The Transmuted (Chapter 3)

The bell rung while most were already out of the door. This blare set off the most coveted period of the day, lunch, the only time where we went from running out the clock to existing in the moment. For a couple minutes the whole school was in the hallway, all partaking in some form of conversation creating a low din that rose like heat from the first floor to the fourth. I walked out of Statistics to find Anthony,

“Outside, right?”

“Yeah,” I answered, “just gotta grab my lunch.”

He nodded and strolled to the doors while I walked up the stairs to the second floor. Snippets of conversation passed by me furiously as most made a mad dash to secure their place outside,

“Yeah, she’s so hot…”

“How’d the test go for you?”

“I’m ready to be out of here.”

And so on and so forth. I finally arrived at my locker, grabbed lunch, and made my back downstairs. The noise had quieted mostly and the only remaining people in the halls were small groups of four or five circling close together on the floor cheerfully conversing over ham sandwiches and chicken over rice.

I hit the doors to find the sun exulting in the joy of reaching its apex and burning brightly out of exuberance. Since the school didn’t have a conventional cafeteria, most students were driven outside into one of the three courtyards on campus, the one farthest away from the building held freshman, sophomores and juniors were lumped in the middle, and the most accessible and pristine spaces were reserved for seniors. The guerilla warfare of popularity struggle had finally ended with cliques and hierarchies regimented long ago which had led to a general system of notoriety working itself out from the middle of the courtyard.

I spotted Anthony on the outskirts and joined my group amidst a conversation.

“Obviously I wouldn’t.”

That negation belonged to Donald, a well-built if not stocky mixed guy who joined our cabal last year. To the outside observer, it would seem as if someone with Donald’s qualifications, football captain, and lacrosse state champion, was deigning upon our group of budding intellectuals and brooding creative-types. However, underneath his pectorals and six-pack (highlighted by a perpetually tight shirt) lay a casual poetry reader and guitar player.

“Well I definitely would,” Anthony chimed in.

“What was the question?” I asked putting my lunch down on the round table next to Anthony.

“John asked whether or not everyone would want to fuck Samantha,” Camila, Donald’s girlfriend, responded sharply.

Camila is a truly beautiful girl who’d move to the school from Spain in tenth grade. She was tall for a girl and stood right at about six foot, slightly shorter than Donald. She was also a track star, long jump and hurdles, which made the two something of a power couple. She obviously didn’t particularly like hanging out with us but could tolerate all of us most of the time, except John.

“Oh come on man, lunch just started and we’re already on this.”

“Well I didn’t phrase it like that,” John pleaded.

“O.K. then how’d you phrase it?” Camila said eyes narrowing at him.

“I asked,” John’s voice was dignified and sciolistic, “whether everyone would know Sally, in like a biblical sense.”

“Jesus Christ John I don’t know which is worse.”

John, a wiry kid with skin slightly tanner than Anthony, wasn’t truly liked by everyone but tolerated since he really didn’t have anywhere else to go. He was funny at times, but all of his humor was based on pushing the line of what was acceptable, and many times he transgressed.

“O.K. so you’re saying that you wouldn’t? Obviously, Donald can’t say he would but no one in their right mind wouldn’t,” John said orienting himself away from Camila and towards me.

I looked over to Samantha who sat at the epicenter of the courtyard laughing at some imperceptible joke. That table, filled with only the crème de la crème of high school peakers, always looked like they were having so much fun. Samantha couldn’t be described in any other way than the ambiguous umbrella term “hot”. Her blonde hair flowed out down her back freely, her face was always painted with unbelievable precision, her shirts toed the wonderful line between vulgar and acceptable, and the rest of her body was athletic and inviting. She sat facing me from about ten yards away, lips parted in a smile to show off her flawless teeth.

“Well yeah, of course, I would but could we not talk about this here for the whole world to hear?”

“Look at you Michael, forsaking your morals to be with the girl, how Nietzschean of you,” Donald laughed.

““to be with” is a little much, she’s hot but she’s a terrible person. I’m just making an objective statement of my actions if she were to come onto me nothing more.”

“Who said she’s coming onto you?” Anthony asked.

“Isn’t that the situation? She like slips me a note with her intentions and I fulfill the request, right?”

“I never said anything about that,” John clarified.

“And why would she use a note?” Donald asked with a smile.

“Then how is this situation supposed to play itself out?”

“I don’t know you would probably make the first move and wait.”

“Hell no I’m not making the first move, we all know what happens when she rejects people, remember Ravi?”

Ravi was a poor, poor soul that had tried to ask Samantha on a date on the day school let out for winter break Freshman year. She laughed in his face, called all of her friends over, had them all laugh him to death, and then told the story for the world to see over Snapchat.

“R.I.P Ravi,” Donald said kissing a finger then raising it to the sky.

Ravi never returned and was forced to transfer in disgrace.

“C’mon man, in this hypothetical you have a 100% guarantee that she’ll want to do it, you just have to approach her,” John coaxed.

“No, I have to reject out of principle. I’m surprised Anthony hasn’t changed his mind.”

“Yeah I know she’s the devil, the landfill trash of society, but I think I could forget all of that for 2-5 minutes.”

“You’re all pigs,” Beatrix, the last member of our group, said from under her hood.

Beatrix was the brooding, tortured artist of the group, a painter to be exact, and sat silently with her coal-black hoodie on at all times. Easily the most talented out of all of us, I have no real idea why she hangs out with us at all for any other reason than to sporadically throw out clever one-liners.

“She speaks!” John exalted throwing his hands in the sky.

Beatrix took a quick look around then gave John two middle fingers causing the whole table to erupt in laughter and John’s face to turn beat red in anger.

Lunch continued on like so many before it, conversations turning from easily from one topic to another as we ran out those forty-five minutes in the middle of the day. We all tried to nestle up into that time together, to share it and make it last forever, our laughs carrying delicately on the late spring breeze. But like every day the bell eventually rang forcing all of the living mass to reluctantly walk back inside to endure the rest of the day, dreaming of the golden paradise just outside the glass window panes.