YOUNG ✮ DEGRASSI

stand up, stand down

Manny popped a cheese and pickled flavoured crisp into her mouth. "Alright." she scanned the area for another pick until her gaze landed right on Spinner Mason. They all soon turned to the object of her attention. He sat a couple picnic benches away with Paige Michealchck and Federico, plus some other girl who Arlee didn't know from their grade.

"Definitely not." Emma simply stated, taking a small bite of her food.

"Yeah, what she said." muttered Arlee as she purposefully stuffed half of her sandwich into her mouth just so her answer would be twice as inaudible.

That still didn't deter Manny from giving her a puzzled look. "But didn't you dance with him at the school dance last Friday?"

Arlee swallowed thickly. She went in search of her orange juice box, ripped the bendy plastic straw from its side and flitted her gaze straight down to it to try and concentrate on trying not to tear a huge gaping hole in the wrong gap with her straw. "Not really."

Not really. Not freaking really. Was that seriously the best she could do?

Luckily, Manny decided to move on from that non-answer of an answer to continue on with their little game. "Okay what about Federico?"

Arlee's face shrewd to infinity once she'd managed to finally stab a hole through her juice cartoon. "Ugh, Manny."

"I'm not asking you, obviously." clarified Manny. "I was asking Em, since she told me about how she used to have a crush on hi-"

"Manny !" Emma rushed to cut her off, causing Arlee to swiftly stare straight at her with a raised brow at that as she drank her juice. But decided for her sake, to drop the plethora of queries that had just bombarded her head about Manny's accidental confession. "Can we please change the subject ?"

Arlee lowered her juice cartoon from her lips. "Depends on what subject you want to switch  it to, like for example....anything NAK related."  

"I was actually gonna ask if you'd done the homework for English." replied Emma. "But now you've mentioned it, I do have one last thing to get off my chest."

NAK. NAK. Any more of this and Arlee was going to disappear into orbit. "Haven't you already said everything ?"

"I'm sorry it just annoys me so much." lamented Emma. "I mean, how do they think it's okay to talk to kids like they don't have minds of their own ?"

Manny folded her arms against the table. "It's not like people really think about it at all."

"That's the thing, they don't want us to think! They want us to become brain dead, NAK robots."

Just as those words escaped Emma's mouth for what Arlee was hoping to be the last time, Toby and JT approached the table with their lunches.

JT had decided to worm his way in the tiny gap between Emma and herself, slamming his tray down unnecessarily and making the other half of her sandwich fall to the floor.

Upon noticing what he'd done, he sheepishly grinned at her. And in retaliation, she took a handful of his curly fries.  Not that there was a vast amount on his plate to begin with, considering the school's strict regimen on portion control.

"What's with her?" Toby questioned Manny about Emma, brows furrowing as he tried to understand how one person could rave about a singular subject with breathing for air.