Outer Layers

Outer Layers

The girls in front of me in the lunch line debate the nutritional merits of a brownie versus an Oreo in terms of fat grams.  On my tray I have both the brownie and the Oreo along with a cheeseburger and fries. 

“Shut up about fat grams,” I say.   I almost get into things with Brownie and Oreo.  But then “Excuse me, ladies,” intervenes.

He has the kind of skin that tans dark in the sun, his hair is short, almost black, and though I try not to notice, he has these teen idol brown eyes.

I look down at my tray and reconsider all of my food, especially the cookies.  If I could, I’d find a way to disappear from the line and melt into the pea soup green cafeteria walls, the posters from pizza and burger restaurants and the clubs at school.  Not one of those posters tells me anything about how to talk to this boy.  But he talks to me first and I don’t hear anything Brownie and Oreo say after that.

“You into Rush?”

I glance up from the desserts long enough to see that he is smiling at me and not in the leering predatory way that some boys do.  But he smiles like someone I would like to know.

“They’re awesome,” I hear the music second hand, filtered through the headphones that dangle from his neck.  I think I hear the word, “Subdivisions.”  I know the song.

I smile up at him.  My head nods in time with the beat.

He has a clean and casual way.  His shirts look too pressed, too neat as if his mom and dad send their laundry to the dry cleaners.  He seems unusually confident too, but there’s no meanness like some boys wear, as if they have this outer shell, a coating of artificial toughness.  This guy has none of that.  He seems perfect like he belongs in one of those supermarket commercials you see around the holidays, where all the relatives gather around a long dining table and there’s a ton of presents and a turkey as big as a whale and everyone is bubbling over.  He smiles carefree without it being annoying.