Love With Your Heart Not Your Eyes

Chapter 3: New Habitat

Chapter 3: New Habitat

Lunch.

The part of the day I’ve been dreading the most.

When I was the popular girl, it was simple; I sat at the best table with the majority of my friends, well the rest of the ‘populars’ really, but that wasn’t the case now. It was neither an option nor a preference.

I decided I had two options: I could either find a quiet corner in the cafeteria, where I could try and pick at my lunch in peace. Or I could go and hide in the restrooms till lunch was over.

The latter option would probably make me more of a target, especially to the ‘populars’ at this school, who thankfully I hadn’t met yet. But, and I speak from experience here when I say that all popular girls, from any school, always eat their lunch then go to the restrooms to top up their makeup and gossip about the students who they think are lower than them. By eating my food in the restroom I was basically just asking for their insults and ridicule.

So I guess I was stuck with my first option to go and find a quiet corner, which from looking at the crowded  cafeteria in front of me, was going to be harder than I anticipated because I could see cliques from here.

You know I always found it funny how people separate themselves from others like they don’t belong; they are basically labelling themselves. You know you have the little cliques of people who never branch out, but if you didn’t have them, there would be no people who considered themselves higher up or superior to others. That is the basic definition of a ‘popular’, they think they are better than people when they’re really worse than them all, me included.

Without really looking for them you could spot this school’s ‘populars’ from a mile away and I wasn’t surprised when I saw that Ian was among them. Even within their clique you could see the hierarchy, the queen bee and her boyfriend at the top of the table then her wannabe’s and the boyfriend’s friends lower down.

The rest of the cafeteria was laid out similarly with the jocks, the cheerleaders, the geeks, the emo’s/goth’s, the music freaks etc - a typical high school cafeteria, how refreshing.

I walked around the stereotypical room, keeping my head low and searching desperately for a lone table where I could sit and be unbothered.

Surprisingly, when I dared to raise my eyes, I found a lone table in the corner of the room. Once I had seen it I was determined to not take my eyes off it till I was sat at the red hair that was, currently, turned over.

I could feel the smile rising on my face as I got closer and closer to my new best friend, the table. With my eyes never leaving the table I completely missed the bag that was, so conveniently, placed in the middle of the gap between two tables, right in my path to the unused table.

My foot got caught on one of the bags’ handles as I began to step over it. Stumbling forward I began to panic; as a result I tighten my grip on my tray so I didn’t drop it. Hopping, in a hope to regain my balance, I shook my raised foot to detangle it from the bag.

I let out a sigh of relief as I managed to not face plant the floor for the second time today. Although I didn’t fall over, I did gain the stares of the whole room and if anyone didn’t know there was a new kid at the school, they did now.

“Hey, freak, that’s my bag!”

Looking over to were the sound had originated I saw a blonde cheerleader staring angrily at me, waiting for my response.

Swallowing heavily I hesitated before mumbling “Sorry, I didn’t see it.”

“Yeah and you won’t see my fist hit you in the face if you touch my bag again!”