Five Minute Friend

I sat at the lunch table poking idly at my pasta.  The table was half empty with me at one end and a group of girls clustered together on the other.  Two chairs and a pile of book bags piled on the table separated us.  It was no matter.  Today in segregation at this table, tomorrow, at another. 

I sighed as they laughed together about something or other, just having fun with each other.  Not that I cared.  I had accepted my fate as a loner a long time ago.

Rather than pay anymore attention to the other girls, I turned back to the Religion homework I was pretending to do.  Really I was only doing it so I could look busy and not quite as pathetic. 

"Hey there."

A girl was sitting across the table from me.  She must have been one of the upperclassmen because she was wearing a solid colored skirt as opposed to my plaid one, but it was more than just her attire that tipped me off.  She seemed different than the girls in my grade.  She carried with her, an air of confidence.

"Hey," I answered back, lowering my head once more.  The last thing I needed was someone confirming how pathetic I really was.

"How's it going?"

"Okay," I answered quickly, not looking up from my "work."  A moment of awkward silence followed.

"So... What's your name?"  I told her.  She told me hers. "Are these your buds?"  I shook my head.  At this point I was hoping that she would get bored with me and move elsewhere.

No such luck.  She asked what grade was I in.  What was I working on?  Who was my teacher?  What other classes was I in?  I answered quickly and she ran off some random facts about herself in turn.

We couldn't have been talking for more than five minutes when two other girls, presumably her friends, came over and tried to get her to go with them.  She told them to leave her alone; that she was hanging out with her new friend.  However, her protests went unnoticed as they dragged her away, literally, by her chair.  I just smiled and shook my head.

Why I was smiling, I didn't know.  In my mind, I probably thought it was just their antics that amused me.  In reality, I was smiling because she had called me her friend.

Two years later found me in the exact same cafeteria searching out my friends at our lunch table.  No longer was I the loner, but instead the upperclassman with an air of confidence trailing her.  My separation was a thing of the past.

Nonetheless, I still remembered that girl.  I couldn't see her face or remember her voice.  I didn't even know her name. It was just because she spoke with me that she remained in my memory.

It was because she cared enough that day to make sure that I wouldn't have to sit alone.

Pretending not to see my friends waving at me, I sat down at another table across from a girl who was absorbed in her textbook, sitting separately from the rest of the crowd.

"Hey there."

She looked up and gave a weak smile.  "Hey."

"How's it going?"

"Okay."