The most brilliant of ideas. All that lunch meat, the apples, little snack bags ready to go for long hours out in the fields. Ask and he did receive.
Paper bag lunch ready to go.
(Definitely not a lunch box.)
Which meant...no lunch line and no lunchtime friendship overtures.
He just...needed to disappear from eyes leaving class leading to lunch and then find a spot to eat in piece.
If he said he needed to talk to the teacher after, they'd probably wait. Bathroom? Someone might use it too.
And it'd be a whole new round of questions to him after lunch of where had he gone, was he okay... Nurse's Office?
Actually.
Danny paused in his mental plotting.
Where was the Nurse's Office?
That option of skipping lunch for going there meant someone would probably insist on showing him. Or, even if he went himself, questions after.
There were only so many classrooms and all had ongoing classes. Or teachers using the time for a couple study halls. Those were out.
Homework in the library. Perfect. A place that one had to be quiet in. And an excuse that didn't lead to tons of questions.
"Out. No food in the library. I don't know how it was at your old school, but all students eat in the cafetorium."
Sighing, Danny trudged back down the hallway.
Wait.
That's right.
The cafe for lunch was an auditorium too. A cafetorium. A stage on one side. Bleachers pushed against the opposite wall. With square openings up high for the theater lights.
It was technically where he was supposed to be.
Darting into the hallway near the bleacher side, Danny glanced for any kids, ducking behind the milk machine with Steven Tyler's screaming/singing face on the side. Then flew straight up. Empty, dark perfection. He'd just...cut off any line of questioning after lunch in claiming he was doing homework. Uh, somewhere.
Dragging the dusty chair closer to one of the openings for the light, Danny took his seat. Crinkling open his bag, he gazed out across the entire lunch area full of oblivious students and happily took a huge bite of his packed sandwich.
Success was tasty.
Idiot.
He sat near an opening for light.
All it took was one single kid to look up and notice a shadowy tip of a messy head not normally there.
And...the entire cafe erupted into chaotic glee of excitement.
Now he was getting questions on how he got into a locked room, openly admired for his actions and sheer gumption, and currently being lead to the office for a talk.
All he wanted was to have one lunch in peace!
Please!
That was all he was asking for.
The little free time he had at school to be free of people clustering close with concentrated energy directed onto him.
It wasn't that it was too much, but it was too much for him.
New guy did not want new friends.