Smallara

The dish clinked faintly against the tabletop as Ezra lowered his face to the water.  Cool, filtered, faintly plastic. Underneath it, that stubborn, clean chemical tang clung to everything in the cafeteria,…

Ezra ate the pellets. He hated how he could feel himself getting full. How his grumbling stomach eased. How maybe Dayton was right. The more he ate the more it felt like he had more energy. He wasn’t as…

Dayton finished her iced tea setting the bottle down, and then finally did the thing Ezra had been dreading and needing at the same time.  She unclipped the tiny green and clear bowl…

Dayton didn’t drift toward their table like she was trying not to be noticed. She cut across the cafeteria with the same controlled pace she’d used in the hallway, tray balanced under one arm, the…

The Roosevelt lunchroom was doing what it always did, which was pretending it wasn’t a zoo.  Trays clattered like cymbals. Chairs screeched. A hundred conversations rose and fell in overlapping waves, every laugh…

The lunch line twisted through the cafeteria like a lazy river, slow and clogged and impossible to fight. Nobody cut. Nobody could. You just floated forward with the rest of the school, tray…