Hello all. So I'm sorry about this wait. I've just been swamped, which i know is always my excuse, but that would be because it's true. Anyways, update, yay!
Here we go, I only own what my own mind created. Lottie belongs to IndigoStarling. All aspects of Gone go to Micheal Grant.
~The New and the Old~
The front entrance was tucked under an awning of stone so clean it practically glowed, and the entire wall was made of glass spindled with veins of thin gray wire, this too kept meticulously clean. So much so, that it was like looking in the mirror; staring back into her own big grey eyes and taking in her pale skin and thick auburn hair that fell to her shoulders in waves, and the uniform that she had been so careful to keep neat and clean. The uniform represented escape, it represented success, but most importantly, the black and gold symbolized something very new to her; someone believing.
How had it happened? How had she been the person, out of thousands or more kids, to receive the only vocal scholarship they had been offering that year? How had her voice, something her father always swore was annoying and awful and wrong, gotten her here?
"It doesn't open on mental command, you know?"
She jumped, and found in the reflection someone standing behind her. A boy, wearing the Headline uniform, with chocolate colored hair tucked into a black beanie. Some of the soft strands had fallen out, and rested on his forehead, making his eyes seem even softer, like melted chocolate. He raised one eyebrow.
"Um...right." She shook herself out of her daydreaming. She turned to face him, trying not to think about how much she wanted to run her hand through his hair, which she thought would feel like down feathers. "I knew that."
His eyes softened. "You must be new," he took a step toward her and offered a hand. "I'm Beck."
"Lotus." She moved to shake his hand, but then jerked back suddenly. "I-I mean, that's the name on my birth certificate. I don't actually go by that, which makes it weird that I said Lotus. My friends call me Lottie, or, they would if I had friends...not that I'm a loner or anything. I just don't have any friends because I'm...new." The boy's eyes were sparkling with amusement, but somehow, it didn't feel cruel. Actually, it helped her relax a little, so she tried again, shaking his hand. "I'm Lottie."
"Nice to meet you Lottie." He moved past her and pulled the door open, gesturing with one hand.
She thanked him, and hurried into the building with her head down. The front room was a large open space, one side looked like a lobby, with a large t.v set up on the wall and couches and chairs and a table placed together oddly. The other wall was carved out into a large office space, and a group of girls were loitering at the front counter. One was leaned against it, on her elbows, arguing with a second who was rummaging through a filing cabinet. Both had their back turned to the front door, as did a third girl, who was seated on the counter facing the office, and the last was in the chair, feet propped up on the counter, a bag of Cheerios in her lap. It was her that noticed them first, and her face lit up. "Beck!"
The girl on the counter turned, and her face split with a smile. She hopped down in a way that was almost elegent, and brushed past Lottie to give Beck a hug, saying, "Well, if it isn't my favorite he-she!"
Beck laughed, and accepted the hug. Lottie frowned as the first girl who had spoken moved past her to hug him too. What did he-she mean?
The fiery-haired girl called, "Hey Beck," as she swept away, leaving the last girl at the counter to huff.
She turned to face the rest of the room, leaning her elbows on the counter behind her. It took Lottie no time at all to see the resemblence between this girl and Beck. The same softly rounded eyes, although her were a crystal-blue, and the neat curve of their nose, and their silky brown hair, which she had shaved up to her temple before it grew down to her ears. She flicked the hair from her face, and it fell perfectly across her forehead. "Hey, cuz."
"Chris." Beck looked in the direction of the girl who had left, his mouth creeping up into a smile. "What are you two fighting about now?"
"It's stupid," Chris replied, shaking her head. "She's pissed off because Shaena and I went on vacation with the family to Florida without her."
Lilah nudged Beck, grinning. "That's not even the best part."
"Really?" Beck rocked onto his toes so he stood taller than the girl. "What's the best part?"
"Chris invited Rose to go," the forth girl said.
"And she refused to go because Shaena was going to be there," Chris added.
Beck shook his head, laughing. "Girls."
Beck gave his head another shake. "Not anymore. Your dad performed the gender re identification surgery a few weeks ago. I am officially all-male."
"Good for you!"
