Lines

    She  stood in the lunch line, free lunch kids always went first, trying to ignore the yellow stain on her favorite shirt. It was the only Old navy, the only ones the kids ever complimented me on, the one momma found at the Goodwill with the tags still attached. She hated this line. It separated them, the haves and the have nots, everyone knew who was who in you could see it in everything. It wasn't so bad in grade school, the pecking order just begun but not yet set in stone.
  Now in middle school though it was different. Made it clear you would not get asked by Robert Milton to the dance or be elected to cheer leading or student council. Only thing worse was a sack lunch. Totally not cool. Her friend Anna went without a lunch everyday, purposely leaving it on the bus everyday.
    It was worse for girls like her, who loved learned but sucked at sports. Sports could help you get past the line. Joe Jackson, Anna's brother was popular and ate and the jocks table. He was some kind of end on the football team and no one seemed to notice that he tennis shoes were hand me downs.
    She sat at the table between the nerds and the loners. She wasn't really sure what they called her table and even less sure that she wanted to know. She ate lunch every day with Anna, fat Kathy and the foreign exchange student Mila. She could never figure out why Mila wasn't popular. She was a beautiful girl from Somalia. Fay was just glad the she had chosen to be here friend.
        In reality, to others who did love her like her mother and her English teacher Mrs. Kaufman, Fay was the prettiest girl at the table, a very pretty girl no matter what table she sat at. Fay was unaware of it though, hating long straight hair that fell to her butt, wishing momma would let her cut it like the other girls. She hated her dark skin that made others often guess she was Mexican, sometimes speaking Spanish at her and expecting her to answer.
    She had lost her confidence in her beauty and in her worth at a young age. Truly it had been stolen from her. many things tugged at pulled at her self worth. It started with a brother Ryan, the oldest, who's playing house had passed the lines, damn broken lines, into something that made her feel sick and anger at herself, at him and a mother for not knowing.
  A mother who living with was some kind of roller coaster ride. The never seemed to be a middle line, just highs and lows that were so different, she sometimse felt like she had two moms. She loved the high mood mom the best, but when she was like that things were likely to change; where they lived, who was "dad of the week", where they went to school.