The meeting area turned into the bathroom. Sydney was the first one to report in, and she decided to try and fix her hair up while she was waiting on the others. The color of bright red just wasn’t meshing with her today, but she was unable to dye it the shade of purple that she wanted to due to school dress code number six:

A student must dye their hair natural colors. Blue, purple, green, etc. are not natural hair colors, and any student arriving on school property with said colors will be sent home and cannot return until their hair is dyed an color acceptable to the principal.

Her mom made her memorize all of the school codes due to the fact that she broke so many at her previous school. She looked at the red hair in the mirror and marveled at how she got away with it. At her old school, she would have never been able to walk inside with any other color besides blonde.

But they didn’t know her here. Nobody knew who she was except those bimbos that were in her class first hour.

“So, this is the bathroom?” Eliza’s voice boomed as she walked through the door with Misty and Abbey on her heels.

They all looked with open mouths and awe in their eyes when they laid eyes on the foam soap dispenser.

“Holy crap! It’s foam!” Eliza excitedly yelled as she pushed on the lever to release the foam onto the floor. “We never had this back at Turner.”

“Look the bathroom stalls have doors,” Abbey pointed out enthusiastically.

“I thought you were home schooled,” Misty said and Abbey quickly varied the fact.

“Oh God, don’t tell me you don’t have bathroom doors at your house,” Sydney piped up.

“No, we do,” Abbey defended her comment. “But I saw on T.V. once where students at a school didn’t have bathroom doors, so I thought that all schools were like that.

“Listen up everyone,” Sydney ordered to break up the awkward silence after Abbey’s comment. “I got a map of the cafeteria from a Junior in my Health class. He mapped out where all the different groups sit and even suggested good places for us to set up shop.”

Sydney pulled the map out of her jean backpack. It was highly detailed, and she suspected that it had been passed down for several generations. Each of the individual tables were labeled with the high school stereotypes that sat there. They all centered around one giant group of Jocks and Cheerleaders.

“It’s worse then I thought,” Misty said after she surveyed the map.

“Where are we going to sit?” Abbey asked.

“I say we infiltrate the Cheerleader table,” Eliza suggested.

“No. It’s too risky. We’ll get eaten alive,” Sydney warned the others.

They all stood in front of the sinks and observed the map for a few brief seconds before Abbey came up with an idea.

“How about over here by the microwaves?” she said pointing at one of the tables in the far right corner.

“Hmm…in-between the Artsies and the Freaks. That isn’t so bad,” Sydney agreed while the others shook their heads. “However, there is only four of us. We will need a larger force.”

Just then Karen came walking into the bathroom with a food tray in her hands. Tears were leaking out of her eyes, and she quickly tried to hide her face from the others when she saw them.

“What the hell happened to you?” Sydney asked.

“The cafeteria,” Karen managed to get out. “It’s horrible. Nobody would let me sit by them. I got called all sorts of horrible names, so I just thought I would eat in here.”

“Go ahead,” Abbey encouraged. “The bathroom stalls actually have doors.

“You can sit with us,” Eliza said ignoring Abbey‘s comment. “We are like a group of rebels ready to infiltrate the cafeteria.”

She threw her fist in the air after the last sentence, but nobody else participated in this gesture.

“Really? You guys would let me sit with you?” Karen asked with a hint of disbelief in her voice.

“Five is better than four, I suppose,” Misty added, and Sydney shook her head in agreement.

“Let’s go!” Eliza yelled as Sydney opened the bathroom door and walked out into the hallway.

They all stopped before the big wooden doors of the cafeteria. Eliza put her hand lightly on the cold metal handle and looked at the others for support before she began to pull it open. Someone on the other side of the door, however, assisted in her quest, and Eliza was hit square in the face by the door.

“What the hell?” Eliza asked as she found her vision focusing in and out.

“I’m so sorry,” an unfamiliar male voice said. “I didn’t think about somebody being on the other side of the door.”

A circle of people were already beginning to gather around the fallen girl on the floor, but all that Eliza was focused on was the gorgeous guy apologizing in front of her. He had black hair with bangs that fell this way and that over his blue eyes. A green army jacket hung over his red Strokes t-shirt and his ripped and teared black pants fit a little too well to ensure safety around teenage girls.

“What the hell?” Eliza repeated as he offered her his hand to help her up.

She shrugged the hand off and got up herself while dusting the dirt off of her clothes.

“Oh, this is nothing, you should see me after hockey practice. I get bruises, scrapes, and the lot everyday. This is nothing. Nothing at all,” she blurted out while laughing uncomfortably and turning the color of Sydney’s hair.

