New Guy on the Street (Larry)

Chapter Three: Lunch Got Better

If I had known that my morning was going to be this bad, I would have called in sick. Instead, I woke up fifteen minutes late, spilled orange juice all over my shirt when I was nearly out of the door causing me to have to rummage through box after box to find a clean one. All of that caused Mr. Tomlinson, who insisted to start picking me up for school in the mornings, to be late for work. I apologized nearly thirty times during the car ride, but he just kept brushing me off and saying that it was fine, though it clearly wasn’t.

And to top it all off, the ladies at the front desk were in the middle of a heated conversation on old people things and had yet to assist me. So here I stand waiting for one of them to notice my presence or to send me to class or something, only becoming later and later. I hate being late. First you’re late, then you start ditching, and then you get put in jail. I’ve heard the stories.

“Excuse me?” I ask, yet again. One of the ladies turns to me and hold up a finger.

A bitch did not.

“I really need to get to class,” I say. “I’m missing math. If you miss math you fail math you fail at life and if you fail at life you go to jail and get raped by a guy named Bubba.” The woman stares at me with a look of such confusion that I know I probably shouldn’t have said that. It’s not like I had truly made it up. I had actually gotten the whole analogy from my government teacher a few years back. Except, he said that would happen if you failed government, not math.

“Look kid,” the lady snaps, pointing at me angrily, “the system is down. You are going to have to wait for it to start working before you can go to class. If you had gotten to school on time, you wouldn’t be having this problem.” I roll my eyes and mutter ‘thanks’ before turning my back to the lady and leaning against the counter. It was a simple question that popped into my head: Do I stay here and wait, or do I just go without being checked in?

Guess what I chose.

“Tardy slip, Mr. Styles?” Mrs. Peppers asks, holding out her hand to me right as I walk through her door. I should have thought of that before leaving the office. This school is strict on tardies. Nonetheless, I straighten my back up and prepare myself to lie.

“I don’t have one,” I say forming an excuse in my mind. “The system was down so they just told me to come to class.” There. That wasn’t totally a lie.

“Fine. Sit down and open your book to page three-ten,” she says with clear annoyance laced in her voice. “We are on the second paragraph of column two. Eddy, you keep reading.” I walk over to my desk and sling my things next to it as I sit down in my seat. After I rummage around my backpack for a while, I get out my binder, pencils, calculator, and finally my book. Eventually, I give up on trying to find the place in the book that Eddy was reading from and let my thoughts drift elsewhere.

Elsewhere meaning Mr. Tomlinson.

I really hoped he wasn’t mad at me. It’s not like I meant to make us that late, it just happened. I really don’t want him mad at me. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to hold grudges, but then again he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who can cook and on my first night there he made a huge meal all by himself. That can’t be good.

Finally the bell rang and I could leave my first class. I had no clue why I was so exited to get out of Mrs. Peppers’ room, but I was. Even though I had to suffer through four more classes, I guess anything was better than being glared at by an old lady who was mad at you for being late. To my surprise, I did eventually make it out of those four classes I was dreading and into the lunch room. I decided against eating today after looking at the long lines and worked on finding myself a place to sit. For the first two days, I had sat in the bathroom for an hour reading a book. I’m finished with the book now, which reminds me that I needed to go to the library to get a new one.