Chapter 2

Victor spent the rest of that day and the morning of the next worrying about lunch.

It wasn't like he asked for much from Lawndale High. Just a place where, for 25 minutes a day, he didn't have to deal with people. That Li was taking even that away from him—all because two morons started a fire in the auditorium—felt like a personal insult.

Sitting at the back of Mr. O'Neill's 4th period English, Victor wondered if he could talk the man into letting him hide in the classroom. It was possible, he reasoned. You could talk O'Neill into almost anything.

Except he'd almost always screw it up.

"Uh, excuse me, Mr. O'Neill? Sir?" Victor asked, after the lunch bell rang.

Mr. O'Neill smiled. "Yes, Vanya?"

Victor blinked. "Victor."

"Oh, dear! Of course, how silly of me! How can I help you? Victor?"

"Yes, well, I was wondering if I could spend lunch in your room." He decided to just tell the truth. "I find the cafeteria very stressful, and I'd much rather read in here. We can, uh, talk if you want."

God, he hoped he wasn't laying a trap for himself with that.

"Oh, my. First, let me say that I'm honored that you consider my classroom as a safe place. But I'm afraid Principal Li's new rules are quite clear."

"Yes, but—"

"I know it's a challenge but think of it as an adventure! The cafeteria's full of people who'd love to have a friend like you."

"Actually, I haven't really observed that—"

"Consider it a part of your education." And then he smiled, like he'd just delivered some benediction.

"Uh, right. Thank you, sir."

Clenching his hands into fists, he stalked out of the room.

Inexorably, each doomed step took him closer to the dreaded cafeteria. The students already crowding the halls felt like a grim harbinger of the chaos that awaited behind those doors.

His old high school in California hadn't been great—okay, fine, it had sucked—but at least they'd eaten lunch outdoors. Noise wasn't so bad that way.

Reaching the cafeteria threshold, he braced for the worst.

He was not prepared.

The place was jam-packed with people, so many that there was barely any room to stand. All the kids who'd sensibly taken lunch elsewhere now had no choice but to eat in the cafeteria. The noise was the worst. Feet stomping on linoleum. Human chatter at every pitch imaginable, so it felt like the air was going berserk with sound. Teeth gnashing food in a steady and slimy susurration of chomping.

Victor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Okay, he could do this. Just tune it out, even though he felt it as much as he heard it. Well within his power.

Dammit! He still had to sit somewhere.

He surveyed the tables, students squeezed together on the metal benches. Where was he even allowed to go? No way would he let himself repeat the error of his first day in Lawndale, where he'd tried multiple tables only to be told that no, he wasn't welcome at any of them.

The nerds, Gary, Nate, and Paul had been crowded to the end of one of the less popular tables. Still probably laughing at math jokes and laughing even harder at the people who didn't get them.

Victor wondered if Nate still did that stupid gag where he sneezed milk through his nose.

"Make way!" cried a cheery voice.

The next thing Victor knew, a solid wall of muscle slammed right into him followed by a cleated shoe slamming down on his foot. He wriggled free and fell as what looked like the entire football team marched by in yellow and blue.

"And it looks like Lawndale High's annual 'Running of the Jocks' has claimed yet another hapless victim," droned a hateful and familiar voice.

Victor propped himself up on his knobby elbow and glared at Daria, just long enough to let her know that yes, he'd heard, and yes, he knew she was making fun of him.

For what it was worth, he also knew she was referring to Pamplona.

Standing next to Daria, tray in her hands, was Jane.

Why did Jane have to be her friend? He'd heard something had happened between the two of them at the end of junior year—but whatever it had been, they'd apparently patched it up.

But Jane looked slightly annoyed at Daria's comment. "Hey, are you okay?" she asked, leaning forward a bit.

He wanted to snap a photo of her in that moment. She was worried—well, concerned about, at least—about him.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."

He pushed his skinny, porcelain-fragile body off the ground. By the time he got back on his feet, both Daria and Jane were long gone.

