie on my jeans.

Then at me.

I pulled my hoodie down over the waistband.

“Don’t,” Stetson said, pointing his Monster at him. “Don’t look at my sister. That’s a gateway.”

“To what?”

“To you getting ideas. You’re legally forbidden.” He turned to Noelle, deadly serious. “It’s in writing. We signed it in fifth grade. There was a juice box involved.”

“It was Capri Sun,” Chandler said.

“Binding,” said Stetson.

“You both need help,” I said, and walked toward first period before either of them could look at me again.

By third period, the lights in Mr. Grzywacz’s room were buzzing like they were about to give up.

He was already at the whiteboard when we came in, writing equations in fast, slanted marker, his tie crooked and a coffee mug steaming on his desk that said I ♥POLYNOMIALS, which I was pretty sure someone had given him as a joke he didn’t get.

“Page ninety-four,” he said without turning around, in the clipped accent that made every assignment sound like a sentencing. “Problems one through twenty. Quiz Wednesday. If you are absent, you take a zero.”

Mr. Grzywacz didn’t do extensions. He didn’t do sympathy. He barely did eye contact.

I took my usual seat, third row by the window. Chandler sat behind me, and Maekynzie sat behind him.

“I did the homework,” Maekynzie whispered, loud enough for half the room. “Spiritually.”

“That’s not a kind of doing it,” Chandler whispered back.

“It is if you believe.”

I opened my notebook and tried to focus.

I got through six problems. Then the numbers started sliding around. I’d read a problem four times and still not know what it was asking. I kept pressing my thumb into the spiral binding until it left red dents. Under the desk, the spot in my thigh that had lit up on Thursday throbbed, steady and low.

“Miss Deshazo.”

My head jerked up.

The whole class was looking at me. Two rows over, Kleo smirked into her sleeve. Kleo and her twin, Gemma, were Tahni’s matching set, and Kleo had clearly been assigned to report back.

“Number seven,” Mr. Grzywacz said. “At the board.”

I stood up too fast. The room tipped. I grabbed the edge of my desk, and my fingers locked around it hard enough that the laminate bit into my palm. I made it look like I was pushing in my chair.

Behind me, the scratch of Chandler’s pencil stopped.

At the board, I solved the problem. I got it right, but my handwriting sloped downhill.

“Correct,” Mr. Grzywacz said, sounding a little disappointed. “Sit.”

On the way back, I passed Chandler. He wasn’t looking at the board. He was looking at my hand, the one that had grabbed the desk.

“You good?” Maekynzie whispered from behind him. Her honey-brown eyes were wide and worried under a perfect swipe of eyeliner.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You looked kind of…”

“Kind of what?”

She hesitated. Maekynzie never hesitated. “Nothing. Cute hoodie.”

It was Stetson’s hoodie, two sizes too big. It was not cute.

Every time somebody asked how I was feeling, it sounded less like a question and more like they were waiting for me to confess.

The cafeteria smelled like pizza that had been sitting under a heat lamp since freshman year.

Our table was the round one near the windows, where you could see the student lot and, on clear days, the hard blue line of the mountains past it. Tahni’s was dead center, where everybody had to walk past it to get anywhere, with the cheer squad around her and Kleo and Gemma on either side, all three angled so they could see our table without looking like they were looking.

We sat where we always sat. Me between Chandler and Noelle. Noelle between me and Maekynzie. Stetson across from me, where he could see everybody and stir everything. Emory on Chandler’s other side, all five foot nine of him folded over the table, drumming with two carrot sticks. Tinsley beside him with her back to the wall and her choppy cinnamon-red hair shoved under her beanie, her bottle-green eyes moving over the whole room like she was counting exits.

The stools were metal and attached to the table, and the cold from mine came right up my spine.

I had my usual. Turkey with Swiss on wheat, sweet potato fries, a lemon tea. I’d eaten two fries.

Two.

I wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t been in a while. Food tasted fine; I just lost interest halfway through the first bite.

