Josh’s eyes darted from one face to another, praying that someone—anyone—would tell the truth. But all the kids gathered around Ethan Roeder were his tormentor’s friends, all of them kids from his own class. Kids who already hated him.
His eyes searched further across the cafeteria, and finally fixed on Jerry Peterson, who was standing up on a chair at a table next to the far wall, straining to see the action on the other side of the room and report to his friends what was happening.
Two years ago Josh had been at that table himself, sitting next to Jerry, giggling at whatever joke his best friend might be telling.
Now, Jerry hardly even seemed to see him. Their eyes met for a quick instant, but then Jerry looked away, jumping down off the chair, disappearing behind the crowd of bigger kids who surrounded Josh and the principal.
“Well, what about it?” he heard the principal demanding. “Is that the way it happened?”
Josh shook his head miserably. “I was just sitting by myself, reading. Ethan grabbed my book and wouldn’t give it back.”
“Oh, Jeez,” he heard Ethan groan. “What would I want his stupid book for? I just asked him what he was reading, and he went apeshit, just like he always does!”
“That’ll be enough!” Hodgkins snapped, the look in his eye telling Ethan not to press his hick any further. “Roeder, you and Cortez clean up this mess. And no backtalk! MacCallum, you come with me.”
Josh nodded, but said nothing. His head down, he followed the principal out of the cafeteria, already preparing himself for the lecture he was going to get about disrupting the cafeteria.
The first day of school this year, he decided, was even worse than the first day last year.
And it wasn’t going to get any better.
2
“Chili up, no tears!”
Brenda MacCallum heard the shout from the kitchen, but acknowledged it with no more than a quick nod of her head as she tried to keep up with the changing orders of the four men who were impatiently ordering lunch. Not that she could blame them for their irritability, but was it her fault that Mary-Lou had called in sick that morning, leaving just herself and Annette to deal with the lunch rush? Still, the slow service wasn’t the customers’ problem, and she held her temper carefully in check as one of the men changed his order for the third time. But when Max’s voice—etched with sarcasm this time—came again, his demand to know if she’d suddenly turned deaf combined with the heat of the day to snap the thread of her nerves.
“I hear you,” she yelled back. “But I’ve only got two arms and two feet.”
“More like one of each, given the service around here,” one of the men muttered.
Brenda clenched her jaw, firmly checking the words that hovered on the tip of her tongue, and turned away, heading for the kitchen. Only another forty-five minutes until the noon rush was over. Forty-five minutes until she could find the time to sit down and drink a cup of coffee while the feeling came back into her feet. As she passed the cash register, the phone beside it started ringing. But Brenda ignored it, moving on to the pass-through to slip the order onto the wheel and pick up the three bowls of chili that were still steaming under the warming lights.
“God damn it, Brenda,” Max growled. “You think the customers want their food stone cold?”
“If they want food, they don’t come here in the first place! And don’t yell at me—I’m not the one who called in sick.”
Max opened his mouth as if ready to fire back at her, but then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. And he was right, Brenda reflected as she balanced the three bowls of chili, a basket of stale sourdough bread, and a dish of grated cheddar cheese that was rapidly turning orange, on her left arm, while she picked up the limp salads with her right. This was not the day to push her, not after this morning, when she’d all but had to force Josh into going to school, and tend with the baby’s colicky stomach as well.
As she threaded her way to the table where three women—with whom Brenda had gone to high school only ten years ago—waited for their lunch, she caught sight of herself in the mirror behind the soda fountain, and her heart sank.