Dyllan pushed his way through the cafeteria noise, forcing each step he took towards the table with Andie and Cedric. The cluttering, cheerful chaos of the relentlessly buzzing thought doodles that swarmed the whole school were starting to pull something out of him, something paradoxically cold and hot. A shivering, minty, feverish heat that was conceived by his mind, born in his gut, and spread like an infection. No, it wasn’t spreading, it was being revealed; revealed as the shell of mental stamina and willpower was chiseled away like stone. He liked to lie to himself about this feeling, pretend it was new, and that he didn’t know what it was. That he didn’t know it was the feeling of stress, overwhelming stress and mental fatigue.
“Goddammit Dyllan I can taste the melodrama from here, and its ruining my sandwich! What the hell are you doing? Writing emo poetry in your head or -” Andie paused as she watched Dyllan slump listlessly into his seat. “- something…” A moment of awkward silence filled the table, boxed in and amplified by the surrounding chatter. “…You were doing a lot better back in class. Did something happen?”
Dyllan shook his head, and began to unpack his lunch.
“…Okay… Good? That’s… that’s good.” Andie tried really hard to be a good friend to everyone she met, but she sometimes had a little trouble discerning between fiction and reality. She knew in her head that emotional crises could not be magically solved in one day with an epic speech, but it didn’t really sink in on an emotional level. So she really had no idea how to handle this sort of thing. “I… uh… brought a few packs of those weird snacks you really like? Would that help cheer you…” Dyllan dumped out his lunch bag, spilling its junk food contents across the table. “…and you don’t actually like them do you. You just eat them because they’re healthy, and you’re a health nut. Now that you’re depressed, you don’t care about eating healthy, and I have a lunch bag full of useless funky tasting almonds.” Andie plonked her head down upon the lunch table. “Ceeedriiic… Heeelp…”
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“Hm…” Cedric glanced toward Andie, then over towards Dyllan’s lunch. A sly glint flickering in his eye before he spoke. “Well, I must say that your preference in snacks comes as quite a surprise. I really didn’t think you’d have a taste for those childish cheese puffs that Andie -”
Andie bolted upright. “Quadruple-Cheese Super Poofs!? Dyllan likes Quadruple-Cheese Super Poofs? The only snack that has a whole superhero team for a mascot? With fleshed out characters and a whole-ass tragic back story and everything? I bought a whole Five Flavor Three Week Mega-Pack of those things for the free comic! I’ve got like, four Mini-Bags in my backpack right now.” She hauled her backpack onto the table, and pulled out two bags of Super Poofs. “Gouda or swiss? You can have both if you want.”
Dyllan started to reach for both, but stopped halfway and took the swiss cheese flavor. He tried to hide it, but Cedric noticed. Andie remained blissfully unaware, and placed the gouda back in her bag. Then, when she thought Dyllan wasn’t looking, she pulled out a second bag of swiss cheese flavor, and casually slid it over to Dyllan.