Noelle was telling Stetson she would burn his soccer jersey before she’d ever wash it, then cackling at her own joke loud enough that the next table turned around. Stetson was trying to steal her cookie. Chandler was laughing at something Emory said, chin down.

Then he glanced at me, and his laugh stopped.

I didn’t know what my face looked like. I only knew the cafeteria was very bright and very loud, and my body suddenly wanted to lie down. The edges of everything went soft and far away.

Two taps on the table, right next to my tray.

Tap tap.

I blinked.

Chandler’s knuckles were resting beside my hand. Two taps. Our signal since kindergarten, when I used to zone out during story time and he would tap my carpet square twice to bring me back before Mrs. Lopez noticed. We hadn’t needed it in years.

“Earth,” he said quietly.

“I’m here.”

“You sure?”

“I’m here.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything else. He just lifted his tray and slid his whole pile of fries onto mine, then went back to his burger like he hadn’t done anything at all.

A second later, something settled over the back of my stool. His jacket, the forest green Carhartt with the corduroy collar. He’d hung it there without a word, as if he were just putting it somewhere.

I was cold. That was the worst part. I was freezing, and he knew it, and he hadn’t asked.

Across the table, Stetson had finally gotten the cookie. He hadn’t looked at me once since we sat down.

And I understood. Stetson wasn’t paying attention, so Chandler was. That was the real Capri Sun contract: watch my sister.

I was a job.

The first thing I thought when he gave me something was why.

I picked up his fries with both hands and dumped them back on his tray.

They scattered. A few went on the table. One landed in Emory’s water.

“I’m not a charity case,” I said.

It came out louder than I meant it to. Our table went quiet, then the tables around us. In the center of the room, Tahni’s head turned. Gemma leaned over and whispered something in her ear.

Chandler looked at the fries on his tray. Then at me.

He didn’t get mad. That was what I couldn’t stand. He just fished one fry out of Emory’s water, set it on a napkin, and said, “Okay.”

“That’s it?”

“Okay.”

Stetson looked between us. “Did I miss something?”

“Always,” Tinsley said, and ate one of the fries off the table.

I took my tray to the trash. My jeans slid down, and I hitched them up in front of the entire cafeteria.

His jacket was still on my stool when I came back. I didn’t take it off.

I didn’t put it on, either.

I didn’t know why his worrying bothered me more than everybody else’s. Maybe because everybody else could worry and then go home.

Chandler stayed.

Tinsley’s shift at Java Junction started at four. By the time the rest of us came in after practice, she’d rewritten the chalkboard menu into something that read like a threat: OAT MILK IS 75 CENTS. DON’T ARGUE.

The bell over the door chimed when Noelle pushed it open, the soft little one that sounded more like a wind chime than a store. Java Junction was all honey-colored wood and sage-green walls, Edison bulbs strung across the ceiling, not one fluorescent light in the whole place. Every table was a different wood, and every chair squeaked. The community board by the door was shingled three layers deep with flyers: a Happy Paws adoption day, a lost orange cat named Pancake, and, front and center, Emory’s band. STATIC HONEY, SATURDAY, LIVE (MOSTLY). Somebody had drawn hearts around it in purple gel pen. Mae always carried a purple gel pen.

We pushed two four-tops together under the lights, the way we always did. Noelle shoved in next to me so tight our hips touched.

I had my usual, a honey-vanilla latte with cinnamon on top, iced, the same thing I’d ordered every week since we’d started coming here. I wasn’t drinking it. I was just holding it and watching the condensation run down the plastic, trying to figure out when holding something cold had started to hurt.

Through the window, I caught a flash of platinum hair on the sidewalk. Tahni glanced in as she passed. Her eyes went to my untouched latte, and then she was gone.

Tinsley came over to wipe a table that didn’t need wiping. She set a cinnamon roll in front of me without asking, then set her own black coffee down next to it and pulled out the chair beside mine without explaining why she was suddenly on break. She tapped her chipped black nails against the side of my cup, one, two, three, while she looked at me.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said flatly. “Not a compliment.”

