I'm finally back to continue this! But don't count on me too much, I might disappear for two months again.
VeronicaWeasley - If you don't want to review, you're not a noice person. That's a fact that you can read in my book. Poor fellow newsies indeed.
Dylan Quagmir - Woot woot! Answering questions with "fuck" is always the right thing to do.
Tuesday 8:30
Smalls wasn't in the lunch room when the teachers started the day. Sniper had arrived at eight, as usual. Had it been any other day, Smalls would have shown up ten minutes later. But she hadn't done that, and she was still nowhere to be seen.
Their four cooking teachers spoke in unnecessary detail about what had to be done in the kitchen that day. Sniper's attention gravitated strongly towards the empty chair at his table instead. Smalls should have been in that seat. Finch and Tommy Boy filled the remaining two chairs, but Sniper was seriously missing the presence of Smalls. His hand under the table felt tingly without another hand to hold. He used said uncomfortably empty hand to sneak his phone out of his pocket.
Still no message, no text, not any kind of notification from Smalls indicating where she was. Smalls wasn't one to show up on time 100% of the time, but she was one to let people know when she faced trouble.
"Dude, you're starin' at yer hand again," Finch's voice cut through Sniper's thoughts. He realized that he had indeed been looking straight at his hand, hanging beside the chair.
"Patrick!" Weasel shouted, cutting off Seitz in the middle of a sentence, only to reprimand the teenager who had whispered one sentence.
Finch nodded at the asshole, who looked satisfied with that response. The second Weasel started looking for other students to randomly yell at, Finch rolled his eyes and mouthed "that son of a bitch".
"One hell of a motherfucker," Sniper whispered, barely loud enough for Finch and Tommy Boy to hear.
"He'd be lucky if any old hag, mudda' of twelve wanted ta be wit 'im," Finch said.
Sniper's snort earned him a glance from Weasel. He meekly raised his hand as an apology for his terrible disruption to the class. It didn't work much, as only a second later, he had to muffle another laugh when Tommy Boy said:
"Just like you, Finchy."
Under the table, Finch stabbed the air with his middle finger.
"Tom's right," Sniper whispered.
He also got the harsh flip-off from Finch. He quickly put his middle finger up towards his friend. His other hand did the same to Tommy Boy. Two seconds later, the boys were having a battle about who could flip the others off most aggressively under the table.
"Thomas, Patrick, Jeffrey, is there somethin' you'd like ta share with the class?" Ms. Kasprzak, or Hannah, as the students called her suddenly said.
The three boys realized they had been leaning over the table to very visibly flip each other off under the clothless table.
"No..." Tommy Boy said.
"Good," Hannah nodded sternly. "I need eight people to be today's waiters."
"We gotta be waiters - I forgot my hat at the lodging," Finch told his friends as he raised his hand to volunteer.
"What 'bout Smalls?" Sniper queried.
"She ain't here right now, she ain't got a say."
"Alright," Sniper raised his hand too.
"Okay, Jack, Charlie, Davey, Tom, Patrick, Jeff... two more please, or I will choose," Hannah said strictly.
That would have been a perfect time for Smalls to appear around the corner, all tired from hurrying, but ready to volunteer. Sniper glanced back at the staircase to the first floor, entertaining the small chance that exactly that would happen.
"Mike and Elmer, you can join the group," Hannah said. Still no Smalls appeared, and Sniper pinched his lips together.
"Hannah, come on!" Elmer complained, quite clearly upset that he couldn't be with JoJo, Buttons and Henry.
"Waiters, let's go gather in the dining hall," Hannah ignored him completely.
Five minutes, several more flip-offs, and one change of clothes later, the waiter group was in the dining hall, watching Hannah repeat exactly what she'd told them in the lunch room. Gotta blend drinks, gotta clean and set the tables, gotta bla bla bla...
Still no sign of Smalls. No message either. Even if she were to send a message now, Sniper wouldn't see it. Hannah took his phone away when she saw him checking it. Now it sat in her pencil mug of stuff she needed, with her pens and notepads, next to Hannah herself as she gestured away with her hands.
