Clare

When the buzzer rang, ending my last class before lunch, I could help but pat my insolent belly because I could feel and hear its unpleasant rumbles of hunger. Unfortunately, I was determined not to satisfy it today.

Since I arrived in Hawkins Town, I had been eating more than I usually did with Josie, who was a chef at Della’s diner. She was always cooking all sorts of delicious food or bringing me leftovers from the diner. They were all tasty food and most times, I’d either found it difficult to reject Josie’s kindness or allowed the pang of hunger to make me eat those meals.

That was until I looked into the full-length mirror I finally purchased yesterday. There was no doubt that I had added weight, and quite a lot at that. If I continued this way, I wasn’t very far from going back to being the ‘Fatty Clary’ of the past, and I was never going to let that happen.

So I’d brought out the appetite suppressing tea I usually took when my appetite started to wind out of control, rejected Josie’s breakfast offer and walked to school. Unfortunately, the tea took quite a while to take effect, which was why skipping breakfast had me feeling so hungry by lunch.

“Hey Clare, I saw your text. You’re not going to lunch?” Lissa’s voice interrupted my train of thought.

At her words, my stomach growled in hunger. I ignored it as I nodded to Lissa, pushing my tome-like biology textbook into my locker.

“Yeah, I’m going on a fast today. It’s a spiritual exercise to increase my connection to the earth.” I lied because there was no way I was telling her that I was fasting to avoid gaining weight.

My last ‘friend’ in my previous town had spread the word to the popular kids, which had them teasing me nonstop all day long for an entire nightmarish week.

“Oh, wow. That sounds fun.” Lissa seemed intrigued by the bullshit excuse I’d made up and it took all the strength in me not to laugh.

“Unfortunately, that means I also have to eat lunch alone.” Lissa complained with a sigh. “Why don’t you come sit with me during lunch?”

And die of pangs of hunger caused by the auditory, visual, and olfactory assault of food from all around me at the cafeteria? No thanks.

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“I-I can’t. I want to use the time to skim through an old book of herbs I found online last night.”

This time, I was actually not lying. I really needed to skim through that book I bought yesterday. I hadn’t been able to bring along the large tome of the old book of herbs so finding a pdf version of its scanned pages was such a delight and I wanted to read through them so I didn’t thoroughly forget all the herbs I’d worked so hard in my adolescent and teenage years to understand.

“Oh, alright.” Lissa agreed grudgingly, and then we parted ways.

***

I didn’t want to go to the library for the reading that I needed to do, so I opted to go to an empty classroom. However, when I tried to push the doors open, I found that all the empty classroom doors seemed to be locked.

I was just about to give up when I successfully pushed a door open. Unfortunately, when I walked in, I stumbled upon a boy seated at the teacher’s deck with his legs raised onto the table like some kind of rascal while reading a book written in another language which I couldn’t identify.

“Who…” The boy looked up from his book and focused his familiar light blue eyes on me.

I recognized him instantly.

Sawyer Hawkins.

I had seen him earlier today, driving out of school just before first period like the school vagrant he was, so it was a double surprise to see him here in this classroom, reading.

“Um, I’ll just go.” I said politely, turning back to open the classroom door.

“Wait!”

I turned back to stare at him curiously, wondering what he wanted.

“You wanted to do something in the empty classroom, right?” He asked.

I nodded tentatively, not quite sure why he was asking.

“And you’re not going to make a lot of noise?” He asked again.

I nodded in response, wishing he’d go straight to the point.

“Well, then you can stay. I’m also not going to make any noise.” He said before turning back to his book.

I turned to face the door, contemplating just walking away because I truly wanted nothing to do with Sawyer.

But considering the fact that he could take offense to that and could thus develop a grudge against me, speak against me to his father or mother and then get me somehow expelled from his pack, I decided to stay and just do my reading here.

So that was how I sat alone in an empty classroom to study herbs with the future Alpha of Hawkins pack.

Of course, the novelty wore off fast as I got lost in the book I was reading.

When the warning buzzer signaling that the time for lunch period to end was close, I packed up my notes and got ready to leave.

However, before I could walk out of the classroom and forget that I ever sat alone in the same classroom with the future Alpha of the Hawkins pack, he stopped me.

“Wait!”

I stopped in my tracks and turned to stare at him as he pulled his legs off the teacher’s desk and strode toward me. He was wearing his sunglasses again while looking like a fool for wearing them indoors, albeit a very cool and handsome fool.

“Can I help you?” I asked, craning my neck to stare up at him after he’d stood in front of me, staring at me with an inscrutable look for several seconds.

“Will you go out with me?”