Chapter Seven

After barely surviving Ethics with Frollo, Algebra 2 was a piece of (bitter) cake. I found out that Tiana and I were in the same class and she led me to our classroom in the math building, where I chose a seat in the back off by myself and waited for the period to end. (Tiana wanted to sit at the front but I wasn't willing to suffer through that kind of visibility two classes in a row.)

I became too lost in my own thoughts to really pay attention to anything that happened during the class's duration, but it was largely uneventful. Mostly, I just noticed that our teacher, Mr. Hatter, seemed like a total nut-bag, which was to be expected, considering he was a loon in every incarnation of "Alice in Wonderland" I had ever seen.

I could tell I was going to struggle, though, because I hadn't been in a math class in years and I'm legendarily bad at all forms of it. Just ask any math teacher I've ever had, if they haven't dropped dead from lack of personality. (Is that a fatal disease yet?) I figured Tiana might be decent in the subject, but it was doubtful that she was the kind of chick who would let me cheat off of her. 'Not worth the risk,' she'd probably say.

I recognized four students from the popular crowd sitting right in the middle of the classroom, presumably so everybody could notice them and bask in their glory: Herc, Jasmine, Aurora, and Snow. Jasmine and Aurora seemed like they might be decently smart, but the other two were complete morons.

"How do you spell 'adorable'?" I heard Snow inquire. "Is it with two 'U's' or just one?"

"Are you serious?" Jasmine asked with disgust.

"It doesn't have any U's, babe," said Aurora, patting Snow's arm.

Snow frowned and held her paper up in front of her. "Oh. I'm writing Gaston a poem to let him know what a wonderful boyfriend he is."

Jasmine and Aurora exchanged a glance as Herc submitted to his laughter.

"Shut up, Herc," said Jasmine.

"I'm sorry," he giggled, "but that's just hilarious. Gaston: Boyfriend of the Year." His laughter only increased and Jasmine threw a pencil at his head, where it bounced onto the ground and rolled away, out of her reach.

'This is it!' I thought suddenly, my heart leaping with joy. But alas, she did not get up to retrieve it off of the floor and I bitterly slumped back down in my seat, glaring out at the rest of the class from behind my go-to moping pose.

Fortunately, Snow remained oblivious to the source of Herc's amusement and continued to happily scribble her poem. If only I could have seen that baby, it would have lifted my spirits right up. I'm sure it was a classic.

I could see why Ariel was insecure about Aurora. She was tall and beautiful, with long ridiculously flowing blonde hair that cascaded down and around her shoulders. She had the face of a teen magazine cover girl with a perfect nose, dark blue eyes, and eyebrows that were a shade darker than her hair. She also was dressed surprisingly modest for a cheerleader, compared to some of her contemporaries (Jasmine *cough* I'm looking at you *cough, cough.*)

Snow White wasn't as striking as some of the other girls I had come across but she was cute in her own way. She had a pleasant face with wide, innocent brown eyes, pale skin, red lips, and a black bob-cut. Like Aurora, she was dressed in pretty modest attire.

Other students that I managed to notice were Tarzan, Pocahontas, and one unreasonably hot black-haired, green-eyed girl also sitting in the back row who I only managed to get a couple glimpses of here and there. She had a couple friends with her, one male and one female, but I took no notice of them. I was almost positive that she had been in my Ethics class and was one of Meg's friends who had been laughing at my confrontation with Gaston. Her friendship with Meg and intimidating attractiveness combined with me being plain burned out from Ethics resulted in me making a conscious effort to avoid making eye contact with her. I was pretty sure that she glanced over in my direction a few times but she generally seemed to be occupied and content by conversing with her friends.

Math class ended and I walked out with Tiana, but not before catching a glimpse of the green-eyed girl walking by with her cohorts. She paid me no mind, but the back of her was almost as awesome as the front, and I guess I looked a little dazed watching her leave because Tiana said, "Are you all right?"

"What?" I asked, blinking. "Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm good. I wonder what super fun awesome class I have next."

"Hopefully nothing," said Tiana, "or I feel sorry for you."

"Why you say that?"

"Because it's lunch time, dummy."

I suddenly realized that my stomach was growling. My body had been so overwhelmed and over-stimulated by its new surroundings that it didn't recognize that it was hungry. But now I felt like I could put an all-you-can-eat buffet out of business all by myself.

