Lunch: A Short Story by Willa

Lunch

~ Willa

       She watched while they talked in front of her and packed their bags. As they left the room, the looks on their faces were an obvious indication that they didn’t want her coming with them. She stayed on the pale plastic chair in the empty green room while watching the foursome depart.

       Lunch ended at 12:45. Twenty two minutes. She wasn’t hungry, but she wasn’t going to spend her time walking around the school again either.

       She glanced down at the foil-wrapped sandwich on her lap. She’d told her mother she didn’t like tomatoes. Meticulously, she picked apart the meal, discarding the salmon-colored slices of her distaste to the side of the foil. She spared a bite after piecing her lunch back together. It didn’t taste good.

A few high school students walked by; two of themeyed her but quickly went back to their chatter.

A second grader crossed the hall to retrieve something from the printer. He was a black kid with an afro and the shortest child she’d ever seen. He was fat and his cheeks bubbled out, and although he shouldn’t have been able to reach the printer, he managed to grab the paper on his tip-toes.

       “Hi,” she said.

       He looked over his shoulder at her.

       “What’re you getting?”

       “Pictures.”

       He looked back at the printer and peered up again on the tips of his toes, and when he saw nothing else to be retrieved, he ran away, presumably back to the classroom.

       With nothing to do and nowhere else to go, she stayedon the chair near the piano and finished her sandwich as slowly as possible with seventeen minutes left of lunch to go.