“You have a balance from last year on your account. You need to get that paid if you plan to eat next week. Now move along.” The lunch lady shooed her away, not wanting to give her the time of day.
Chloe was just as stunned as Elle with the lunch lady’s attitude as she gave her own lunch number to the lady.
“You should transfer after this week, just to tick her off,” Chloe told Elle as they took their seats at their table from last year.
Elle cracked a laugh before she shut her down. “As much as I would like to piss her off, that’s not going to happen. I’ve made my choice, and I’m staying here.”
“Well, then I hope you fail all of your classes.”
“Aw, thanks, I appreciate that,” Elle retorted as she held her hand over her heart.
She gave Elle a smile. “You’re welcome.”
They both laughed for a minute then began eating what no one else wanted.
“Who even hired a fifteen-year-old, anyway?”
“No one.” Elle swallowed the food that was in her mouth. “A diner downtown hired a sixteen-year-old.”
Chloe blinked her eyes a few times, digesting what she had just heard. “How in the world did you get away with that!”
“Easy. It’s a crappy diner, and they needed a waitress so badly they hired me on the spot because a waitress had just quit. Put me to work that night and everything.”
“What did your parents say?”
Elle took another bite of food, clearly trying to dodge the question before she finally gave in. “Well, they think I work at Magical Cupcakes in the suburbs.”
“Oh, my gosh.” Chloe stared at her like she was a monster. “Do you just collect awards for all the lies you manage to pull off?”
Elle shrugged. “Possibly.”
The two had missed each other a lot over the summer and were glad to catch up and be in each other’s presence again. Chloe had spent the night over at Elle’s a couple of times, but not as much as they would have liked due to her parents.
Stopping mid-bite, Elle’s mouth almost dropped to the floor. “Oh, my gosh, who is that?”
Glancing behind her, Chloe saw an extremely tall and very well built teenage boy walking across the cafeteria before she quickly turned her head back around. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a transfer. He looks like a senior.”
She continued to gawk at him before her eyes got big. “No freaking way. Look! I think that’s Amo!”
“What? No, it’s n—” She stopped mid-sentence when she looked back to see him sitting in the exact same spot Amo had last year—at the table where his best friends Vincent and Nero sat. Vincent was the pretty blond, but Nero was like their group leader and perfection with his dark hair and skin along with his piercing green eyes. He and Vincent had managed to have every girl drooling after them last year, while Amo had been just a normal, awkward teenager. But now he was unrecognizable.
Elle had yet to move her eyes from him, much like all the other girls in the cafeteria.
“Jeez, it looks like he started eating roids for breakfast.”
Chloe practically laughed up her sandwich. I bet he’s going to give Nero and Vincent a run for their money now.
“Dang, he went from about a three or four to a solid ten really quickly.”
Definitely a run for their money.
“Don’t you think so?” Elle asked, still not moving her eyes from Amo once.
Chloe shrugged. “Eh, he’s all right.”
Elle finally moved her gaze to Chloe like she had been struck. “All right! Excuse me?”
“I think Nero is better looking in my opinion,” she told her matter-of-factly.
Elle busted out in laughter. “Too bad his ego is about as big as Amo, which makes Nero a zero out of ten.”
“We were ranking looks, not personality. If we were ranking personality, then they would all be zeros, and Vincent would round it out at negative one.”
“What’s wrong with Amo’s personality? He’s never really done anything.”
He has to me… But Chloe decided to keep that information to herself.
“And that was pre-pubescent Amo. Puberty Amo will be a jerk like them. I mean, come on, he looks scary now.” Chloe turned her head back to stare at him for a moment. “Like a beast.”
Twenty
…
Present Day
When the nightmare ended and Chloe came to, she found herself clutching the jacket around her arms in desperation. Quickly, she went to wipe away the tears that had escaped during her episode, but there weren’t any. It was only her imagination. Tears hadn’t crossed her face in years. However, she could still feel them pouring out of her eyes and down her face from that night as if they were real. Now they were nothing but ghost tears.
With her eyelids growing heavier by the second, she lay down on her bed. It wasn’t until she snuggled up to the fabric and inhaled Amo’s scent that she realized she was using his jacket like it was her blanket. Not only that, but she had yet to let go of Amo’s jacket from the moment he had draped it over her shoulders earlier that night.