"Congratulations!"
A door opened behind the counter, and a man came into the open, glancing briefly at the crowd gathered before him. "Shouldn't you people be in class?" he asked mildly, looking back at the folder in his hands.
"They're doing that testing thing today, so we're off first and second period," Chris explained.
The man raised his head, frowning. "That's today?"
"Yep," the third girl replied. "I've never really understood why they do it the first day of second semester. Why not the beginning of the year? Or the end?"
"Because they want to do it now." The man smiled. "When you get on the school board you can criticize their decision making, okay Lauren."
Lauren stuck her tongue out. "Watch it, Neal. I could be your boss someday. My legal guardian is the head of the school board."
"Her legal guardian owns the school board," Chris commented with a grin.
"She's not even interested in administrative stuff." Neal waved a hand dismissively at Chris. "In fact, you're not particularly interested in anything. What is your specialty?"
"Law enforcement."
"Really?" Neal laughed.
Lauren huffed. "Yes, really. Now how about you help your new students, Mr. Heartly."
Neal blinked, noticing Lottie for the first time. She smiled shyly at him. "I'm sorry," he apologized, turning away and opening up a filing cabinet. "What your name, hun?"
"Um, Lotus."
"Lotus," he repeated under his breath, picking a stack of folders off of the counter, and checking the names on them. He nodded, and said, "Only one." opening the file with one hand and pulling out a piece of paper. He turned back to her, grinning, but faltered when he realized she hadn't moved. "Well, come on."
Lottie reached the counter, and Chris moved away from it, and towards the small group in the middle of the room, talking in low, excited voices. Were they talking about her? She hugged her waist self-consciously. "I'll get you in a second Becks."
"It's just Beck now," he told him, and then he said, "And it's okay. I can wait."
Neal placed the paper in front of her. "This will be your schedule. We're on an AB schedule here. So today is an A day, tomorrow will be a B day, and so on so forth. This here is your dorm, and this one your locker; you don't have to use the locker obviously, but some people prefer it." He then pulled out a thick, brown envelope. "This has things like key cards and an extra ID and pretty much every thing else. So, yeah, you're all set."
Lottie stood still as a statue, clutching the brown envelope in one hand, and the schedule in the other; her mind racing. She had never gone to a school where she had needed to know and have so much. So many classes and cards and uniform pieces and numbers to remember.
"It all seems a little over-whelming at first," someone said, and Lottie jumped. Chris was back at the counter, leaned on one elbow, and smiling kindly, "but you get used to it real quick."
"Says the girl that has to get a new key card every semester because she's lost the old one," Neal muttered through a laugh.
"Speaking of which, I lost my ID," Chris told him. "Which is why I was here in the first place."
Neal pulled open a drawer, Lottie could see rows and rows of small, plastic cards, all one of the same two faces. One was Chris, and the other a dark girl with an almost mean sort of grin. In very small blocky print underneath the picture was the name "Shaena Carter". Lottie found herself hoping she didn't encounter this Shaena girl ever, but especially not on her first day.
Chris took hers and started to walk off, but before she could get two steps, Neal said, "Lottie, this is Chris. She'll show you around."
"Uh, she will?" Chris raised her head and frowned at him.
He only shrugged. "Sure she will."
"Well then I guess I will. Are you coming?" she added when she realized she was walking and Lottie wasn't following."
She scurried after the girl, catching up as they passed under a tall, stone arch, and into a large hallway. One either side was a grand staircase that twisted up to a glass rail and the second floor. Across from the arch was a long, glass wall that looked into what could only have been a library, with shelves upon shelves of books and tables dotting the center, and computers lining empty wall space, and bean bags and couches tucked into corners and any crevice they could find.
"Wow," she breathed.
Chris laughed. "If you like that, you should see the bathrooms. Or the Art room."
"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I lived in Chicago before, and my school didn't put a lot of its funding into the library."
"It's okay. Everyone is amazed by this place for the first few weeks." She was leading her down the left side of the hall way, and through a side door. "Most people who don't know any better walk all the way around the building," Chris told her grinning as she held the door open. "but this is a shortcut you can take even when Mrs. Wright is gone, or has a class." The hallway beyond the door was considerably smaller, and more cramped, and their footsteps only thumped once, unlike in the main hallway, where the echos seemed to last forever.
