avannah slid her lunch tray down the metal bars in front of the lunch choices that were displayed behind the clear plastic sneeze guard like so many science experiments gone bad. Here a metal container of steaming yellow goo, here a mass of overcooked and wilted greenish-brown vegetables, here some kind of mystery meat covered in gravy, and finally the ever present fake mashed potatoes. Savannah quickly moved past each container and finally took a small, cold roll, a banana and a carton of chocolate milk. Savannah looked at the measly lunch on her tray and wished that she wasn’t such a picky eater.
Just the night before her mom had pointed out the
difficulty of cooking for her. “How can I cook anything when you don’t like the
main ingredients in most common meals?
Spaghetti, tacos, chili, hamburgers, you won’t eat any of them!”
“I eat tacos.
Remember those shrimp ones you made?”
Savannah had replied.
Her mother sighed heavily. “Yes, Savannah, you do have a taste for
expensive food – shrimp, salmon, steak.
But you know it’s not in our budget to eat those things every night.”
Savannah had learned that there were a lot of things “not
in our budget”, but no one ever said that military families were rich. In fact, Savannah had come to realize there
were a lot of things that no one could say about military families. Such as living in one place your whole life,
or having your family together. She
remembered with disappointment all the moves her family had made. But it was her dad’s departure to Iraq that
sent a stab of worry through her.
Just
two weeks before he had filled his foot locker with all the things he would
need to be away in a foreign country for a year – uniforms, boots, desert gear,
a laptop, tons of movies, an IPod loaded with music, books and a few snacks he
liked and knew he wouldn’t be able to find over there. Her dad had insisted that the family not come
to see him off at the departure ceremony.
He said it would only be harder to say goodbye there, so Savannah and her
mom and brother had tearfully told him goodbye at their house, then watched him
leave with one of the other soldiers who came to pick him up. Those first few hours that he was gone the
house seemed so quiet and empty to Savannah.
She didn’t know how it would be possible not to see her dad for an
entire year. Her mom had tried to be
upbeat, and fixed a nice dinner that even Savannah liked. After that, the days seemed to drag by until
he finally called and said his company had made it to Kuwait and they would be
there for a couple weeks before moving on to their base in Iraq. This news did much to perk up Savannah’s mom,
who had been teary-eyed and nervous since her dad had left. Even Josh came out of his bad mood for a bit
and played with his plastic Army figures.
As
Savannah made her way to a table in the cafeteria she thought of Josh and how
hard the next year would be for him. She
remembered her promise to her mom to help him through it, but she just wasn’t
sure what she could do for him. The only
thing that would really make him happy was having their dad home again.
Finding
an empty table, Savannah sat down and was just about ready to peel her banana
when she heard a familiar, unpleasant voice shout to her from nearby.
“Hey, Savannarexic, I think that’s more than
you had for lunch yesterday. Careful,
you might get fat!” Eileen was smirking
at her from a few tables over. Eileen’s
friends Jonetta, Shelley and Lisa, better known as the “Brat Pack” by Savannah,
giggled approvingly into their lunches.
“A banana, and a roll? Are you sure you can finish all that?” Eileen laughed loudly at her own joke and
turned back to her own lunch.
Savannah
was determined not to let the Brat Pack get to her. They had been bothering her ever since she
moved to the school in the fall, although she wasn’t sure why she was the
target of their meanness. She had enough
to worry about with her dad being gone and her brother upset over him leaving. Eileen’s mean comments didn’t deserve to
register a blip on her screen right now.
That decided, Savannah ate her lunch as quickly as she could. When she rose to take the tray back to the
kitchen, she was suddenly surprised by the sound of clapping. Confused, she looked around and saw Eileen
and the Brat Pack standing up and applauding.
Soon, other students stood and began clapping too. They hooted and whistled. One boy shouted “Look! She finished all her food!”
