Meet Helen

The cafeteria hummed with voices, chairs scraping against linoleum, the clatter of trays. Cassandra sat at the far end of a long table, her back to the window, eating the sandwich. Her mother never cooked for her, so Cassandra had to learn how to make a meal for herself.

She finished half the sandwich and folded the rest back into its wrapping. The milk carton was empty, collapsed in on itself. She had forty-three minutes until the fifth period. The library was an option, or the empty classroom on the third floor where the radiator knocked, and the chalkboard still had last week's equations faintly ghosted across it. She was weighing these possibilities when someone set a tray down across from her.

Cassandra's first thought was a mistake. Someone had misjudged, thought the seat was free, would apologize and move once they realized. She kept her eyes on her hands, on the smudge of mayonnaise at the corner of her napkin.

"You're in my English class," the girl said. "You sit by the window. I'm two seats behind you, by the door."

Cassandra looked up. She recognized the face—of course she did, they had shared the same third-period classroom since September—but she could not remember this girl ever speaking to her before. Dark hair pulled back with a tortoiseshell clip. A navy sweater that looked soft and expensive. Hands that were peeling an orange in neat, practiced sections, the rind spiraling onto her tray like something deliberate and strange.

The girl held out a section of orange, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. The flesh glistened, caught the overhead light. "I'm Helen."

Cassandra did not take the orange. She said, "Cassandra."

"I know." Helen withdrew the offered fruit and placed it on her own tray, unbothered. She ate a section herself, chewing slowly, watching Cassandra with what might have been curiosity or might have been assessment. "You always have your nose to a book before class starts. What are you reading?"

"Les Propheties."

"The book of Nostradamus?" Helen was surprised. "Most of its contents deal with disasters. Depressing."

"Depressing or not depressing makes no difference. What is meant to happen will happen."

Helen smiled. It was not the smile Cassandra was used to seeing directed at her—the quick, pitying, sliding-away smile of people who had accidentally made eye contact and needed to correct the error.

"Can I sit here?" Helen asked, though she was already sitting, her bag settled on the bench beside her, her orange half-consumed.

Cassandra wanted to say something that would close the conversation. She had strategies for this, honed over the years. I was just leaving. I'm waiting for someone. This seat is saved. But looking at Helen, at the directness of her gaze, at the way she seemed completely at ease in this moment that should have been awkward for both of them, Cassandra felt her usual defenses crumbling somehow, not through **** but through irrelevance.

"There are other tables," she said finally. It came out wrong, not as a refusal but as a question.

"But you are the only one sitting alone," Helen said. "Too many people trying too hard." She peeled another section, separated it into halves, ate one half, and held the other out again. "I hate trying hard. Don't you?"

Cassandra took the orange this time. It was cold, slightly bitter, the membrane thick between her teeth. She could not remember the last time someone had shared food with her. She could not remember the last time someone had chosen to sit with her when they had other options, better options, any options at all.

"I'm not—" she started, and stopped. Not what? Not interesting? Not safe? Not whatever Helen was looking for?

"I don't want you to be anything," Helen said, and the simplicity of it, the lack of demand in her voice, made Cassandra's throat tighten in a way she could not name. "I just want to sit here. If that's okay."

Cassandra looked at her half-eaten sandwich, at the crumpled wax paper, at the milk carton crushed flat. She looked at Helen, at the clip in her hair that was slightly askew, catching light at one corner. She thought of all the reasons this was strange, all the ways it could go wrong, the inevitable moment when Helen would realize that Cassandra was not worth this effort, this attention, this careful peeling of oranges.

"Okay," she said.

Helen smiled again. She sat there, but didn't ask any questions. She just shared the serenity.

The bell rang. Helen gathered her things with unhurried efficiency, sliding her bag over one shoulder, picking up her empty tray. She paused, looking down at Cassandra with an expression Cassandra could not read.

"See you in the next class," Helen said.

Cassandra nodded. She watched Helen walk away, weaving between tables, stopping once to return a dropped napkin to a student Cassandra did not recognize. She sat alone at the table, her sandwich finished, her hands empty. The cafeteria was emptying now, the noise thinning, but she did not move immediately. She sat in the space Helen had left, in the strange warmth of having been chosen, however briefly, for no reason she could understand or trust.

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Two years have passed since that day. Cassandra and Helen had become inseparable friends. Whenever they did something, they did it together. Cassandra told Helen everything about her.

Well, almost everything. She didn't tell her best friend about the dark fate that awaited her.