13 by Jason Robert Brown Page B

notebooks on her bookshelf: her diaries, where she recorded every slight that had ever been directed at her in her twelve years of miserable existence on this earth. I didn’t have to think too hard to wonder what she was writing about now.
    Even so, I almost walked across the room and asked if I could join her. I felt just that weird and lonely. But then Archie clumped up, collapsed in thechair across from her, and took a bag lunch out of his knapsack. With nowhere else to go, I plopped down at a mostly empty table in the middle of the room, opened my own knapsack, and grabbed Of Mice and Men , the novel we had been assigned for English. Not that I had any desperate urge to get a head start on my work, but with no food and no friends, I had to do something to keep myself from shriveling into a depressed ball and blowing away. But even though the first few sentences were good, I just couldn’t concentrate. I felt too hungry and alone to read. I riffled through the front pocket of my knapsack, grabbed my cell phone, even though they weren’t allowed in school, and wrote a text to Steve:
    HELP! I’m stuck in a universe of freaks! Call me!
    But when I pressed send, the stupid thing wouldn’t go through. Just as I was about to try again, I felt a strong grip on my shoulder.
    â€œHey, hey! You know the rules!”
    Suddenly I was staring into the face of an insanely muscular bald guy. Clearly a phys ed teacher turned lunch monitor.
    â€œThe phone!” he said.
    Argument was pointless. I handed it over.
    â€œPick it up tomorrow in the assistant principal’s office with a note from home.”
    No phone. No way to contact my New York friends. No way to contact anyone! Totally depressed, I put my head down on my knapsack. Which is when I finally caught a break. That’s because I felt something soft under my right temple. Curious, I looked inside the knapsack. Squashed underneath my new biology textbook was a brown bag.
    My mom had packed lunch!
    I turned it upside down over the table. Out spilled a turkey sandwich that looked like it had been run over by a truck, a small bag of baby carrots, and a box of raisins. Not much. But at least it was something. With the turkey smashed beyond recognition, I started in on the raisins and just sat there, waiting for the rest of the gang to show up. They didn’t. And when I crumpled up my lunch bag to throw it away, I felt something else: an envelope with a note in my mom’s squiggly handwriting.
    Â 
    To my brave young man on his first day of school. I am so proud of you. Love, Mom.
    Â 
    There were still ten minutes left to lunch. But there I was, sitting by myself in a giant cafeteria with an empty box of raisins, trying not to cry.
    Â 
    â€œAbout time you showed up, Brain!”
    Fudge threw his shirt at me. The locker room smelled like feet.
    â€œWhere were you guys?” I asked. “I looked for you during lunch.”
    Eddie laughed. “You didn’t actually go to the cafeteria?”
    â€œWell, yeah,” I said stupidly.
    Fudge grinned. “Lunch is at the parking lot, Brain.”
    Brett poked his head around the corner. “Come on, you freaks! I want to get out there already!”
    Fudge and Eddie pushed past me to get outside. I quickly changed, dumped my clothes in an empty locker, and ran behind them, up a ramp and onto the football field. I don’t think I’d ever actually been on one—not one that was regulation size, anyway. It was the real deal, a hundred yards long. And curving around it was a track. Stenciled in the center of the field was the name of the football team: T HE Q UAYLE Q UAILS .
    By the time I got outside, Brett and the rest of the guys and girls were stretching. Next thing I knew, the gym teacher walked up. Guess who? The guy who took my cell phone. Just my luck. But if he recognized me, he didn’t let on. Probably collected about fifty cell phones a day.
    â€œAll