Enchilada Ed

15

Ed managed to make it to Calculus. He couldn't focus on any of the derivatives. The little numbers in his textbook seemed to be laughing at him.

At lunchtime, when Ed got to the cafeteria, he didn't know where to sit. He accidentally peeked at his usual spot and caught Audra wide-eyed staring at him. Emily whispered something into Audra's ears. Ed thought he might pass out. He quickly shifted his gaze a nearby table, populated by a group of guys he sort of knew from his English class.

"Hey, uh, Jesse," Ed said to one, a golden haired drummer, "anybody sitting here?" He pointed at an empty chair.

"Nah man," Jesse said. "Go ahead. We're talking about 90s alt-rock today."

Ed tried to socialize like a person not suffering from acute, unexpected heartbreak. But there was only so much he could say about Weezer's early work. He wasn't a big Radiohead fan either, so he couldn't argue convincingly as to whether or not Thom Yorke meant "Subterranean Homesick Alien" as a "sequel" to "Paranoid Android" on OK Computer. Still, the ebbs and flows of the conversation felt to Ed like a numbing salve, or Novocain. If he didn't think about the pain, he would not feel the pain. Ed tried not to think about anything at all.

"I think you're giving Thom Yorke too much credit," Jesse stuffed half a Twinkie into his mouth, "He's a contrarian."

"So the whole album is about his car-phobia? Is that what you're saying?" a brown haired bassist replied.

"I'm saying the album is about nothing, brah. All Radiohead lyrics are about nothing. Yorke uses the cut-up method, like Bowie did, or the Dadaists, or Burroughs."

"You can't listen to "No Surprises" and tell me that's about nothing-"

"You're both wrong," a feminine voice brought Ed back to stinging reality.

Gina plopped down across the table from Ed.

"Everybody knows that Ok Computer was born from Yorke's Eurotrash dissatisfaction with neoliberal capitalism," Gina grabbed a French fry from Jesse's lunch tray. "Yorke was such a saddie, complaining about the nineties. The manufacturing-to-service-economy transition didn't start to really suck until after 2000."

"Take that back!" The bassist raised his voice, "Thom Yorke is not Eurotrash!"

"What do you want, Gina?" Ed took a swig from his water bottle.

"I was sent by the mothership to check up on you," Gina bent her head in the direction of Ed's usual lunch table. "You just not gonna sit with us, or what?"

"You guys want me to sit with you?" Ed lifted his eyebrows, "did everybody forget about what happened this morning?"

"You're making it weird."

"I'm making it weird?"

"Look, I don't know what's going on with Frenchy, either," Gina pursed her dark blue lips, "but who cares, so you're not going to go to prom with her. Big deal."

"What do you mean, what's going on with Audra?" Ed's stomach dropped, "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, she's fine. Emily said she just doesn't want to talk about it, so we're not talking about it."

"About what?" A thousand horrible possibilities ran through Ed's head, "Is somebody sick? Nobody died, right?"

"Pfft. This isn't a John Green novel," Gina examined the SpongeBob stickers on her nails. "She just doesn't want to go to prom for some reason, that's all I know."