Savannah
felt her face go hot. The tears pushed
behind her eyes, threatening to spill, but she refused to let them. Instead, she stiffened her back, stared down
the other students, and then turned to leave her tray at the kitchen and get
out of the cafeteria as quickly as possible. The sound of applause followed her all the way
out and down the hall.
#
Head
bent low over the math assignment on her desk, Savannah looked up through the
brown curtain of her bangs to steal a glance at the new girl. Well, she technically wasn’t new anymore
since she’d moved to the school a month ago.
The girl, Trudy, sat at her desk with a concentrated expression as her
pencil hovered just over her math paper.
Her long blonde hair draped over her shoulders and her straight bangs
hung just to the middle of her green eyes.
Blowing the bangs out of her eyes, Trudy appeared to attack the next
math problem with her pencil, jabbing and scraping the lead over the paper, the
concentrated look on her face getting even deeper and creasing her brow. Breathing out a huge sigh, Trudy flipped the
pencil over in her fist and began furiously erasing then quickly began writing
again without even wiping away the bits of used eraser.
Savannah
looked back down at her own math paper and saw rows of neat numbers, each
problem carefully numerated and the answers circled with heavy pencil mark. Math had always been Savannah’s favorite
subject, mostly because it was easy for her.
She liked the way that numbers didn’t surprise you. They were so predictable with their patterns
and formulas. It didn’t matter which way
you wrote 4 + 4, the answer would always be 8, and that certainty was
comfortable. Savannah glanced up through
her bangs again at Trudy who had taken to chewing the end of her pencil as she
looked down unblinking at her math paper, as if winning a staring contest with
it would reveal the answers she needed.
The
girl sitting just in front of Trudy turned around, took one look at Trudy’s
paper and smirked. Eileen’s shiny black
hair hung in perfect waves down to her shoulders, a hint of eye shadow on her
eyes and gloss on her lips gave her the appearance of being older than the 12
she was. She pointed one pink tipped
fingernail at Trudy’s paper.
“Here’s your problem,” she said
in a voice loud enough for everyone in the nearby seats to hear. “You forgot to ROUND the numbers before you
multiplied them.”
The
word round rolled out of her mouth
and hung in the air like the echo of a fireworks shell after it explodes. Muffled laughter broke out nearby and Eileen
settled her face into a self-satisfied smile.
She looked from side to side to acknowledge the laughter coming from her
friends.
Encouraged,
Eileen continued her lecture. “Of
course, we learned how to do that over a month ago, but you weren’t here
then. I guess your last school never
taught you that?”
Trudy’s
cheeks bloomed pink, but from embarrassment or anger Savannah wasn’t sure. “Oh sure, they taught us that,” Trudy said,
eyes narrowed at Eileen. “They also
taught us how to be respectful, which
it seems your teacher hasn’t gotten to yet.”
Savannah recognized a slight drawl in her voice; the kind that you get
after spending just enough time in a southern state to pick up the habit.
Eileen’s
glossy lips turned down in a little frown.
“Well, I was only trying to help,” she muttered and quickly turned back
around to her own work. Savannah
couldn’t hear Trudy’s mumbled response as she returned to chewing on the end of
her pencil and staring down the math problems on her page.
A slow
smile began to spread across Savannah’s face.
She had never seen anyone put Eileen in her place so neatly before. After the scene in the cafeteria that Eileen
had instigated, Savannah was glad to see someone who could stop her in her
tracks. Before she could stop it, a
small giggle escaped from Savannah. The
look on Eileen’s face from Trudy’s comeback had been truly funny. Savannah smothered her laugh and glanced over
at Trudy only to see her staring back. Trudy
smiled at her, and then turned her attention back to her math paper.
#
When the bell rang signaling the end of school, Savannah
couldn’t be happier to pack up her things and head home. The scene in the cafeteria had put her on
edge, just waiting for Eileen’s next cutting comments. Even though Eileen had been strangely quiet
since her run in with Trudy during math, Savannah didn’t feel like waiting
around for her to come out of her stupor.
Shoving her English book into her backpack and zipping it closed,
Savannah turned to head for the classroom door, and almost ran into Trudy.