"You know your way around," Lottie couldn't help the comment as she quickened her pace.
"Yeah, well I've been here a while, and I know people who've been here for even longer, so I learned the ins and outs pretty quick."
"That must be nice." She shook her head, feeling small in this huge place. How would she ever find her way around? "Can I ask how long you've been here?"
"Nine years. Never gone to school anywhere else."
"Wow, your parents must be rich." She regretted saying it as soon as she did. It was rude of her.
Chris didn't seem to mind. In fact, she actually laughed. "No, I just am a really good cook."
"Your mom let you use a stove when you were that young?"
Chris shrugged. "Let's just say my mom wasn't much of a supervisor when I was that young, and I had to eat somehow. Anyways, they base their decisions on scholarships for a brand new class mostly on natural talent, rather than skill. I wasn't making gourmet meals or anything, but I could follow a recipe and stuff."
"That's still pretty impressive. I couldn't even recite the alphabet going into school."
Chris turned, and smiled, pushing open a door, and early morning light temporarily blinded her. "This is the rest of the campus," Chris explained as they stepped out into the fresh air. Lottie breathed in, smiling. Chris was walking again when she opened her eyes, so she hurried to catch up, listening as Chris said, "Now, there is a building for almost everything out here. The main building only holds normal classrooms, and lockers, and the media center. Out here we have the dorm buildings, the cafeteria, the band room, the art room, the chior room, the computer labs, the video room-"
"Excuse me." Chris paused, and looked at her. "I was just wondering if you could tell me which one is the choir room," Lottie explained sheepishly. "I'm going to be in the choir."
"Oh yeah, sure." She raised a hand, pointing to a half-moon building set right up against the wall that marked the right-hand edge of campus. Lottie couldn't make out any details from where she was, except that was black, save two lines of gold running horizontally across the top and bottom. She was so focused on the building that she forgot to watch where she was going, and walked straight into Chris. She jumped back, yelping, and nearly tripped over her feet, but Chris caught her. "Alright?"
She nodded, looking down at her feet. She hadn't even been at the school five minutes and she was already making a fool of herself. She heard Chris say, "Sorry about that. I know better than to just stop like that. I can't tell you how many accidents I've caused that way. Once I did it going down a staircase, and the girl behind me bumped into me and I fell down half flight of stairs. Broke my wrist."
Lottie looked up, mouth turning up into a small smile, and saw that Chris had her hand raised, as though showing off a watch. The smile must have satisfied her, because she turned, and began walking again. "You'll need to know where the dorms are, too. This way."
She followed, and they walked for a long time in silence. Lottie was beginning to think they must be reaching the back of campus, when Chris said, "We call this the flatlands, but the way." They were passing another building, and Chris reached out to run her hand along the oddly-shaped bricks as she passed. "The dorms are right smack in the middle of it."
Lottie thought she could see why it was called the Flatlands. They had been walking since the main building on an expanse of perfectly flat land, layered with thin dirt that kicked up into dust if you weren't careful. "This campus is huge," she thought aloud.
She heard Chris chuckle. "Yeah, it's pretty big, and the Flatlands aren't even all of it. The ball fields are set up behind the treeline. In the woods."
"They built the fields in the forest?"
"Sure. That way people are less inclined to break into the school during games," Chris explained. "That's what Neal told us. My personal opinion? It was a calculation error that they're trying to cover up with lame excuses." She came to a stop and turned to face Lottie. "Welcome to the Hive," and she gestured grandly to two buildings that dwarfed all of the others in height, and almost as much in width. It was made of the same black brick as all of the other buildings, but these were decorated with almost every depiction of a bee imaginable, some appearing to crawl into the windows lining the walls, and a huge bunch of the tiny creatures swarming the door.
"Wow!" She said quietly when Chris continued to look at her expectantly.
"Next to the art room, it's probably got the coolest outside design." If the art room was better than this, then she definitely wanted to see it. "Girls are on the left," Chris was saying, walking towards the specified building, "and guys on the right. We call the courtyard that separates the buildings 'No Man's Land'."
