Chapter 17
Alice ducked her head as she sat down at one of the back tables in the cafeteria with her meager, school provided, breakfast.
It consisted of a miniature box of cereal, a little half-pint of two percent milk, and an orange. Generally, the oranges were so bitter that they were virtually impossible to eat, and she could tell from the slightest green tint to the skin that this one was no exception.
Honestly, she doubted that it was worth anywhere near the two dollars that the school charged her to get breakfast, but it was less complicated than buying food from one of the grocery stores in town.
Most of the kids that came in for the breakfast were subsidized to get it, though, there were a few who weren't.
But she wasn't close with any of them.
Alice opened her milk carton and started to drink from it as Emmett and his dad, the school principal, stepped inside the cafeteria.
"What do you mean you're not going to make an announcement? They're her classmates, they deserve to know, dad." Emmett's voice carried, even though he wasn't being intentionally loud.
She strained to hear principal McCarty's reply, curious.
"When, or if, she comes back to school, then she can certainly tell her friends or talk to the counselor about it. But I'm respecting the father's wishes in this."
"And when it ends up in the local newspaper?"
Principal McCarty's lips twitched briefly, before he shook his head. "Don't say something that funny to me. Laughing isn't appropriate given –"
The rest of his words were swallowed by the sound of several of the students farther in the cafeteria.