“Hi,” Trudy said.
She smiled and cocked her head to the side like she was trying to figure
out how Savannah would respond, or if she would just run out the door
instead. When Savannah didn’t
immediately reply Trudy kept talking like there had been no uncomfortable
silence between them. “I saw what happened
with Eileen in the cafeteria today. She
can be such a brat.”
At that, Savannah smiled.
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said.
Trudy’s smile widened.
“Has she always been that mean to you?” she asked.
“Well, yes, since I started in the fall.”
Trudy looked surprised.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were new here too.”
Savannah’s smile faltered a little. “Yea, I’m always the new kid. But I’m used to it.” She shrugged on the last words.
Trudy glanced at Savannah’s Army backpack slung over her
shoulder. “Oh, so you’re in the Army
too? I thought maybe you were just one
of those kids that liked Army stuff. You
know, living in a base town it’s pretty easy to get those things.”
Savannah only heard the first part of what Trudy said
because she was stuck on the words ‘you’re
in the Army too?’ She wasn’t sure
why she’d never realized it, but she hadn’t thought about Trudy being an Army
kid. “Yea, my dad works on helicopters,”
Savannah finally said.
“Oh, cool! My dad
flies around in helicopters a lot. He’s
a medic.” She turned to look around the
classroom, but it was empty. “Looks like
Eileen took off before we could chat more.”
She grinned. “Hey, are you
walking home? Maybe we could walk
together.”
Savannah hesitated.
Trudy seemed nice, and she had managed to shut Eileen up for the
afternoon. But Savannah remembered her
promise to herself not to get too attached.
She knew once her dad came home they would probably be moving to a new
town. And she doubted she’d have time
for anything now with her brother needing her to help him while their dad was
gone. “I don’t know,” she looked
apologetically up through her brown bangs at Trudy. “I’m kind of busy.”
Disappointment flashed briefly across Trudy’s face. Then seeing Savannah’s backpack again, she
bit her lip thinking. “No, I
understand. It’s just that, you’re
pretty good at math, right? I’m pretty
horrible at math and I wondered if maybe you could help me with my homework
tonight? I saw you’re bringing your
English book home. I can help you with
the questions to the story if you want.
We already read that story at my last school before I left.”
Savannah considered for a moment. It would be easy to help Trudy with her math,
and she did need help with those story questions. One night of homework together wasn’t really
committing to a friendship anyway.
Savannah adjusted her backpack on her shoulder and said, “Sure, I can do
that. You want to come over to my
house?”
“That sounds great!”
Trudy smiled widely at her. “I
just have to be home by five for dinner.”
She turned to head out the classroom door.
Savannah heard that slight drawl in Trudy’s voice again
on the word five. “Where did you live before here?” she asked,
falling into step behind Trudy.
“Oh, we lived on Ft. Bragg. You know, in North Carolina? We were there for about three years. The last six months we were there my dad was
in Iraq, so when my dad told us we would be moving here to Tennessee when he
gets back, my mom decided we would get here early and look for a place to
live.”
Savannah was stunned.
“You’re dad’s been in Iraq for six months?”
“Well, almost eight now.
He’ll be home around the time school gets out. It’s been pretty hard having him gone, but
now that we’re past the halfway point it’s finally going faster.” She looked sideways at Savannah before
asking, “How long has your dad been gone?”
Savannah’s eyebrows shot up. She wasn’t sure how Trudy had guessed that
her dad was in Iraq also. “Only two
weeks. He just left.”
“Oh, wow.
Sorry. That’s got to be the
hardest part, when they first leave. But
trust me, it does get better.”
Savannah nodded, looking hopeful.
As if she sensed it was time to change the subject, Trudy
said, “Now, tell me all about Eileen and those friends of hers. What’s their problem?”
Savannah rolled her eyes.
“You mean what’s not their
problem?”
Trudy laughed, listening as Savannah filled her in on the
Brat Pack.
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