"Do you have a name for everything?" Lottie asked, unable to help herself.
"Oh yeah," Chris replied excitedly, turning to grin at her. "Even the floors."
"Really?" Her eyes widened, interest flickering to life in her chest. "What do you call them."
"The floors," she answered matter-of-factly, turning and disappearing through the door to the girls' dormitories.
It took Lottie a moment to realize that it had been a joke, and she came through the door blushing. Chris was waiting for her a few feet into the room behind the door.
She looked around, and found herself almost gasping again. The room was big-as all Headline things seemed to be-and seemed to be playing a double role as a lobby and a miniature library. On one side of the room, the wall was lined with bookshelves stuffed with text books, and other research books, and stacked with free reading pieces. The area in front of it was fill with tall, slim tables and stools, or squat round tables with short, comfy-looking chairs.
The other side of the room looked similar to the front office; a large television was attached to the wall, with a table set in front of it, and enclosed in a circle of couches. Then, across from the entrance, beside a doorway-through which she could see a carpeted staircase and a hallway lined wih doors-was a fireplace, with plush armchairs and overstuffed beanbags dotting the space in front of it.
"The lounge," Chris told her. "Where we hang out when we don't want to be stuck in our rooms, but aren't supposed to be out of the dorm buildings- that's after ten, by the way. After you reach middle school age they basically don't care when you go to bed so long as you aren't wandering around, or making a bunch of noise and waking the elementaries. Their lights out is at ten."
Lottie nodded, soaking up the information like a sponge. "Stay in after ten, and don't make noise."
Chris nodded, satisfied, and said, "What's your room number?"
Lottie looked down at her schedule, and found a number under the label, "Dorm," in the top right corner. "C-16."
Chris, who had been in the middle of turning toward the staircase with her mouth open as if to tell her to follow, froze abruptly, and stared at her as though she had just spoken a curse.
Lottie found herself hoping for Chris to regain her composure, so that she wouldn't have to ask what was wrong, but she didn't. Jusr as the silence had finally stretched too long, and Lottie was opening her mouth to ask the dreaded question, someone came through the doorway on the opposite side of the room. It was a short, rather compact girl with jet-black hair that was pulled messily into a bun. She, like Chris, had yet to change into a school uniform, and instead was wearing a baggy, green tie-die shirt that reached down to her knees, and loose-fitting black sweatpants that gathered up under her bare heels. She had a textbook tucked under one arm.
Lottie guessed she had heard Chris's voice, because she was talking when she came in, not looking up from the phone in her hand. "I just got a text from Dad. He decided to propose to your mom on her birthday instead. She said yes, of course. I knew she would, but Dad was really-" she trailed off as she finally looked up to see Chris's half-turned position, staring at Lottie. At this point, she was standing in the middle of the lobby beside her. Irritation flashed in her dark eyes as she asked, "What are you doing?"
Chris's face turned red, and she seemed to regain her ability to move and speak, as she scratched her head sheepishly and stammered, "Um, right. I was just showing the new girl around." She gestured to Lottie, ducking her head so she didn't have to meet the shorter girl's eye.
Lottie panicked a little when the girl began walking toward her, and took a step back before realizing what she was doing and forcing herself to stop. The girl stopped a respectable distance from her, crossed her arms, and tilted her head to one side, looking Lottie over curiously. "What's your name?"
"Lottie."
"Hello, Lottie." She held out her hand, and for one awful second Lottie thought she meant to shake hands. "Could I see your schedule?" She scanned it quickly, then handed it back and turned to Chris. "I'll take it form here. Can't have you forgetting how to get to the room because you're too busy acting like a flustered imbecile."
Chris's face was a bright shade of scarlette, and she objected half-heartedly, "I know how to get to the room," but even as she did she was passing Lottie to the door back outside.
"I'm Julie by the way," the dark-haired girl introduced, heading for the staircase. "Your room's on the third floor." They climbed the stairs in silence, and when they reached the third floor landing, Juile gestured her through the door on the right. Their footsteps made muffled sounds on the carpeted floor, and that was the only sound; except music that was playing behind one of the closed doors.
