Another Lunch

Another day, another lunch.  I walk through those all-too-familiar steel double doors and take my place in the lunch line. The usual smells of bleach and stale food my nostrils. The large white lunch lady hands me my tray without a saying a word. I take my generic black plastic tray and head toward the back of the cafeteria. As I walk past the rows of laughing and happy children my eyes search for the one person I long to see each day. I spot him out at one of the tables of junior-class boys. I walk up, not quite knowing what to expect. I know we have to keep it quiet, I know we won’t hug or even waive, but perhaps a word, just one word can get through this divide. I walk up to him, smile, and open my mouth to speak. Before a single sound can emerge from the depths of my soul I met with a barrage of comments

“You’re master ain’t here girl.”

“You lost? The fields out back.”

“Hey bitch, go fetch me another tray, I’m awfully hungry.”

Each successive comment is met with audible laughter. Those were only the ones I heard, although I’m sure that there were more. I stood frozen, eyes level with Michaels, not knowing what to do. Should I say something? Go? Cry? Run? How could Michael allow this? why didn’t he stop it? i stood and watched until Michael himself, trying to fit in cracked a smile. It’s at that point that the cold began to envelope me and I became alone. Sure he’d apologize and I would take him back, but things were altered forever. I had strayed from the rules, from the confines of color and tried to find my world of Grey. Now I am left, even with Michael, together, alone.

Where Worlds Meet

Regina woke from her nap to a tapping sound. Rat-Tat-Tat…. Rat-Tat-Tat. She rubbed the sleep from her bleery eyes and headed toward her window. Outside was the her counterpoint, her relief. Michael was waiting for her with what looked like a backpack.

“What?” she said with what she hoped sounded like contempt.

“Look I’m sorry about today, the guys, the just don’t understand. They think its funny, like its a joke or something.”

“Michael you shrugged me off at lunch and then ditched me after school! Why would I go anywhere with you?”

“Regina I’m sorry, I’m trying to make up for it, I’m trying tomake it work.”

She paused for a moment. He seems sincere, I want to go with him, I miss him. I’ll go “Whats that for?” Regina asked.

“Stop being so nosy and get out here already, we have to hurry.”

“You’re ridiculous!” Regina said laughingly and climbed out the window.

The two of them climbed into the beat up old 1990 Landcruiser that Michael had gotten for his 16th birthday and pulled away from the house. They drove and drove until they reached the end. The place where they always went to get away. To everyone else it was a parking lot next to a small airport perched on a peninsula between two shipping channels. They parked the car where channel met. That one point where two different paths coming from different cities combined.

To them it was a launching point to a place without boundries, rules, guidelines, or pressures. A place where they could just be. There were sailboats and houseboats dotting the water. Across the channel the sulfur mines billowed that familiar odorous smoke into the blue and orange sky. As the sun continued to fall and the world began to gray, they would lay in the bed of the truck wrapped in a blanket and like the smoke, just drift away. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.