"Alright, shall we assign some tasks?" she turned to the whiteboard behind her to write down what was about to be decided.
"Yes ma'am," answered only Jack. Suck-up.
"Who wants to set the tables?"
Knowing that task was the laziest and easiest one, the boys at the table shot their hands into the air like fireworks.
"Tom and Patrick, we only need two for that one," Hannah decided.
Sniper's eyebrows furrowed, and he leaned back in his chair, sighing.
"Jeff, couldja polish the pint glasses in the waiter's passage, maybe?" Hannah suggested.
"Sure," Sniper mumbled back, getting off the chair.
He crossed the room, went past Hannah and the bar, and pushed the door to the waiter's passage open. As always, a tray of glasses blocked almost the whole width of the tiny corridor. There was no reason to procrastinate, so Sniper grabbed a kitchen throw from the pile, and picked up a glass.
They were supposed to check every glass to see if it was already polished before shoving their throw-covered hand into it. No one did this. Ever. Checking for eventual smudges on the glass took as long as actually polishing it, so all checking really did was waste time.
Sniper put down the first glass. It looked exactly the same as it had done a minute ago. He grabbed the second one.
"Snipes!"
He knew that voice. He knew it very well. His focus on the glasses disappeared instantly, and all his attention was placed on the girl in the kitchen window.
"Smalls!"
He heard Albert mumble something irritably to Smalls as he completely abandoned the glasses. Whatever it was Albert said, it wasn't important, because Smalls rolled her eyes. Sniper trusted her judgment.
"Shuddup Al," he told the redhead. Then he turned to Smalls, and grinned. "Ya can't be late like this if ya wan' us ta be in the same group."
"Shuddup, everything just went badly," Smalls answered.
Sniper didn't delve deeper on the topic of Smalls' bad morning. Instead he grabbed the heating lamp and shone it in his face. Considering how cold the kitchen was when one was wearing a thin waiter's shirt, the warmth on his face was really nice.
"This is how you get a tan as a chef," he informed Smalls.
"Gimme one then," Smalls said, leaning forward over the counter.
Sniper angled the lamp, and smirked at her as she got to enjoy the warmth instead.
"Which window're ya in?" Smalls asked.
"Two. You?"
"Fuck," Smalls looked away from the chef-tanning lamp.
"You're in one?"
"Sure am," she slammed an onion on the cutting board between her and Sniper. That was an act of taking her out her bottled up rage on the poor bulb vegetable. Sniper could tell.
"Don't worry," he told her. "I'll hang out here ev'ry second I'm not takin' the food to the table."
He could see Smalls smile as she put down the second onion with much less aggression.
"Come ova' if yer eyes bleed too much," he told her, severely over-dramatifying the consequences of cutting onions.
"You bet I will," Smalls chuckled.
"Then I'm takin' my cuttin' board back," Albert joined the conversation, very much unwelcomed.
"Shuddup Al," both parts of the couple in the window told him.
"I'll smear onion juice all ova' it," Smalls quickly began peeling her current onion.
"Fuck that, I'll use it anyway," Albert frowned at her.
"An' cross contaminate those tomatoes?! Al, you're a criminal," Sniper joked. Only one of the two people who were listening appreciated the joke.
As he started to feel cold again, he Sniper turned the heating lamp back on.
"Don't get a sunburn," Smalls sneered.
"I'll try!"
"Don't play with the heating lamps!" Seitz shouted from across the room.
Sniper quickly turned it off, and held his hands up in the air.
"Jeff, don't bother the chefs!" Hannah appeared in the waiter's passage to say. Sniper felt like a criminal caught in the act, with his hands in the air, and teachers shouting at him from different directions.
"If ya don't mind, I'll stop botherin' ya now," he quietly said to Smalls, needing to leave with some kind of goodbye.
"I so bodda'," Smalls said sarcastically. "Now leave, before I get so bothered I cut ya wit this knife!"
Chuckling at the scene that had just happened, Sniper turned around, and went back to the everlasting task of polishing the glasses.
I love this chapter, I hope you did too, and I'm tired but now I'm gonna watch The Suite Life, and this sentence is too long and not grammar at all but hahahaha who cares, what am I doing?