"Did you pack a lunch?" Tiana asked me. I shook my head and she said, "Well I did. But it's over in my locker. We can go pick it up and I can take you to the cafeteria if you want, unless you want to go by yourself."

"No, I'd appreciate the company," I said.

On our trek to her locker, I asked, "So where do you guys usually eat lunch?"

"Well, we have a table we go to sometimes," Tiana replied, "but it's such a nice day, I kind of want to eat outside. Also, Belle and them won't be able to join us because they have their class council meeting to go to."

"Oh that's right," I said, my spirits sinking a bit. I had been looking forward to being around Belle again. Already, I felt safer and more relaxed with her than with anybody else I had met so far. That being said, Tiana was a cool girl too (and she wasn't bad to look at either, so I could do worse in the company department.)

After we retrieved her lunch, we stopped by at the cafeteria. The two of us got in line and I caught a glimpse of some of the food they were serving. It wasn't pretty.

"Word to the wise," Tiana said, seeing my face. "If you can help it, bring your own lunch. Ol' Cookie Farnsworth is the head cook here and he's got a reputation for being a little too inventive at times with his ingredients."

I squinted and tried to see inside of a bubbling pot filled with a thick, sinister looking sludge. "I'm pretty sure that's a boot in there."

A faraway look of horror entered Tiana's face. "I tried to eat the lasagna one time. I figured, hey, how do you screw up lasagna? All the ingredients are delicious. I found a chicken's foot in mine. A chicken's…foot."

"Does lasagna even usually have chicken in it?"

"Not their claws!"

When I got near the front of the line, a funny thing happened. I saw a chicken sandwich with tater tots (the only things more school cafeteria-y than tater tots are square cut, one-pepperoni pizza slices that taste like cardboard) and I figured it looked decent enough to eat. I had exactly twenty-one bucks in my wallet that I was going to have to find a way to make last for the entirety of my stay in this weird world (or at least until I could find a consistent mode of income.) So, hoping this sandwich wouldn't be too expensive, I approached the paying counter.

Tiana went off to the side to go wait for me while I waited innocently to pay for my food. It was at that time that I caught an intoxicating whiff of perfume and, suddenly, a pair of two striking green eyes was right in front of mine.

"Hi."

My heart caught in my throat. It was the beautiful girl from Ethics and Algebra, Meg's friend. For the first time, I was getting a full-on glimpse of her and, man oh man, was it something to behold. She had the body of a video vixen any rapper would have paid big bucks to employ. She was taller than any of the other girls, even Pocahontas and Aurora, at maybe two inches below me. Her black hair was thick and wavy. Her figure was out of this world and she wasn't shy about showing it; she had a low cut top that made it very clear she was more well endowed than all the other gals I had come across, but her lady lumps weren't her only assets. Her lower half was equally impressive in jeans that were practically painted on-hips, thighs, calves, backside…everything. Her skin was beautiful, darkly tanned and smooth, and, along with that black hair, contrasted sharply with those green eyes of hers.

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I recognized her as Esmeralda from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," but with her standing in front of me, my thoughts were pathetically incoherent.

"Are you new here?" Esmeralda asked me upon understanding that I was woefully unable to respond to her initial greeting.

"Hi…" I finally managed to get out, having taken that long to react to that first word of hers.

She giggled, clearly enjoying my misery. "Hi. I'm Esmeralda. Are you new here?"

"I…hi…" I mumbled, still unable to tear my eyes away from hers. "I mean, yeah. Yeah, I'm…yeah…"

"Oh," said Esmeralda. "How do you like it so far?"

"It's…good," I said.

"You're quite the conversationalist," she said.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I am."

"Well…it was nice talking to you…?" she trailed off, waiting for me to provide my name.

"Esmeralda?" I asked, confused.

"No, that's my name," she corrected me gently.

"Shane," I finally said. "I am Shane."

"Next!" said the cashier. I glanced vaguely over at him as though he were some kind of inconsequential annoyance that I didn't need to bother responding to.

"Well, Shane, it was certainly nice to meet you," Esmeralda said. She extended her hand to me and I floated mine awkwardly up, not really grabbing hers, because I was still lost in her eyes. (And to think, only a few hours ago, I had pitied Milo's presumed social ineptitude. The poor chap probably had nothing on me.)

Patiently, Esmeralda took my hand and shook it, then wrinkled her nose a bit upon feeling how sweaty my palms were. But she didn't pull quickly away or anything.

"NEXT!" bellowed the cashier.