"Here you are," Julie said, coming to a stop beside a door with a brass number sixteen, catching the light flooding in from the window across the hall, which looked out over the forest behind the school.
"Here you are," Julie said, coming to a stop beside a door with a brass number sixteen, catching the light flooding in from the window across the hall, which looked out over the forest behind the school.
"So, if you need anythign you're on a good floor," Julie told her. "Almost everyone here is friendly enough, but if you feel like you need a familiar face; Chris's room I the last door on the left that way," she pointed on down the hallway, "and mine is on the first floor. The first door you see when you go through on the left-hand side. Trust me, you can't miss it," then she added a little bitterly, "My roommate made sure of that."
"I'm sorry," she called at the last second, when Julie was nearly halfway down the hallway. The girl paused, and turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised. She repeated, "I'm sorry. I was just wondering if you could tell me..." she faultered uncertainly, but Julie continued to wait patiently. "What wrong with the room. Did someone die in it or something?"
Julie laughed a little, and shook her head. "No, it's nothing like that." and she came back towards the door, placing one hand on it. "It's just a room, there's nothing wront with it."
"Then..." she fiddled absently with the I.D hanging from around her neck. "Then why did she-I mean, Chris- seem so freaked out when I told her what room I was in?"
Julie considered the question for a long moment. Lottie was just starting to think that maybe she wasn't going to answer when she did. "This time last semester, this room was occupied by another girl. Her name was-is-Jasamin."
"What happened?"
"There was an accident over winter break," Julie explained. "And she was messed up pretty badly. She's now comotose, and her condition has hit some people harder than others. Chris is one of those whom has been hit the hardest." Julie pulled her hand away and turned, walking back down the hallway. "The room isn't the problem. It's the association."
"I'm sorry," Lottie called, but if Julie heard her, she didn't acknowledge it.
~The Old and the New~
Lottie didn't bother going into the room. Not after what she had just heard. So she dropped her bag just inside the door and made her way back down into the lobby, where she wandered around uncertainly, realizing that no one had bothered to check her schedule for the class she was supposed to be in; Career Orientation.
She had been there for quite some time, walking aimless circles around the room, before she was finally stumbled upon. It was the fiery-haired girl from the front office, passing through the room with her nose buried in a large file. They nearly collided, and the girl raised her head with a scowl. "Hey, watch where you're-" she stopped abruptly, both in her walking and talking. "Who are you?"
"I'm, um...uh, Lottie. I'm...Lottie."
She raised one eyebrow. "Charmed." Lottie blushed and shrunk away when the girl moved toward her, but she still held out her hand. "I'm Rose."
"Um, nice to meet you." She hesitated, moved to shake her hand, then pulled back again uncertainly. Rose didn't withdraw, only stood there looking at Lottie expectantly. So she braced herself, and took the hand, shaking it hurriedly before withdrawing as though she'd been bitten.
"Right," Rose said slowly, still eyeing her with ever-increasing curiosity.
Lottie looked down uncomfortably, and remembered the schedule in her hand. "Um, I was wondering if you could, um, tell me how to get to my class?"
Rose's hand was out again, and when Lottie gave her a confused look, she said, "Give me your schedule."
"Oh, right! Sorry." she handed over the paper, blushing fiercly.
She glanced at it briefly, then handed it back. "You don't have a class."
"Excuse me?" She panicked a little, staring at the paper. That couldn't be right. She was looking at a class right there on the paper.
"All eighth grade classes are canceled first and second period because of testing," Rose explained. "You've got about an hour and a half to kill before your first class." Then she was gone as quick as she had come.
Lottie stood there uncertainly, and looked around the room. She thought of the library by the front office, but didn't think she could find her way back to it, so decided against trying. Her next though was of her room, she would have to face it eventually, but she took two steps towards the staircase, changed her mind, and ended up heading for the door int other courtyard instead.
When she reached the door, she noticed for the first time what was set up beside it. A tall wooden podium that stood at her chest, and on it, a thick, black book, trimmed with gold. She paused, fascinated, and opened the cover, but the page inside was blank, and so were all the pages that followed. She took a step back, staring at it with her teeth between her teeth. Okay, she thought, Why is there an empty book on a podium?