He'd seen some of Jane's art, watched as she worked magic with nothing more than paper and pen. Why did someone that creative shackle herself to Daria? She probably made fun of Jane's art, and Jane put up with it for… some unfathomable reason.

It didn't make sense. But nothing in Lawndale High did.

Victor decided he wasn't going to play the stupid table game. Some kids stood to eat that day, and he'd do the same. He'd packed his usual lunch: a ham sandwich and a granola bar. In the good old days, food just had to be something he could eat quickly on the way to the library.

He spotted Priscilla, who stood near the nerd table. With arms crossed, she glared at Gary, Nate, and Paul with eyes like death beams.

"Hey," Victor said.

She kept glaring. Victor didn't blame her—she was good at it. Good enough to give Daria a run for her money, even.

"Hey!"

That time she looked at him, her death beam intensity dropping down to more of a stun gun level of hostility.

"Hey."

"This really sucks, doesn't it," he said, shouting a bit to be heard.

"It's the last place on campus I want to be." Her eyes swiveled back to the crowd.

A thought occurred to Victor. "Uh, pardon me if this is offensive, but I know there's a Christian Student Club. Maybe you'd like to hang out with them?"

No reason she should have to play the table game if she already had a place and simply didn't know it. But Priscilla sneered.

"If by that you mean the Pharisee Student Club, no, I don't want to hang out with them."

Victor just nodded. He didn't know what a Pharisee was, but her feelings toward her co-religionists were clear. Not that it helped him. The noise still felt like someone using hammers to play a percussion solo on his skull.

"We'll be eating lunch here for the rest of the year," he said, and each word seemed to hammer in the awful reality of the situation.

"I'm being tested," she said.

Nate chose that moment to stand up from his seat. Victor saw the carton of milk in Nate's hand, and immediately knew what was going to happen. He drew back from the table, the world switching to slow-mo as the first gobs of snot-infused white liquid burst forth from his classmate's nostrils.

Priscilla's eyes doubled in size. A low cry escaped her lips as drops of the milk splashed her hair, her face, and her cardigan. Victor, pinned to the wall, had just escaped—but he hadn't warned her in time.

The table erupted. To their credit, the rest of the nerds seemed as annoyed at Nate as everyone else.

"Why are you still doing that, dumbass!" either Gary or Paul shouted.

Priscilla gagged.

"I can't believe this!" she exclaimed.

"Sorry! Uh, Nate does that. Can I get you a towel?" Victor asked, feeling entirely inadequate.

She stormed off, presumably to the girl's room. Alone in the noise, Victor wished he could take out his graph paper and start drafting plans for his army—anything to escape. But if there was one lesson he'd learned in junior high, it was that publicly laboring over detailed strategic plans always drew bullies. Specifically, bullies against whom no strategic plan ever seemed to prevail.

He miserably ate his sandwich, finishing as Priscilla returned with her face red and her jaw clenched so tight, he could imagine her teeth cracking under the pressure.

"I hate this," Victor said.

"I hate this, too," Priscilla agreed.

Victor looked at her, and then at the rest of the crowd, their jeering mouths and angry eyes blurring together as if the constituent parts of a single fleshy monstrosity.

At least it was a Friday.

On Saturday, Victor carefully packed his miniatures (the Cadian 15th: small in stature and in numbers), carefully laid them out in a box which he then put in his backpack and biked over to the Dragon's Tower for the weekly game.

There, in a mere 90 minutes, the Ork armies of Darren "Green Tide" Jones trashed Victor's Cadian 15th thoroughly and decisively. No hard feelings, though—Victor was a mediocre player at best, so he kept his Saturday expectations realistic. He and Darren shook hands after the match. With plenty of time to spare, Victor turned his attention to the match at the other table. There, Gavin and Rodney, two of the better players (also, both of them players with money who could afford big armies), waged furious battle.