“Alright, as long as you are cool,” he smiled as he started to walk off. “But I’ll buy you an ice cream or something if it makes you feel any better.”

Eliza watched him walk on down the hallway with the already infamous Japanese exchange student and a short blonde kid with long hair that hung down to his shoulders. The dark-haired guy that had hit Eliza with the door stood about a foot taller than both of his companions. Her eyes narrowed slowly as she watched him.

“Who the hell does he think he is?” she asked the others. “Hitting me with a door and then offering to buy me ice cream. What does he think I am? Twelve?”

“Watch what you are saying,” Sydney warned her. “That’s James Raleigh. He’s a Junior, and he just so happens to be the lead singer of the band The Toshi Station Robbers.”

“So what?” she asked.

“And he’s freaking hot!” Sydney yelled.

“So what?” she asked again.

“You aren’t going to talk any logic into her, Syd,” Misty warned before Sydney went insane.

“If you like him so much, Syd, then why don’t you go out for some ice cream with him yourself,” Eliza spitefully spit out.

“Just drop it!” Misty interfered once she saw Sydney making a fist by her side. “Don’t we have a more important task her at hand?”

The two feuding girls reluctantly brushed their anger off and turned to open the cafeteria door again. Eliza showed no signs of fear of being hit by the door again, but Abbey and Karen were very hesitant as the door was pulled open. They became even more frightened when they saw the sight inside.

Incredibly loud noises first greeted their ears. Whether it was the Jocks at the center table making obscene body noises or the Drama Queens at the far right tables yelling out haunting soliloquies with tears flowing down their faces. A few cheerleaders had decided to jump up on their table and do a cheer for the first day of school, but nobody seemed to be paying very much attention to their high-pitched squeals.

Eliza quickly took the lead as they headed over to the microwaves with Sydney right behind her and the other three trying to keep up with her pace. Quickly she plopped down at a table that only had one other student at it who was getting yelled at by a teacher for painting at the table.

“It’s Art, Mrs. Lancaster! Don’t you see? I call it Scene in a Cafeteria,” explained the flustered art student.

Karen sneaked a look at the painting only to see a mixture of different colored stripes. Being of the more scientific mind, she didn’t quite understand how that could be interpreted as such, but she just shrugged it off and pulled her lunch out of her backpack.

“Well, that wasn’t so hard,” Eliza sighed as she too pulled her lunch out.

“We just got lucky today,” Sydney claimed as she took a bite out of her turkey sandwich.

“Hey girls!” chirped Grace as she walked up to their table.

“Where have you been?” Misty asked.

“You know, just around seeing everyone. Making sure I say hello.”

“The social butterfly pollinating a field of false happiness that will bloom into lies, deceit, and ultimate destruction,” Sydney said poetically. Grace gave her an unappreciative look.

“Seriously, Syd, you need to lighten up. I hear that you used to be a pretty happy-go-lucky…” She purposefully trailed her sentence off.

“So, I see that you have been in contact with the enemy,” Sydney accused.

“The enemy?” Grace replied shocked. “They seemed like nice people to me. They actually invited me to sit with them at lunch.”

“You traitor!” Eliza pointed her index finger at Grace.

“Settle down, you two,” Misty ordered as Grace reluctantly took a seat next to her. “Grace can choose who she hangs out with.”

An uncomfortable silence fell upon the round table as Sydney and Eliza exchanged disapproving glances. Misty motioned for Grace to sit down, and she eventually did with slight reluctance. Karen and Abbey were hastily shoving food into their mouths in order to avoid joining in the conversation.

“So, what’s been going on?” Grace’s question sliced the dead air.

“Eliza’s already got a boyfriend!” Abbey blurted out loud enough for their side of the cafeteria to hear. Everyone turned in their seats to look over at the embarrassed girl.

“I do not!” she defended herself, and life eventually returned to the rest of the cafeteria.

“Who is it?” Grace inquired of Abbey.

“Syd said his name was James Raleigh, but I don’t know a thing about him.”

“James Raleigh!” Grace’s voice found a new level on the decibel scale. “He’s freaking hot! The other sophomore girls are already talking about who is going to get their hands on him first.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Eliza tried to explain to the ventilating girl. “He just hit me with a door and said something about buying me ice cream if it would make me feel better.”

“If you know what I mean,” Karen unexpectedly mused.

“Cheap shot!” Syd yelled as the other girls laughed.

Eliza saw that she was no match for the untrue comments about her and James, so she slowly slid the paper sack that had previously contained her lunch in it over her head. Fifth hour couldn’t come any sooner.