turning a bright shade of red, he would assign the antagonist detention. When everyone was packing up to go, Mr. Collins set the eraser on the desk in front of Lily, and headed for the teacher’s lounge to de-stress.
“Now’s my chance, it’s mine this time,” Deans thoughts hummed at her. This time Lily snatched her eraser quickly from the desk and stuffed it in the pocket of her backpack. She glanced up to see Dean’s startled face, smiled innocently, and promptly left the room.
***
By lunchtime, she was more than ready to take a match to her crutches. Malaya plopped down in the blue plastic chair beside Lily and began to chatter away about her classes and how the cafeteria spaghetti looked like elongated worms. Lily slowly ate and listened until her thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing she had heard earlier that morning. However this time the buzzing didn’t go away, but instead morphed into words so clear they may as well have been her own thoughts.
“Look at that nerd. He shouldn’t even be allowed into school dressed like that. It should be illegal. I think he needs to go for a little trip.” Just as the words ended in Lily’s mind, there was a crash a couple of tables over. Lily jerked her head around to see someone lying on the floor. It was Robert from her Algebra class. His tray had splattered all over the floor and red tomato sauce covered the front side of his shirt. Directly behind him sat Dean, one of Landon’s friends, and one of the worst bullies of the school. Everyone in the room stared as Robert slowly stood, obviously embarrassed, and began to pick up his tray.
“You should go help him,” Lily urged Malaya.
“Yeah, no one else will, I guess,” she replied clearly hoping someone else would volunteer for the job. With a sigh Malaya shoved back her chair and wove her way through the tangled web of cafeteria tables. She began sweeping spaghetti worms into a pile with the edge of her shoe, and then with a wad of napkins from a nearby table she scooped them up and tossed them in the trash. Robert shot her a look of gratitude, and then continued his own efforts to wipe up the mess. Dean just smirked at them and went back to scarfing down his own lunch. Lily watched feeling helpless when she noticed that Landon wasn’t at the table with his friends. She looked around wondering where he was. Had he seen what his “friend” had just done? Was he going to do or say anything about it?
“Probably not,” Lily thought disappointed. Lily knew Landon wasn’t really like those jerks, but she also knew he wouldn’t stand up to them either. Just as she was about to give up her search, she spotted him standing at the salad bar. It seemed he didn’t have the slightest idea that anything had happened. If he had seen Robert trip, apparently he didn’t care. Landon rounded his way around the tables to sit with his friends. By that time Malaya was back in her chair munching away on a carrot stick.
“So do you know that guy? I think I’ve seen him somewhere before,” Malaya crunched away. “Maybe he’s in one of my classes. I can’t remember.”
“That’s Robert; he’s in my algebra class. Dresses a little odd, but he seems like a really nice guy,” Lily said, glancing his direction. He sat in a corner along with a handful of other “geeks”. His clothing was well worn, and incredibly out of style. His blue t-shirt was tucked into his high-waisted jeans. However bad his clothes were, he had a handsome face. Lily thought his brown, wavy hair was a little long, but not terrible enough to bother cutting it yet. He had a dimple when he smiled, which wasn’t very often. Lily had only seen it once a few weeks ago when he got the best grade in the class. He didn’t have a lick of fashion sense, but he was sure smart. Jason Hadley usually got the best grade in algebra, but Robert was always a close second as far as Lily could tell.
“He’s pretty cute, I mean, he has nice brown eyes. They’re almost like warm fudge brownies. Hmmm…” Malaya was also staring in his direction. “I think we should be nicer to him in the future,” she said tilting her head to the side. “If nothing else, he can tutor us.” Lily