“Dude!” Joe let out a low whistle. “You better fix that shit before she gets tired of waiting on you.”
Joe was definitely right. Without question, I still owed Mayra one date, and as her boyfriend, I needed to plan more outings for the future. I hadn’t considered prom, but it was only a few weeks away, and I should probably ask her about that as well. I glanced at the back of Joe’s head, simultaneously grateful he brought it up and still a little pissed off he thought Mayra was hot.
I was going to have to get all of this worked into my budget, too.
Later on, I felt my heart rate increase a little as I took my lunch out of my locker and headed toward the cafeteria. I hadn’t seen Mayra since this morning, and I knew we were supposed to eat lunch together. I hadn’t eaten lunch with anyone but Joe all year, and I tried to keep it together when I realized that Mayra and I had not discussed where we would sit. Would she come to the table where I usually sat, or was I supposed to go to her table?
I decided to hang out by the line of people buying school lunch and wait for Mayra. I fully intended to tell her I’d rather she came to sit with me and Joe, but I wasn’t sure how she would feel about that. Mayra always ate at a table full of other girls—mostly on the soccer team—and a few boys as well.
I shuffled my feet back and forth a bit as people began to crowd into the cafeteria. I hadn’t seen Mayra yet, but her locker was in the hallway farthest from the lunchroom, so it wasn’t surprising that it would take her a while to get here. Joe was already seated at the table where we always sat, and I figured I ought to at least tell him that I was going to eat with Mayra.
As I started toward the table, I felt a sharp pain in my ankle and the floor was suddenly very close to my face. I managed to get my hands out in front of me before I hit the ground, but my lunch was smashed under me and my knees hit the floor hard. I could hear a laugh from behind me, and I knew it was Justin Lords before I ever looked up.
“You need to watch where you’re going,” he said as I rolled over and sat up. “You get into the wrong man’s territory, and you just might get yourself hurt.”
I started to pull myself back up when he shoved me back to the floor with a hand to my shoulder.
“I’m the wrong man, you fucking freak.”
There is some kind of high school law of physics about rules being broken when teachers have their backs turned. At that point, there wasn’t a single adult in the area except for those scooping ladles
full of goulash onto plastic trays. I also knew the second law that went along with the first: If I were to retaliate, that’s when a teacher would walk into the room.
As much as I might have wanted to hit Lords right then, I knew I couldn’t. It was against the school rules, and I was eighteen, which meant it could potentially be an assault charge. Of course he had started it, but I wasn’t going to be able to prove he had tripped me intentionally.
I couldn’t hit him, so I just moved away and sat with Joe.
I really hadn’t had any intention of telling Mayra about my encounter with Justin Lords, not because I didn’t want her to know, but I tended to leave those kinds of things in the past and not dwell on them much. Thinking about such things or acting on them didn’t bring anyone anything other than additional misery. Talking to Mayra about it would just have brought it back into the present again, and I avoided such conflicts.
Joe didn’t have any similar tendencies, apparently.
“So what are you two going to do about Lords?” he asked as Mayra sat down at our table. I had just begun pulling out my slightly squished sandwich and setting it up with my carrots. I was pretty sure there was a bruise on my chest from where I fell on my apple, but the apple itself seemed okay.
“What do you mean?” Mayra asked.
Joe continued before I could stop him.
“Well, he just tripped Matthew and shoved him,” he blurted out. “I kinda doubt he’ll be done with that. He told Matthew to stay away from you, and that was before you were out of the closet.”
He snickered, and Mayra’s eyes turned to me. I poked around at my squished bread, refusing to meet her gaze. I could feel her staring at me, and it seemed like there was heat radiating from her body to mine.
“That son of a bitch,” she muttered. She was off the bench and stomping across the room in about the same amount of time it took me to open the zipper on my bag of carrots.
“Shit,” Joe muttered. “She’s pissed.”
I looked up and saw Mayra marching right over to the table where Justin was sitting with some of his football buddies. I had no idea what she was planning, but I felt compelled to follow her and try to stop her from…well, whatever she was thinking about doing. I placed my carrots next to the sandwich and slowly followed her.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Mayra was leaning over in front of Justin with her palms flat on the table. He leaned so his chair was balanced on its back two legs and grinned up at her.
“No idea what you mean, babe,” he responded with a wide grin. “As far as I can tell, I’m perfect.”
His buddies laughed, and Mayra continued her tirade.
“You leave Matthew and me alone!” she ordered. She lifted her hands up off the table and shook one finger at him. “I don’t want anything to do with you anymore, and you know that! I thought we were going to try to at least be friends, but I see you are going to make that impossible!”
The sharp sound of the front legs of Justin’s chair hitting the floor as he leaned forward filled the cafeteria and made me cringe. A lot of conversations around us ended right about then, and the room grew quiet. When I looked up at him, there was a look in Justin’s eyes I didn’t like at all. It was beyond the normal look of someone who just wanted to show his friends how awesome he was by picking on others. I looked back at the floor, unable to keep my eyes on his. His expression was full of malice, and I suddenly didn’t want Mayra near him at all. I reached out and gripped the lower part of her arm, trying to coax her away.
“Oh, we were never going to be friends.” Justin sneered as he leaned close to her. I kept my grip on her arm, but Mayra refused to move. “Never just friends.”