January 2nd, Monday
The Lone
11:50
She inspected his height first. He is tall, then again so is she, standing at the astonishing height of 6' 1". They are almost at an exact eye level but he is just slightly taller. Then she took in the way he pulled half his dark hair into a small ponytail.
She meets his eyes again and he smiles softly. She doesn't like his smile, it is a smile that holds no sincerity but all the formality he must have practiced for diplomats. In other words it was fake.
"Did you want to play?" He asks with a furrow of his brows.
She simply hands the football to him with a small shake of her head. "No." Her voice is stern yet quiet as she turns away
Not once had he ever talked to her, even though they had multiple classes together since middle school. They never had any reasons to speak to one another unless it was direly needed. He was something of a socialite while she was an honor roll student who only knew the life of school and home.
She glides across the quad to the lunch room where she can already see the lunch line becoming absurdly long. Even with the huge line growing she is not deterred from her goal to buy herself an unnecessarily expensive meal. Although when she remembered she was accepted into one of the most prominent high schools on the east coast, and if not the world, she understood that an expensive lunch was nothing to her peers.
Buying the newest hover car was nothing but chump change to these spoiled brats.
Even though she had never purchased a meal in all her academic life, today she would buy lunch. She had always skipped the meal and waited until dinner in the evening. On occasion she even skipped breakfast to get to school early. The only reason why today was different was because the younger girls from the girls home noticed she never packed a lunch box nor did her school give her food since she already received an incredibly high scholarship. So that morning, after New Years, they had gathered all the money they could find and gave it to her telling her she had to eat lunch.
She patted the coins and dollar bills within her plaid skirt pocket, almost surprised they had found enough money to buy just one meal even though they thought it was enough for ten.
She glances down at her deteriorating satchel and throws it open as she looks for a canvas bound book. After five seconds she retrieves the book A Thousand Leagues under the Sea that she had to read for her English class. She leaned against the white painted wall, the skylight dome above her head letting in light as she read the fine delicate papers and the inky black letters that covered it's beige surface. The buzz of people's voices fell into the distant background as she slowly read every finely crafted sentence.
Read a page, shuffle forward, read a page, shuffle forward. She fell into a soothing rhythm.
"It's your turn." The person behinds her mumbles.
She shut her book while she shuffles across the long table of pre-readied meals she had to carefully choose in fear of exceeding her budget.
Once she reached the end of the line and paid for her food she carefully carries her white plate through the lunchroom crowds and out the back door of the cafeteria. She watches as the automatic glass doors slides open allowing the bitter January air into the warm cafeteria.
With brisk steps she passes the threshold and heads to the classrooms across from the cafeteria.
Most classrooms were all connected to prevent students from going outside, especially when it snowed but Everton high is an architecturally special school that is similar to a hybrid indoor outdoor school. Here at Everton there is a few beautiful red bricked buildings that are not connected to the main one story school. Many students complained about the school having such a peculiar layout but according to the staff if they tries to connect all the buildings it would create a fire hazard.
One would assume that a school as rich as hers could easily afford the remodeling but who knew, maybe it was really a fire hazard.
She directs her attention to her left where there was one of the tall brick buildings. It was no other than the lonesome history classrooms.
While many complained about having to walk through the cold Solaforma didn't care, she had in fact liked walking through the campus, especially when it snowed. During gentle snowfalls the school always made sure to turn on their state of the art ground heaters that made the white cement a strange warm.
She ignores her thoughts when she approaches the glass door of the history building. It slides open once she is within a two foot radius it leads into a sterile wooden hall full of a dozen glass doors that lead to a dozen different classrooms.
She confidently strolls down the hardwood floor, realizing that the hall smelled faintly of stale water and rotting wood. Once again strange for such an upper class school but she ignores the scent and turns to the first open door on her right. A certain history teacher always keeps his class open for students during lunch. She never talks to him except for freshman year when she took his class.
Despite her lack of relation to the teacher she enjoys how his classroom is a typically quiet place to eat with the exception of the occasional groups of harmless students that are always on their holotabs.
"Solaforma." The teacher greets her from across the room.
A group of students looks toward her doing little to hide their utter disgust. She ignores them and gives the teacher a small nod before strolling to one of the red desks to eat her food.
When she was a freshman she used to stare at the rosy red desks and matching chairs of this classroom with little emotions. She still remembered how she was one of the few students who didn't have a holotab . She thought back to the first time this teacher had talked to her.
"That is exactly how notes should be." He said one day as she sat in the class during lunch.
She looked up from her history notes not quite understanding what he meant. "Excuse me?" She had asked.
"Your notes are handwritten with pristine penmanship on paper. Now I know holotabs are what the other students use, and I don't have a problem with that since it saves trees but I appreciate that a student still hand writes their notes."
Solaforma looked at her papers with a new perspective as she tilted her head. "The movement," She paused, aware that her mental buffering surprised the teacher who believed she was as exact as a metronome. "It helps me retain the information." She said with confidence.
She shooed the childish memory away as she took the final bite of her overpriced chicken sandwich. She hastily picks up her napkin and glances at the clock over the teacher's desk. She still has twenty-five minutes until her next class. She swiftly wipes her mouth making sure no mayo remained on the corner of her lips like food typically did.
Grabbing her satchel in one hand she stands up while collecting the plate in the other.
"Leaving already?" The teacher asks with a kind smile.
Solaforma simply nods before rushing out the open door, the pleasant sound of her heels clicking against the hardwood following after her. She glances to the door she had entered then swivels her eyes to the other end of the hall where a glass sliding door opened and closed to students that paid her no attention.
She places her heavy plate above a trash can before gliding down the hall while straightening her plaid red and black uniform skirt that reached just below her knees. She exited through the sliding doors to the side of the school where few people passed her.
With a bit more bravado she hurries down the sidewalk that is lined with large evergreen trees that loom over her like unforgiving guardians. She is heading toward the north side of the school where the library is hidden away.
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