1000 Paper Cranes

Chapter 2 - 955

The cafeteria was crawling with myriad faces I had never seen before. I guess, honestly, I had seen them before. I had gone to school with most of these people since kindergarten. Our little town wasn't really a hotspot of domestic activity. People rarely moved in or out.

The noise hit me like a brick wall. It had been three years since I had stepped foot in there; I had forgotten how loud it could be. And smelly. Who could even stomach the food with the smell of rotten eggs and sweaty teenager hanging in the air? Everybody was loud and chewed while they spoke, like Neanderthals.

"Did you know the Neanderthal's brain was bigger than ours?" I asked as Jo and Jon led me to a crowded table.

"Harsh." Somebody at the table was saying as we approached. I had to dig for her name. I had learned it, I was sure, but I was terrible at remembering names. Instead, I just categorized people. Her name was... Second Period Advanced Chemistry. At least, that's how I remembered her. And I had had a crush on Second Period Advanced Chemistry since our freshman year when she had been First Period Biology. And the next year, when she was Sixth Period Music Appreciation. And our junior year, when she had been Third Period Latin.

"Wow! He walks among us!" Second Period Advanced Chemistry said, turning her almond-shaped eyes on me.

"Hey Robin," Joanna smiled as she nudged me to take a seat on the bench next to Robin.

Suddenly, the most amazing thing happened. The crowd of teenagers crammed around the table defied the laws of physics. Where there had been no room, suddenly there were three person-sized spaces. As I sat down to join my peers, though, I realized that the spaces created were only nearly person-sized.

Nobody else seemed to mind our elbows bumping, though. The excited chatter continued at ear-splitting levels and it was impossible for me to understand anything anybody was saying.

"What draws you out of your lair?" Robin asked, leaning close to me and offering me some of the fries from her tray of food.

"Women lean closer to men to show they're interested in a relationship." I spouted, aware of the growing taste of foot in my mouth.

"Uh...huh." Robin hesitated for a long moment between syllables, looking at me as you would a mangy dog—pityingly. "Now I'm not sure what I asked you. I thought I meant the library." She giggled uncomfortably.

"Forgive my socially-challenged friend." Jon laughed, cutting in. "He thinks random facts are a conversation starter."

I rubbed my forehead uncomfortably.

"I guess what I meant to say was that I got dragged out by Jo and Jonathan." I tried again. The words felt strange in my mouth, sticky and cottony. Definitely not my voice.

We sat for a moment longer, just looking at each other in silence. Not that comfortable silence of old friends, either. But that sticky silence of awkwardness. The kind of silence that grows into a void and swallows you and makes you wish you knew a fact about silence to break the silence.

Suddenly, Robin let out a forced laughed, uncomfortably loud. She turned her attention to something Joanna had said and attempted to forget that I existed, I guessed.

I happily pulled my own silence tightly around me like the security blanket it had become. Quietly, I pulled out another pastel sheet of paper and wrote learn to talk to girls on it before folding it into paper crane number 955. Slipping it into my pocket, I waited for the bell to release me from this deafening hell.

It was the longest ten minutes of my life.