The Lunch Table

SCENE: A freshman in high school, CARLY, standing in front of a drink machine in the cafeteria of a Catholic high school. She is struggling to have the machine accept her dollar bill.

CARLY: Come on, you stupid machine! Accept this nice other dollar! You took my last one!

She pounds the money slot and turns around to walk to a lunch table not far away. Two other freshmen girls (HAYLEE and LEANNE) are sitting near the end of the table.

CARLY: Hey, do either of you have a quarter? The machine’s being stupid and won’t accept my other dollar.

LEANNE: Why do you need another dollar?

CARLY: Because the flavored water has to cost $1.25! I mean, what is so important about that extra 25 cents? They have to make things as difficult as possible, don’t they? And probably while I’m asking for the extra quarter some other person is going to use my dollar that I’ve already put in to buy themselves a nice drink!

LEANNE: You know what? I just figured out why it’s called a quarter. It’s a quarter of a dollar… Ha, ha, I get it now.

CARLY: You’re not helping.

HAYLEE: going through her wallet Here, take my quarter and run. There’s someone coming towards your machine.

CARLY turns to look.

CARLY: Oh, crap, there is. Thanks.

She runs over to the drink machine again. As she gets her drink, another girl, GENESIS, sits down at the table with a slice of pizza.

GENESIS: Hey.

HAYLEE: Hey. You went straight for the lunch line, then?

GENESIS: Well, when they first come in, most people put their stuff down, socialize a little, and then maybe ten or fifteen minutes later get in the lunch line, and then it’s really long. But I swear that if you get in the line right when you enter the cafeteria, it’s much shorter.

LEANNE: Better not share that idea with anyone else, otherwise you won’t be alone in the overly eager line.

CARLY returns to the table with her bottle of flavored water.

CARLY: Hey, Gen.

GENESIS: Hey. Have you been getting angry at inanimate objects again?

CARLY: That drink machine was being very, very, very bad, but it gave me my flavored water so I’m happy with it now. Do you have a Sharpie?

GENESIS: Mm-hmm.

She unzips her backpack and pulls out a red Sharpie.

HAYLEE: What do you want a Sharpie for?

LEANNE: Haylee, who wouldn’t want a Sharpie? Somehow everyone is obsessed with the colored permanent markers, especially the minature ones.

HAYLEE looks at what CARLY is writing on her flavored water bottle.

HAYLEE: “Rum”? You are so weird.

GENESIS: Well, we all know that Carly secretly wants to be a pirate when she grows up.

LEANNE: Do you know that “mur” is “rum” spelled backwards?

CARLY: to HAYLEE And you called me weird? to the whole group Leanne, “mur” is not a word.

LEANNE: It very well could be! After all, “nincompoopery” and “tomfoolery” are words. Why not “mur”? It’s even at the beginning of “mermaid” and “murder.”

HAYLEE: So Gen, how much is the pizza?

GENESIS: $1.50, I think. But the line’s too long now. You missed your chance.

CARLY: $1.50? My flavored water here was $1.25! That’s not very fair pricing. You’d think the pizza would be, like, $2.50 or something.

LEANNE suddenly gasps.

LEANNE: You know what I just figured out? “Murder” backwards is “red rum.”

CARLY: Leanne, you know that guy from my English class who goes on and on about how he doesn’t like stupid humor? He wouldn’t like you very much.

LEANNE: What, do you think I have a stupid sense of humor?

GENESIS: Wait, wait, wait. I haven’t heard about this guy from you English class.

CARLY: Well, for the past two classes he’s managed to bring up how much he hates stupid humor and then he elaborates about it with long pauses between every other word. It’s annoying, plus he never has his homework. We’ve only been in school for three days! How stupid could you be to continuously forget the small amount of homework you get in the first week?

HAYLEE: Well, in my English class there are two other Haylees, and all three of us spell it differently. There’s me with H-A-Y-L-E-E, and then there’s an H-A-L-E-Y and an H-A-I-L-E-Y. And the other two both have the same last initial so there’s “Hailey with an I” and “Haley without an I” and then usually the teacher just calls me “Haylee with two E’s.” She could just call us by our first and last names, but no. She has to make things more difficult.

GENESIS: And while we’re on the subject of names, my theology teacher is still obsessed with my name. You know how most of the teachers take attendance at the beginning of class? Whenever he gets to my name, he always says, “Genesis, which also happens to be the name of the first book in the Bible.” At least I don’t get any “In the beginning…” comments. I mean, if I had to be named after a book in the Bible, why couldn’t it have been a normal one?

CARLY: Because all the normal names of the books are guy names, and I think you’d be much worse off if you were a girl named “Matthew” or “Mark.”

LEANNE: Or “Luke” or “John.” But wasn’t there also, like, a video game system called Genesis in the 90’s or something?

HAYLEE: Like we’ve memorized all the crappy game systems from then.

LEANNE: I just remember when I used to watch Toy Story all the time, there’d always be this preview for a video game of it and I think it was for a Sega Genesis system or something like that. So maybe you were named after that.

GENESIS: Except I doubt that was out in 1992.

LEANNE: Whatever. I’m just trying to help.

HAYLEE: You know, I always thought you looked like a Hannah.

GENESIS: Who, me?

HAYLEE: Yeah. elbowing CARLY Don’t you think so?

CARLY shrugs.

CARLY: Well, I don’t know… I’ve known you since we were, like, five, so I think you’ve always looked like a Genesis or a Gen.

GENESIS: How do you see me as a Hannah?

LEANNE: I think you all look like your names, if that helps.

CARLY: Oh! I remember when I first met you, Leanne, I thought you looked like a girl I knew once named Emily, so I’d always think of you in my head as Emily. I don’t do it much anymore, though. But I’ve got to agree with Gen. She doesn’t look like a Hannah.

HAYLEE: Okay, so I guess it’s just me. looking at the clock How much longer is lunch?

CARLY: Um… maybe another twenty minutes or so? I dunno.

HAYLEE: Well, I guess I’m going to get a slice of pizza or something, considering Gen’s the only one of us who’s eaten something material.

CARLY: Ahem. I have my rum/flavored water.

LEANNE: But all that’s going to do to you is make you have to pee sometime before last period.

CARLY: Are you kidding? I swear I have a bladder the size of Alaska.

HAYLEE: Yeah, I didn’t need that tidbit of information. standing up I’m going to get food. Are any of you coming with me?

LEANNE: also standing Yeah, I’ll get a smoothie or something.

GENESIS: Carly’s just made me want to use the bathroom.

CARLY laughs.

CARLY: Well, I guess I’ll just sit here and do my algebra homework then. sarcastically Yay.

As HAYLEE and LEANNE go toward the lunch line and GENESIS heads toward the bathroom, CARLY takes a textbook, a binder, and a pencil case out of her backback. She takes a sip of her flavored water, but discovered it’s empty.

CARLY: And why is the rum always gone?

END

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Author's Note: That last line, obviously, is a reference to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.