Perhaps the thought hadn't been quite as much as a mental one as she had thought, because someone answered her question. "That's the Headline Tale Book." Lottie turned quickly, taking in a sharp breath. The girl from the front office-Lilah, she thought- was standing by one of the tables her, bag slumped open on a chair next ot her. "2014 edition."
"I'm sorry," Lottie said, still uncertain, "but I don't understand. There's nothing in it."
Lilah laughed. "Well, that's because we haven't started writing in it yet."
"I still don't understand."
The older girl smiled, and produced a dark blue pen from her bag, before crossing the room. She handed it to Lottie. "Write something."
"What?" Lottie took a small step back, but Lilah didn't falter.
"Write something," she repeated. "One sentence, or a stanza from a poem, it doesn't really matter which, just write something."
Lottie stared at her, open-mouthed, and didn't move. So Lilah pressed the pent into her hand and turned her towards the book. "Just write something that represents you. Tells a piece of your story."
"So it's like a diary that the entire school can read," Lottie deducted, more reluctant to do anything by the second.
Lilah was silent a moment. "Yes, and no."
"Excuse me?"
"It's sort of like the entire school's diary," Lilah explained, "and it's all anonymous. You write something, then someone will come along later and add to it, and more and more, until next December. Then we put it on the shelf over there and start a new one."
Lottie looked over at the book case, and found that two shelves were nearly full of thick books like the one in front of her. She glanced back at Lilah, "No one will know I wrote it?"
"No one but me."
She pulled the cap off, and pressed the pen to the first empty page. The first thing that came to mind was a piece from a poem. Not one she had written, or one that was published, but one that had been etched into the wall of the bathroom stall at her old school long before her time. She remembered it clearly, having spent many days locked in the stall, back pressed against the door, staring at the words.
The stanza that came to mind, the one she connected to on the deepest level, transferred itself from her mind to the page in her squished, loopy handwriting:
My mother dead,
My father gone,
And awful life for me,
But sometimes I wonder,
How it'd feel, to love someone,
and for someone to love me
She recapped the pen, chewing her lip, and handed it back to Lilah, who was leaned against the bookshelf, examine her shiny, black uniform shoes. She took it without looking up, her brow furrowed curiously. Lottie looked down at them, too. "What is it?"
"My shoe has a scuff on it," Lilah replied mildly. She licked her thumb and knelt, scrubbing away the barely noticeable imperfection. When it was gone, she straightened with a sound of satisfaction, and turned to Lottie. "Have you had breakfast yet?"
"Um, I had peanuts on the plane..."
Lilah laughed a little, like she though Lottie was cute. "That's not breakfast. Come on."
Lottie hesitated, her lip between her teeth again, then snapped the book shut and hurried after.
~The Old and the New~
The cafeteria was no longer serving hot breakfast, but anyone who wanted could eat stale toast, or cold eggs and sausages- and several people were. There were also galleons of milk set out-everything for whole to soy to types of milk she didn't know existed- and shelves lined with boxes of cereals of all brands and flavors, and Pop Tarts, or other choices of packaged pastries. There were freezers filled with yogarts and cream cheese. Other things Lottie had never even seen before and couldn't put a name to.
"If you can't think of anything else good to say about us back home, you can always say you never went hungry," Lilah joked as they approached a table already crowded with people. She might have been self-conscious of everyone looking curiously at her, but she was too busy staring around; trying to take it all in.
"And that we have really clean bathrooms," one of the table's occupants added, and Lottie jumped, suddenly remembering the other people. "Puppy?" he asked Lilah, as she took a seat next to him.
"Puppy," Lilah confirmed, picking a piece of toast from a plate sat in the middle of the group. Lottie blushed, realizing they were talking about her, and hoped it wasn't that bad of a name.
Another boy across the table flicked dark hair out of his eyes, and flashed his perfect, white teeth. "Hey there, Puppy."
The table burst into groans, and one boy with blond, pepper-speckled hair flicked a piece of crust at him and snapped, "Would you knock that off? You're actually making me physically sick."
