With his friends

"Let's sit with my friends. They're never going to believe how much nicer you are this year," he says and immediately apologizes. "Oh, I'm sorry, Tanya, that was rude of me. I just, I'm still adjusting to you being friendly to me. Grab your stuff and I'll meet you over there."

"Me. Too." Tanya says coldly, uncertain why she's agreed to sit with Kyle and his friends. She heads over to the table where she belongs and puts her food down. She smiles at her popular friends who greet her. Then she grabs her backpack and throws it over her shoulder before picking up her tray again.

"Where are you going, Tanya?" Whitney asks.

"To sit with Kyle and his friends," she says robotically.

All of the jaws at the table drop in unison. McKenzie, Tanya's best friend, asks "what? why?"

"Because he asked," Tanya doesn't know why the words are coming out of her mouth. They're absolutely accurate words but she's as confused as all of her friends. She feels embarrassed reading the judgment on their faces, so she quickly turns and scurries across the cafeteria before they can ask more questions. She looks up at Kyle's table and sees a similar look of confusion on the pimply faces of his friends. Tanya is pretty sure that all of the eyes in the cafeteria are on her as she shatters the high school hierarchy by placing her tray at the nerd table and sitting.

She finds herself surrounded by Kyle, his two guy friends Josh and Minh, and the school's lone sardonic emo girl, Maggie. All of the boys manage a nervous "hi" or "hey" while Maggie only blows her bangs out of her face and rolls her eyes.

Tanya shakes and starts eating her salad. She feels like she'll be able to get up and leave as soon as the bell rings. As they eat, Maggie is quiet but the boys try to make small talk with her. They ask her about cheerleading, her after-school activities, her favorite classes, but she ignores every single question unless it comes from Kyle. She answers anything he asks to the point where the other boys eventually, to her relief, get the picture that she's still uninterested in them. Although, everyone at the table is confused as to why she's paying so much attention to Kyle.

Internally, her eyes glaze over when he starts talking about how they all play a roleplaying game called Shadowrun every weekend and goes deep geek into the mechanics of the game. Yet, as uninterested as she is, she can't stop paying attention. Kyle sees her response as hanging on his every word. When he pauses it gives her an opportunity to look up away and at the clock. She sighs with relief. Five more minutes.