Seeing Shane Gray ✓

one | perfect

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August 9

Voices of various volumes and rates echo all around me as I sit in the cafeteria and try not to focus on the class I've skipped to be with Riley. It's not too bad, I admit, picking food over studies. I don't regret it, hoping I'll get to go home sooner than usual. I would be happier, however, if my company wasn't so terrible.

One of the things I despise is being a third-wheeler, sitting beside my recently-committed best friend who either can't stop talking about her new 'man' or has clearly lost control of her facial muscles. Ever since she got asked out by the second hottest quarterback of Gordon Blake High School, she's been floating in seventh heaven and vaguely resembles a misty-eyed toad waiting for the princess to come and kiss its slimy lips and set it free of its disgusting body. For Riley, though, it's about losing her virginity and not her scales.

"There's something on your face," I point out.

She lifts her gaze from her phone to blink several times at me as if she's forgotten I'm beside her. After a moment, she frowns.

"What?" she asks.

"Drool. You're drooling," I point out, wanting to grab her phone and toss it in the trashcan.

Okay, I get it: Carlos is hot. The prospect of him asking out someone like Riley, who doesn't even sit six feet within this table's radar in the cafeteria, is nothing short of surprising. Maybe that's why I'm suspicious of him. Maybe he's planning to lure her into his trap and skin her alive or sacrifice her for some gory cultist ritual. Telling that to Riley is pointless. She blames it all on my repeated watching of Black List and Criminal Minds.

She's in denial, though because she's love-struck. Sure, Carlos is beautiful, with his chiseled jaw and dark hair and pearly whites. He's got the looks to make girls swoon and the charms to melt them. His crooked smile that halfway resembles a smirk and his original pickup lines are quite adorable.

Too bad he's chock-full of cow-dung.

"I am not," Riley whines, returning to texting.

I groan and throw my head back, sliding down in my seat.

It doesn't make any sense to me why she's so obsessed with him. It makes even less sense that he's sitting right across the cafeteria with his gang of rowdy quarterbacks and star football players and yet he won't call her to sit at the same table. If he's really interested in her, shouldn't he be flaunting her and showing her off to his friends instead of texting her from under the table while he laughs along with the guys he calls friends?

Putting the thought of Riley and her useless new boyfriend who will probably end up dumping her as soon as he finds someone hotter, I lower my gaze to my food. The hash browns and tater tots in my plate look like soggy mush and, despite how hungry I am, I don't feel like taking a bite. My stomach growls in protest. It would be better to just get something from the vending machine instead of torturing my body by eating the greasy potatoes.

It's weird how hungry I always am.

"I'm going to get something to eat before I head to class," I tell Riley. "You coming?"

Riley shakes her head, too engrossed in texting. I'm beginning to regret skipping World History to sit with her while she stared non-stop at her phone. When I told Marla and Rachael anything is better than Mr. Carter's class, I didn't know how wrong I was. Even sleeping through his long pointless debate about which Mughal emperor caused the downfall of the empire in India would have been better than watching my friend make googly eyes at her phone before making googly eyes at the guy who doesn't even look her way.