"You don't look like you're sick," the younger boy retorted, catching the food and throwing it back.
The blond boy leaned over and gagged, and the girl seated beside him cried, "Hey! Don't do that on me!" and shoved him. It was the last girl from the front office, Lottie realized as the girl turned back around, shaking her head.
Lottie took a seat ducking her head and hoping the attention would turn away from her now that they had something new to talk about. The dark-haired boy across the table, however, brought it back around full circle. "So, Puppy, you have a scholarship, or tuition paid?"
"Um," she wrung her hands under the table. "I'm on scholarship."
"Really? So what's your talent?"
"I-uh..." she chewed her lip. "I sing."
"You must be really good. They don't give vocal scholarships to just anyone," the boy told her, biting into a piece of stale toast. "To many singers in this world."
She laughed nervously. "Yeah. Um, I'm okay. I guess."
The boy leaned forward, his dark brown eyes sparkling. "Modesty's sweet, but if you want to make it around here," he waved the toast thoughtfully, and said, "It's not enough to be good. You've got to be good and know it."
Lilah, who was staring at him through half-squinted eyes and over templed fingers, said, "That would have been much more profound without the half-eaten breakfast."
"Hey, give the guy a break," the boy with dreadlocks beside Lilah put in flapping his hand at her. "He's being deep and that's uncharted territory for him."
The boy, who didn't' seem to be listening to the side conversation, leaned forward, and said in a honey-coated voice, "You know, like I'm sexy and I know it." Then he winked.
"Oh, there it went," Lauren announced , and the rest of the table began to laugh.
The boy rolled his eyes. "Do you people mind? I'm trying to have a conversation with the puppy."
"You're trying to get her in bed before she figures out your a conceited man-whore."
He laugehd a little and leaned on his elbow facing Lauren. "I can't be a man-whore, because I am a virgin."
"And also so not a man," the blond boy added, laughing when Andrew junked the half-eaten toast at him.
"How rude!" Lauren said through a laugh. "Throwing food at people?" She shook her head. "I do not approve."
"You don't approve of using food for anything but eating," Andrew said through his own laughter.
"Yes, because that's what food is for."
"No, because you're a bottomless pit."
The table fell into laughter and "Oh"s. Lauren snatched the toast from her blond friend's hand and threw it at Andrew, who ducked. "Now who's throwing food?"
"You're an ass."
"A highly lovable ass."
"No, just an ass." Lauren rolled her eyes at him.
"The puppy thinks I'm lovable. Right, puppy?"
Lottie, halfway through pouring milk into a bowl of Cheerios, jumped, and nearly dopped the carton, when she glanced up to see he was looking at her. "Um...I- I don't really...uh."
"She's shy," Lilah explained, reaching across Lauren for another piece of toast. "Leave her alone."
"I'm not shy," Lottie objected, screwing the lid back onto the milk and shoving the carton as far away as possible. She crouched over the bowl, and muttered, "I'm not shy."
"Shy's okay," the boy assured, but he must have been speaking to Lilah because he added, "Jazz was shy and we all loved her."
"Love," Lauren corrected, suddenly vehement. "We all love Jazz. She's not dead, so everyone needs to stop talking like she is."
"She's as good as dead," the boy argued in an emotionless tone. "A person waking up from that kind of-"
Lauren leapt to her feet, and for a split second, Lottie was sure she was going to come across the table and attack the boy, but instead, she gathered up her things and left in a huff. The blond boy stood to follow, glaring at his insensitive friend. "Way to go, asshole."
It seemed his assessment of this "Jazz"'s condition had struck several neres, because in the minutes that followed, the table empties, until it was only Lottie and the boy, and he seemed to have lost any interest in talking. So they sat in silence until a bell rang, ans he got to his feet. She followed suit quickly.
"My name's Andrew, by the way," he said, holding out his hand. She didn't shake it, but he seemed unphased. "I could show you to your class if you want."
"That would be great," Lottie anwered, relieved, and handed her schedule to him.
Andrew glanced over the paper, then handed it back and said, "Mentoring with Mrs. Rushing? Good luck with that." And began to lead her to the classroom,