Free Last Light Falling by J. E. Plemons

state. Drool drips from the boy’s mouth who’s sitting in front of me. The only thing keeping me from totally conking out are tiny voices whispering behind and to the right of me.
    In the corner desks near the window, four girls are gossiping like a bunch of cackling hens about someone. Then they glance in my direction, smile, and give me a thumbs up.
    I look at the clock and notice that the bell, thankfully, is about to ring. As much as I want to hurry to get in line first for lunch, I’m much too interested in why those girls were gesturing at me. I tell Gabe to wait for me before he leaves, and I eagerly go over to the girls to see what all the fuss is about.
    “So what’s going on?” I pryingly say.
    “We heard what you did to McKenzie, Brittney, and Lorie this morning. I’m Jade, by the way,” the girl says.
    “Brittney and Lorie? I guess I don’t have to worry about a formal introduction,” I sarcastically say.
    “Brittney is the one with the short, blonde hair,” says one of the girls.
    “I guess you already know McKenzie,” Jade says.
    “Yes, we’ve met before,” I say with a smirk.
    “We just want to personally thank you for that little piece of entertainment. They have deserved that for a long time,” says another girl.
    As funny as it may have been, I really start to feel badly for what I did, and these girls just reiterated why I’d rather be alone. Listening to girls gab in dramatic fashion about someone else’s misfortunes is no different than when I had been made fun of. Right then I understood why Gabe reacts the way he does toward others. Regardless of whether someone deserves something or not is not for me to judge.
    These girls are really beginning to annoy me now. “Really, I was just trying to keep them from being stung,” I say sincerely. They seem alittle stunned by my response, and so does Gabe. If there was a smile on my face, it has disappeared. All I want to do is go to lunch, so I promptly turn and walk out the door.
    To my surprise, Jacob is standing outside the cafeteria with his hair pulled back away from his beautiful eyes and his head held up high, smiling. This is really the first time I’ve seen his face underneath all that hair.
    The cafeteria is packed today. By the amount of extra teachers, administrators, and security guards, something important must be going on. I grab my food tray and look for a place to sit. Since we got here later than I wanted, Gabe, Jacob, and I have to search hard for a place to sit.
    There appears to be several seats in the back unoccupied that will do. Gabe starts to sit at the end of the table, but I gesture for him to sit toward the middle next to a girl who seems to be alone. Since we haven’t made many friends yet, I think it will be a good idea for us to start now.
    “May we sit here?” I ask politely.
    “Sure,” she says.
    “I’m Arena, and this is my brother, Gabe.”
    “It’s Gabriel, but most everyone calls me Gabe,” he retorts.
    “And this is our friend Jacob,” I say.
    “I’m Juliana. I’ve seen you before,” she says.
    “Really?” I say.
    “I think I may have seen you at the retirement center,” she says.
    “Oh, yeah, Gabe and I worked there part-time during the summer. Our foster mom got us that job. She knows the staff administrator there,” I say.
    “So you have foster parents too? I visit my grandmother at the center; she’s the only living family I have left. I used to live with her, but her health got worse over the last two years, so she wasn’t able to care for me. I was put in foster care this past year,” Juliana says.
    I feel a genuine sense of empathy for Juliana, as I remember the first time we were taken into foster care. The conversation with Juliana feels so comfortable, and not once do I have to think about what I’m going to say that’s usually accompanied with uneasy, awkward pauses. It’s as if we are meant to sit here. The similarities we share with each other are