Chapter 3 - Lunchtime

“Can you believe Hanson gave us a test on the first day-”
“Jamie and I totally skipped first period and-”
“I lay one trap card face-down and end my turn-”
“Come on Ashley, you know that was just a joke-”
Casey pushed her way through the mass of students and collapsed into a seat beside Mark. “Hey,” she grunted.
“Looks like you had fun in PE,” Mark said with a wry grin.
Casey groaned. “Baker made me do fifteen laps because I didn’t take off my hat,” she said tersely.
Mark shrugged as he swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “Rules are rules, Case,” he said.
“But it’s freezing outside!” Casey protested in frustration. “He expects us to do yoga in three feet of snow!”
Mark laughed. “Easy, Case,” he said. Casey groaned and buried her head in her arms. If there was one thing she hated more that Shakespeare on the first day after break as read by a fashion Slave, it was Mr. Baker’s PE class. The football coach had been lifting weights since the age of four and could bench press a bus without breaking a sweat. That wasn’t an exaggeration, either. Casey had seen him do it firsthand. His PE class consisted of several weeks of weight lifting interrupted by occasional bouts of yoga. Nobody could figure out why a man who could snap someone’s neck between his toes had his class do yoga. Supposedly, he made the football players do it at every practice, but it didn’t seem to improve their performance on the field.
Casey heard two more people sit down at the table. “Hey, Mark. What’s up with Casey?” said one of them.
“She has PE with Baker right before lunch, Angie,” the other replied.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Case,” Angie said. Casey felt her put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it,” Casey replied, lifting her head to look at the newcomers. Angie was a short, dark-skinned girl with curly black hair and light brown eyes. She was thin and bookish, smart enough to get straight A’s but not so smart that Casey automatically hated her. At the moment, she was retrieving her lunch from her backpack. Her companion, Drew, was a tall, lanky redhead who did absolutely nothing in his spare time. His goal in life was to get by with the absolute minimum amount of work, and while he was technically a senior, most of his classes were devoted to catching him up on everything he’d failed to learn as a sophomore. He had the eraser end of a pencil stuck in his mouth and a notebook and a math book on the table in front of him.
“Forget to do your homework?” Casey teased.
“You know it,” Drew replied, not even glancing up from his paper. “Hey, Angie, can you help me with this?”
Angie glanced at the math problem as she sipped apple juice through a straw. “Try taking the square root of x,” she suggested. Drew nodded and scribbled something in his notebook. “So, how was your break?” Angie asked Casey and Mark.
“Short,” Casey answered.
Angie nodded. “They always are, Case, and they’re not going to get any better.” Casey groaned a reply.
“Hey, Angie, what’s a hyperbola?” Drew asked.
“The set of points in a plane whose distances to two fixed points in the plane have a constant difference,” Angie replied in a heartbeat. Drew blinked a couple times, and Angie added, “It’s the arch shape.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Drew’s pencil hit the notebook once again.
“How many times have you failed this math class?” Angie asked.
“A couple.”
“Uh-huh. Have you ever considered studying?”
“Nope.”
Angie rolled her eyes and took a bite of her sandwich. “You’re hopeless.”
“Not if you help me. What’s this… um…”
Angie sighed and took a look at the math book before him. “Quadratic formula,” she read.
“Yeah, that.”
“The formula for determining the roots of a quadratic equation from its coefficients,” Angie replied. “If you want to know any more than that, look it up yourself.”
“Come on, Angie, this is due in ten minutes!”
“You should’ve done it over break, then.”
“Oh please, you didn’t do any homework over break.”
“That’s because I actually keep up with my classes,” Angie replied tartly.
“Thanks a lot.” Drew quickly started leafing through the math book, nervously glancing at the clock every minute or so.
“Hey, Angie, we’re reading Hamlet in English,” Mark started.
“Let me guess,” Angie interrupted him. “You have no clue what’s going on.”
Mark nodded. “Any help?”
Angie sighed. “What scene are you on?”
“The second one.”
Casey paid close attention as Angie explained what the scene was about. With any luck it would save her from having to read the thing herself. “Claudius and Gertrude want Hamlet to stop mourning his father’s death, and Hamlet is upset that his mother remarried so soon after the old king died. Then Horatio and the guards tell Hamlet that they’ve seen his father’s ghost at night, and Hamlet agrees to come with them that night, hoping that he’ll get to see the ghost too.” She paused to peel the sticker off an apple. “Is that good enough?”
Casey and Mark exchanged glances. “I think so,” Mark finally said.
“Which means you have no idea.” Angie sighed irritably. “You know, I could tell you anything and you wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Come on, Angie, you wouldn’t lie to us,” Mark said with a smile.
“Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t,” Angie replied with a shrug. “Unless you do the work yourself, you’ll never know, will you?” Angie glanced over at Drew’s work. “You forgot to carry the three,” she said.
Drew was about to reply when something bumped into his chair. “Hey, watch it!” he snapped at the offender.
“Sorry,” the boy muttered as he hurried away. Drew grumbled something to himself and returned to his math homework.
Casey glanced at the fleeing figure and was struck by a flash of recognition. “Hey, Mark, isn’t that the new kid?” she asked.
Mark barely gave the kid a glance. “Looks like him, why?”
“He looks upset,” Casey said.
“He’s new,” Mark replied indifferently. “He’s still trying to fit in. He’ll be fine in a couple days.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Casey persisted as she watched the new kid blunder into two boys who she knew were destined to become professional thugs. The new kid exited the noisy lunchroom, and the two thugs, after a moment of consultation, followed him.
Casey felt a tingle run up the back of her neck. She knew by the looks on the thug’s faces that the new kid was about to be in big trouble. “Let’s go,” she said, rising to her feet.
“Where?” Mark asked. Angie looked up at her curiously, and Drew continued with his homework.
“Dirk and Ben are after the new kid,” she answered. “If we don’t do something they’ll cream him.”
“If we do do something, they’ll cream us, too,” Drew pointed out. Dirk and Ben were very good at what they did, namely beating the living daylight out of any kid who got in their way.
“I’m not going to let them beat up the new kid,” Casey said defiantly.
“He shouldn’t have gotten in their way,” Drew muttered.
“Face it, Case, there’s nothing we can do,” Mark said reasonably.
“Fine,” Casey said. She couldn’t waste any more time trying to convince them. “I’ll go by myself then.” Without another word, Casey wove her way through the lunchroom and after the two thugs.