"Look, Brooke's mommy gave me brownies," Gordie told Chris proudly. They were sitting at their usual table at lunch in the small cafeteria.
"Anya's mom gave me borscht," Chris sighed. "Bless her heart but not her recipes."
Gordie looked at him with pity. "Here, take a brownie."
"One brownie? She packed you eight!"
"Take the goddamn brownie before I eat it, Chambers."
Rolling his eyes, he muttered a thank you and stuck the brownie in his mouth. It was a very good brownie.
"Chris, I think we took the wrong lunches," Anya announced, approaching the table with Lorelei. She sat down next to Chris. "I asked for borscht and got peanut butter and jelly."
"God bless your mother," Chris said, swapping paper bags with her.
"Give me back my brownie!" Gordie yelled.
"I licked it!" Chris cackled.
"Go to hell."
They grinned at each other.
"Hey, Lie, I'll give you a banana if you let me have your celery sticks," Anya offered, looking at her friend hopefully. "You like bananas."
"I'm pissed off," Lorelei responded, taking the banana.
"Why?"
"Because Teddy never showed up today."
"Dammit, Lorelei, you are the most confusing girl in the world," Gordie observed. "Since when do you like Teddy?"
She glared at him. "Eat your friggen brownies, Lachance."
Brooke sat down beside Gordie suddenly, and they all looked up in shock when they saw an equally surprised Vern was with her. Neither Brooke nor Vern ever sat with their group.
Brooke felt Gordie staring at her. She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
He shook his head. "Oh, nothing."
"Do you like the brownies?" she asked.
"Oh Lord," Gordie moaned. "I want to marry your mother."
"Gross. However, she seems to have loved you in return, because she gave you like a dozen brownies and I only got two."
"Eight. Not a dozen. I got eight. And I gave one to Chris."
"Unwillingly," Chris added.
Gordie dumped his brownies on the table, spreading them out and counting them. "So, I have four left." He slid on brownie over to her. "Now we both have three. There will be no more complaining."
Chris chucked the crust he had peeled off his sandwich at Gordie's head.
Gordie glared back.
"Brownie whore," Chris grumbled.
Lorelei sat up straight abruptly. "Hey! Vern, right?"
Vern looked at her in fear. "I don't think I'm allowed to talk to you."
She exclaimed, "Why?"
"Because Teddy would kill me."
Anya and Chris agreed in unison, "Ooooh."
"Is he here today though?" Lorelei asked.
"No, he never showed up this morning."
"Cassie!" Brooke called.
Cassie looked less involved in her thoughts when she heard someone say her name.
"Over here," Brooke said.
Smiling with relief, Cassie head over to her. She rarely had time to eat in the cafeteria, but today she didn't have any extra homework or anything to do. She had gone into the lunchroom, unable to find any of her friends, until Brooke yelled to her.
Then she saw Vern sitting across the table from Brooke. She almost stopped dead in her tracks, but then she regained some composure and sat next to him, because Brooke decided to be a bitch and set her bag on the bench so that Cassie couldn't sit beside her. "You're the craftiest person I have ever met," she growled.
Brooke smiled, "I'm touched."
She wasn't trying to be crafty; she just thought she should kill two birds with one stone. She wanted to sit with Gordie, and she wanted Cassie to sit with Vern. She knew that Vern, Gordie and Chris used to hang out, so she found him in the hall and dragged him into the lunchroom with her. He had seemed flabbergasted, and she didn't really blame him. She figured she wouldn't feel too out of place if she approached their table with another person who happened to be an old friend of Gordie's. Cassie and she were becoming friends, and would probably have no objections to sitting with her. And since Vern would be there, it all worked very nicely.
Vern said, "Hi, Cassie."
Tearing her evil glare from Brooke, she turned to him and said, "Hi Vern."
"Do you have any fruit cups you need me to open today?"
She reached into her lunch and pulled out a fruit cup, handing it to him. "Yes please…and thanks."
"Goddammit you dropped borscht on the table and it's inching towards me!" Chris exclaimed.
Anya laughed. "It's coooooming for you!"
"Shut up! Don't even joke about that!"
"I agree, Chris. Borscht should be buried and then blown up and outlawed," Lorelei said. "Toxic vomit, I've always called it."
"I am telling my mother that none of my friends are very appreciative of the meals she prepares for them," Anya giggled.
While everyone around them was talking about fruit cups and Polish vomit, Brooke looked over at Gordie. "What are you doing after school?"
"Eating more of your brownies?" he asked.
"So, you're coming home?"
The word home seemed to startle him.
"I meant, with me. I meant, are you coming home with me?"
Gordie was suddenly overcome with an urge to take her hand. She had not-too-slender hands; piano hands, his mother called them.
He nodded. "I wanna go home with you."
There was a moment then, where they just looked at each other. The hell with everyone else at the table--they didn't care. When the intensity of the look caused Brooke to blush and bite her lip nervously, Gordie couldn't handle it, so he grabbed her last brownie and stuck the entire thing in his mouth.
"Gordie!" she screeched. "Spit it out! Spit it out! That's mine!"
Gordie laughed hysterically while he chewed with some difficulty. Perhaps shoving a whole brownie in his mouth hadn't been very wise. He just continued to laugh, however, and cower while she attacked him.
Despite her sadness of the stolen baked goods, Brooke smiled and kind of giggled. "Gordie, just chew before you choke and die, you little shit."
Chris cocked his head at a comedic angle and said, "This is very sweet, really. It's like watching newlyweds."
"Eat me, Chris," Brooke said. "At least we don't act like an old married couple like you and Anya." She looked down at her food. "Oh my God, Gordie, did you eat my sandwich?"
"No. Technically, I'm still eating it." He smiled at her impishly. "You eat too slow. It's your own fault."
"So, my brother Billy's having a party this weekend for Halloween, do you guys want to come?" Vern asked.
"Why are you addressing the whole table while staring at me?" Cassie asked.
"Uhh…I don't really have an answer for that," he stammered.
Instead of being frightened and repulsed, Cassie just smiled eagerly. "It sounds good to me."