Rodney's Chaos army looked stronger on paper, but Gavin's nimble Eldar warriors kept whittling away at the heavily armed and armored daemons and Chaos marines. Somehow, Gavin got all his pieces to work in perfect cohesion.

That's what it took, he realized. Lots of different groups working in unison.

Maybe, just maybe, his classmates could do that.

Wait. Who was he kidding? Sure, he (sort of) knew plastic soldiers, but he didn't know people. It's not like folks came with stat blocks and clear rules. He wished they did.

As he biked home later that afternoon and started cooking dinner for his mom, he realized he didn't have much of a choice. He could either let the cafeteria drive him mad, or he could take a stand and do something about it.

"Hold the line," he whispered to himself, as he tossed some diced garlic into the soup.

Lunch on Monday wasn't as bad as it had been on Friday.

It was worse.

An unseen tension now wove its way into the raucousness. The lunch line extended along the cafeteria's walls, the students crammed so close together that they practically stepped on each other's toes. Metal tables groaned under the extra weight, with the least popular members of a clique pushed to the edges of the benches and sometimes to the floor below. The voices carried an edge, with loud arguments constantly breaking above the hum of strained conversation.

Victor navigated his way through the noisy morass to rejoin Priscilla, who'd relocated to instead stand in judgment over the table dominated by the fashion-forward types. Her glare showed she hated them as much as she hated nerds.

"Hey," Victor said.

"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity!" Priscilla intoned, staring at Quinn, who was either Daria's sister or cousin and who at least pretended to be nice.

"Oh. Not a fan of high fashion? I guess I'm not, either. But it's not like I'm an expert—"

"I spoke to Jodie this morning," Priscilla interrupted, turning to look at him. "I was hoping she might be able to do something, but she says Li won't budge."

"That's unfortunate."

"Li's heart is as hard as pharaoh's. And even pettier."

"Which," Victor said, unslinging his backpack and opening it up, "means we may have to be our own Moses."

He glanced up to see if Priscilla acknowledged the reference, but she just stared. He took out a few sheets of paper he'd printed out the previous day.

"I, uh, took the liberty of preparing some petitions," Victor said. "Li may be hard-hearted, but she might still bow to pressure if we get enough signatures."

Victor handed some of the papers to Priscilla.

"Huh," she uttered, nodding. "Have you ever met Li?"

"Not since orientation, no."

"She's not big on listening. Believe me, I've been responsible for a few petitions in my day."

"I see. How many signatures did you get?"

Priscilla was silent for a moment. "One. My own. But I got the feeling she wouldn't care even if I'd gotten a hundred people to sign."

That wasn't promising. "I see. I'm sure we can get some signatures if we work together. I really don't think Li's decision is a popular one. There are way too many people in here and it's starting to cause friction."

"It's worth a try."

Victor looked out at the cafeteria. God, the place was packed. He hadn't even realized how crowded Lawndale High was until that moment. Easy to forget when he spent his lunch periods in the library.

He noticed Jane—and Daria, inevitably—sitting at the corner of one of the tables to his left. The petition gave him a reason to talk to her. Victor's chest tightened, suddenly conscious of how small and frail he looked—

"All right. Let's split up to cover more ground," Priscilla said. "I'll start at the left, you start at the right, and we'll meet back here at the center after everyone ignores us."

"Actually, could I get the left?" Victor asked, because that's the side were Jane sat. "I'm acquainted with a few people there," he lied.

Priscilla shrugged. "They're all the same reprobates as far as I'm concerned. Go for it."

She signed her petition, and Victor signed his. Then Priscilla turned to face him. "Good luck, Victor. Maybe someone else will actually sign my petition this time."

"Good luck," Victor echoed.

Then he marched to the left, petition papers in his sweaty hands. Victor tried to remember the last time he'd had a conversation with a student outside of Priscilla or the context of classwork. A moment later, he realized he couldn't.

This would be a challenge.