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May. 11th, 2007 04:24 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tamingthemuseTitle: Lunch
Fandom: None
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Being different is hard enough, but worse in high school...
A/N: Once again, my own life gives me way too much inspiration. Based on true events, fictionalized to protect the rebellious.
Lunch
You would think that anyone with a little meat on their bones liked lunchtime. Not so. Overweight means lazy and gluttonous in her school but as small as it was there was nowhere for her to hide when the lunch bell rang. She trudged down the hall to the cafeteria, her feet heavier the closer the room became. The clamor in the room was enough to start her migraines, but actually entering the room sent the pounding in her head into overdrive.
She held her tray between shaking hands and surveyed the room, looking past the mocking faces and hate-filled glares to find a seat away from the maddening crowd. There was no refuge for her here, no place where she belonged. The jocks and popular crowd, for all intents and purposes one and the same, took up one of the four long tables on the far side of the room. Their sneers and jeers passed over her in waves; the cheerleaders’ laughter pierced her with knifelike precision, cutting through any self-esteem she had to slice away at her soul.
The table next to them held the ‘satellites’—kids who were well known enough to be considered somewhat popular in their way, but not enough to rate sitting with the in crowd. She found no respite there either. They followed the lemmings off the cliff when it came to making friends and if you weren’t good enough for the leaders of the school, you weren’t good enough for them either.
The next table was full of laughing freshmen and silly sophomores, chatting amicably about their classes and gossiping about their peers. There were three unoccupied chairs at the end of the table that quickly filled as she moved in that direction although it was only book satchels that took her seat.
That left her at the loser’s table again. The outcasts, those who were friendless for one reason or another. The boy who picked his nose and examined the results to the chagrin of all, including the teachers. Another who had plucked all his facial hair, a nervous habit but one that he was having difficulty breaking. The girl with the pimples that looked ready to explode at any minute. And her. The fat girl.
Granted, there were other fat kids in the school. Nobody is perfect by any definition of the word. For some reason, though, they found their niche in the cafeteria hierarchy, their place of belonging. Those who were comfortable with them for whatever reason and there they stayed, safe in the echelons of power.
With a deep sigh, she carefully placed her tray on the table and sat with her back to the room to keep the pig references to a minimum. She stared down at the cardboard pizza, the glossy pudding that looked like mud and the green beans that seemed like they’d been canned in the dark ages, they were so shriveled. It all tasted the same anyway, no matter how it was cooked or who did the cooking. That was just the beautiful irony of cafeteria lunches. No flavor and no nutritional value to speak of, only a meal prepared to fill a hole in student digestive tracts.
She took up her fork and ate a green bean, nibbling it to savor the texture, not the flavor. If she delayed long enough, she could throw most of it away.
When the bell finally rang, she took her full tray minus a few green beans and the empty milk carton up to the kitchen window to dispose of the refuse. He was standing there, his autocratic look piercing those who dared to shun the meal that was so lovingly prepared for them.
When he saw the state of her tray, he put a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from discarding her leftovers. “I think that you should spend the next class finishing your food and not wasting it. There are starving children who would kill to have the food that you’re throwing away.”
This was nothing new. A daily occurrence in her life, as it were. But the headache roared dully in her ears and prompted a response that seemed out of character for such a good little fat girl, someone who barely raised her voice in class, much less talked back to a teacher.
“Let them. Let them kill for it then, because I don’t want it and I won’t eat it.” Defiantly she turned her tray over, letting the food spill into the waste bin and smiled sweetly. “Shall I meet you in your office?”
She followed the principal to the office, smirking with her hollow victory. Her mind whirled with the promised punishment but inside she felt triumphant. You can lead a fat girl to the cafeteria but there is no way in hell that you can force her to eat.
Fandom: None
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Being different is hard enough, but worse in high school...
A/N: Once again, my own life gives me way too much inspiration. Based on true events, fictionalized to protect the rebellious.
Lunch
You would think that anyone with a little meat on their bones liked lunchtime. Not so. Overweight means lazy and gluttonous in her school but as small as it was there was nowhere for her to hide when the lunch bell rang. She trudged down the hall to the cafeteria, her feet heavier the closer the room became. The clamor in the room was enough to start her migraines, but actually entering the room sent the pounding in her head into overdrive.
She held her tray between shaking hands and surveyed the room, looking past the mocking faces and hate-filled glares to find a seat away from the maddening crowd. There was no refuge for her here, no place where she belonged. The jocks and popular crowd, for all intents and purposes one and the same, took up one of the four long tables on the far side of the room. Their sneers and jeers passed over her in waves; the cheerleaders’ laughter pierced her with knifelike precision, cutting through any self-esteem she had to slice away at her soul.
The table next to them held the ‘satellites’—kids who were well known enough to be considered somewhat popular in their way, but not enough to rate sitting with the in crowd. She found no respite there either. They followed the lemmings off the cliff when it came to making friends and if you weren’t good enough for the leaders of the school, you weren’t good enough for them either.
The next table was full of laughing freshmen and silly sophomores, chatting amicably about their classes and gossiping about their peers. There were three unoccupied chairs at the end of the table that quickly filled as she moved in that direction although it was only book satchels that took her seat.
That left her at the loser’s table again. The outcasts, those who were friendless for one reason or another. The boy who picked his nose and examined the results to the chagrin of all, including the teachers. Another who had plucked all his facial hair, a nervous habit but one that he was having difficulty breaking. The girl with the pimples that looked ready to explode at any minute. And her. The fat girl.
Granted, there were other fat kids in the school. Nobody is perfect by any definition of the word. For some reason, though, they found their niche in the cafeteria hierarchy, their place of belonging. Those who were comfortable with them for whatever reason and there they stayed, safe in the echelons of power.
With a deep sigh, she carefully placed her tray on the table and sat with her back to the room to keep the pig references to a minimum. She stared down at the cardboard pizza, the glossy pudding that looked like mud and the green beans that seemed like they’d been canned in the dark ages, they were so shriveled. It all tasted the same anyway, no matter how it was cooked or who did the cooking. That was just the beautiful irony of cafeteria lunches. No flavor and no nutritional value to speak of, only a meal prepared to fill a hole in student digestive tracts.
She took up her fork and ate a green bean, nibbling it to savor the texture, not the flavor. If she delayed long enough, she could throw most of it away.
When the bell finally rang, she took her full tray minus a few green beans and the empty milk carton up to the kitchen window to dispose of the refuse. He was standing there, his autocratic look piercing those who dared to shun the meal that was so lovingly prepared for them.
When he saw the state of her tray, he put a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from discarding her leftovers. “I think that you should spend the next class finishing your food and not wasting it. There are starving children who would kill to have the food that you’re throwing away.”
This was nothing new. A daily occurrence in her life, as it were. But the headache roared dully in her ears and prompted a response that seemed out of character for such a good little fat girl, someone who barely raised her voice in class, much less talked back to a teacher.
“Let them. Let them kill for it then, because I don’t want it and I won’t eat it.” Defiantly she turned her tray over, letting the food spill into the waste bin and smiled sweetly. “Shall I meet you in your office?”
She followed the principal to the office, smirking with her hollow victory. Her mind whirled with the promised punishment but inside she felt triumphant. You can lead a fat girl to the cafeteria but there is no way in hell that you can force her to eat.