The table went quiet. Even Noelle stopped mid-sentence.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“I didn’t ask if you were fine.”

“It’s volleyball. We run a lot.”

“You’ve run a lot for three years.” She flicked the rag at my wrist, where Stetson’s hoodie sleeve had slid down over my hand, because there was less wrist to hold it up. “Your hands look like somebody else’s.”

Maekynzie slapped both palms flat on the table, and the sugar packets jumped.

“Nope. No. Phones down, everybody. Phones down. This is an intervention.”

“Mae,” I said.

“We are doing this. As a family.” She stood up. On her chair. It squeaked in protest, and every head within fifteen feet turned, and a guy at the communal table with a MacBook took out one AirPod. “Sloane Liliana Deshazo.”

“Don’t full-name me.”

“It’s an intervention. Full names are mandatory.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “We love you. We are concerned. You almost passed out in Algebra. You didn’t eat at lunch. You threw fries at Chandler.”

“I didn’t throw them.”

“There was a fry in my water,” Emory said helpfully.

“And don’t think I didn’t notice the hair tie on your jeans,” Maekynzie went on. “I notice everything.”

The guy with the MacBook was fully watching now. Behind the counter, the espresso machine let out a long, judgmental hiss. My face burned, and the rest of me was hot and freezing at the same time, and all I could hear was my own heartbeat and Maekynzie getting louder, the way she always did when she had an audience.

Everybody was looking at me and deciding what I was.

“Can you sit down?” I said. “Please.”

She sat, slowly, and for once in her life, Maekynzie looked unsure.

Stetson was frowning at me across the table. “Wait. Are you actually sick?”

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’m allowed to be tired.”

He didn’t look away. He had Dad’s eyes when he did that, the same steady blue.

Chandler hadn’t said a word. He sat at the end of the table with one arm hooked over the back of his chair, and he was looking at my wrist.

I pulled my sleeve down over it and took a bite of the cinnamon roll, just to make everybody stop looking. It tasted like sweet cardboard. I chewed until everyone stopped watching my mouth. Then I swallowed, and smiled.

“See?” I said. “Eating.”

The silence stretched. Then Emory leaned back and folded his arms, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Incredible,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone eat a cinnamon roll with that much hostility.”

Noelle snorted. Maekynzie made a noise like a kettle and shoved Emory’s shoulder, and then left her hand there a second longer than a shove needed. Emory didn’t seem to mind. And the corner of my mouth went up before I could stop it.

Under the table, Noelle’s hand found mine and squeezed.

On Tuesday, second period, I told Madame Toussaint I had a headache, and she waved me out of French II with a dramatic “Pauvre chérie.”

Nurse Haviland barely looked up from her computer. “Ibuprofen’s on the counter. Two. Don’t touch my Diet Coke.”

The bathroom in the nurse’s office was tiny and smelled like industrial hand soap. There was a scale in the corner, the old doctor’s office kind with a sliding weight on a metal bar.

Three weeks ago, at team check-in, Coach Mathieson had weighed all of us in the athletic trainer’s room. I remembered my number because I’d been annoyed that my shoes counted.

I took my shoes off, stepped on, and slid the little weight along the bar until it balanced.

Nine pounds less than that number.

I stared at the bar until it stopped looking like a number and started looking like a mistake.

I stepped off.

Back on. I slid the weight all the way to zero and started over, slower this time.

Nine pounds.

Everything inside me went very quiet. My face didn’t move. I’d gotten too good at that.

I hadn’t tried to lose it. I hadn’t done anything different. It had just gone.

I stood there in my socks on the cold metal plate with my loose jeans hanging off my hips. Chandler’s jacket was in my locker. I’d taken it home last night and brought it back this morning, and I hadn’t been able to make myself give it back.

Outside the door, Nurse Haviland’s chair creaked.

I stepped off, slid the weight back to zero, and tied my shoes very carefully, double knots, as tight as they would go.

When I stood up, my jeans slipped down again.

I pulled them up.

Then I walked out of the bathroom and didn’t tell Nurse Haviland.