Esmeralda grinned and wiped her hand on my chest, then winked at me. "Bye!" And then she darted off towards the door of the cafeteria, leaving me there like a zombie. I took a few, bumbling steps up to the cashier, still watching her retreating form, when he spoke.

"What are you buying?" he asked.

I looked down at the counter and discovered that my food was missing. Looking around in confusion, I saw that it was nowhere to be found. Looking back out at the door, I saw Esmeralda and Meg both standing in the doorway, grinning. With snickers, they disappeared outside like ghosts.

Having to return to the food line for a new meal, I was forced to settle for one of those damn cardboard pizza squares and water. Tiana was waiting for me by the door and as soon as I got to her, I knew she had seen the whole embarrassing incident.

"Well don't you feel like a sucker," she said, shaking her head at me.

I followed her outside, squinting in the sunlight. "What happened?"

"The lovely Esmeralda distracted you while her cousin took your food," she replied, not sounding surprised. "They always do that kind of thing, if they can get away with it. You just gotta learn to keep your guard up around them."

"Who's her cousin?" I asked. "Meg?"

"No, Al's her cousin," Tiana said. "Meg is dating him."

"I keep hearing about this Al dude," I said, "but I didn't even see a guy come up."

"That's because you were off in La-La Land staring at his cousin. You're not the first to have been taken for a ride by them. Just feel lucky that all you lost was your lunch, and not your wallet."

We ended up finding a nice patch of shady grass on a hill by the cafeteria. Pocahontas was sitting there with a cute Chinese girl of average height and fine black hair that went down to her shoulders. She was dressed sporty, in a T-shirt and running shorts, along with tennis shoes. There was no doubt about whom she was, but I was polite upon being introduced to her.

"Nice to meet you, Mulan," I said.

She glanced down at my sad little lunch. "You're definitely new here."

I grimaced. "A man cannot live on cardboard pizza squares alone."

"Want some carrot sticks?" Pocahontas offered. I noticed that all three girls had pretty healthy lunches, especially Pocahontas and Mulan.

"Sure," I said. "Thanks. So are you girls big on eating healthy?"

"Definitely," answered Pocahontas. "We both play sports, so we're big into fitness."

"What sports do you play?" I asked.

"I do volleyball, track, and cross-country," Pocahontas answered.

"Football, basketball, softball," replied Mulan.

I stared at her. "Football?"

She glared at me. "Yeah, what of it?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, I've just never seen a girl on a high school football team."

"Here we go," said Tiana.

"You got a problem with girls playing football?" Mulan demanded.

"No, I-" I stammered.

Pocahontas' snickering rescued me. "She's the kicker."

"Ah," I said, nodding.

Mulan shot a glare at Pocahontas, who ducked away, laughing, before turning back to me and saying, "I'm only the kicker because Coach Rourke won't let me play anything else. But I could run the ball if he let me. I can throw pretty well too."

"It's just too bad you can't see over the offensive linemen," Pocahontas teased.

"You can shut your face, thank you very much."

I grinned. "You two are pretty entertaining together."

"This is how they interact all the time," said Tiana with a bite of her sandwich.

"This one's got such a chip on her shoulder," Pocahontas said, gesturing at Mulan, "that I just try to keep her from taking things too seriously."

"Oh, you're one to talk," Mulan said. "You're always pissed off because someone is dumping on one of your bazillion environmental crusades."

"That's because some people are morons!" Pocahontas exclaimed. "Not my fault!"

"I completely agree with you!" Mulan said. "Just don't make it sound like I'm the only one who's fighting some invisible vendetta against the rest of the world."

"I am honored to be in the presence of you both," I said. "Mulan, you're like a feminist icon."

"Oh Lord," said Tiana.

Mulan blinked. "Uh…thank you?"

"Don't give her a big head," said Pocahontas.

"And I've always wanted to ask you, Pocahontas," I continued, "what the heck is a 'blue-corn moon?'"

She made a weird face. "A what?"

"A…blue corn moon?"

"Is that, like, an Indian joke or something?"

"Uh, no it's not," I said, "at least, I don't think it is. Just forget about it."

"You're weird, bro," said Mulan.

I sighed.

"I know. I know."

{I'm almost done with the next chapter so another update should hopefully be on its way soon. Forgive my writer's ADD; it can be hard to balance different projects with school, work, gym, and any semblance of a social life. Also, the NBA season is stressing me out lately but that's neither here nor there haha. All reviews are appreciated, even flames! (Just make them original.) Thanks!}