Lunchtime. The most harmless-seeming but crucial moment of an everyday teen's daily school life. The Popular are always seated at a packed table, usually made up of Beautiful Ones, while the Unpopular sometimes even sit alone.
Guess which category I fall into.
Well, at least I don't sit alone. No, I have a few people at my regular table, that is, when I actually DO come for lunch. Most times, I'd rather just starve to the bone.
But today, I feel different. It's like a special energy-juice is running through my veins. I feel the need to SOCIALISE. It's weird. I think yesterday's encounter with Ephram has left me energized somehow.
So here I am, seated at my lunch table, my packed lunch sitting atop the plastic-topped wood in front of me. Dolphin-safe tuna sandwich. I smile at the guy with the headphones on who sits regularly at this table and he nods back in acknowledgement. Or maybe he's head banging; I can't really tell. He's constantly in his own world.
It's funny how I've never tried to talk to these people before. Not that they'd put in any more effort to talk to me either. Always seated at the side facing the vending machine on the left is a girl who dresses Goth-style regularly. She's got all the works: black lipstick, black eyeliner, pale face, nose-ring, combat boots, various other articles I can't really mention. Most times she just sits down and glares at people who walk by with either deep disdain or something equally menacing. Then she'd get up and walk towards the back of the school building, but not before fishing out a cigarette first, sometimes tucked somewhere into the side of one of her boots.
She's got her own friends, but they don't school here. Sometimes one of them would pick her up after school in a motorbike, and they'd revv off, tyres screaming "Eat dirt!!!"
So that's probably why she doesn't think it necessary to try and communicate with us lower life-forms. Yeap, the Motorcycle Gang is all she needs.
But what really is MY excuse? I mean, I have to face reality. And reality tells me that using trying to win a Scholarship as an excuse not to have friends slash socialize is pretty lame. Yet that's what I've been doing.
Something has got to change.
Hana cleared her throat. The Goth girl didn't bat an eyelid. She simply went on scratching indiscernible marks onto the table-top with a pen-knife. Hana considered asking her whether she could please stop doing so but decided to bite on her words. The knife might very well be turned on her instead.
Hana tried a more direct approach to introducing herself.
"Hey!" Hana greeted, trying to sound chirpy. Then she realized that Goths probably didn't like chirpy, maybe they even detested it. But it had caught the girl's attention. Her permanent look of disdain, contempt and boredom was now focused onto Hana's face. Hana swallowed.
"I'm Hana," she said, trying a friendly smile (but not TOO friendly, just in case). The girl kept on staring at her.
Finally she said, "And?" with the same look on her face.
"A-and...what's your name?" Hana was about to crack a smile again, then stopped herself. "We've been sitting at the same lunch table for almost a year now and I just suddenly realized that we've never said a word to each other so I thought, 'Well, why not now then?' " Hana brushed back a strand of loose hair from her braid away from her face nervously.
And then, after awhile, the girl finally said, "So you're Hana". Hana nodded. And waited. The girl narrowed her eyes, as if trying to search Hana's face for some evil, non-existent ploy that Hana had supposedly cooked up in her mind. Finally, she decided that Hana was being sincere.
"My name's Emily," she replied. And then she smiled. A scary one (rather like a wolf baring its fangs), but a smile nonetheless. Hana was blown away. She'd never seen the girl (or Emily, as she knew her name was now) smile before.
She was making progress.