As it so happened, she didn’t need to wait very long.
Emi stopped by her locker to pick up her bag lunch and was spinning the combination when someone came up beside her.
“Are you going to the lunch room?”
The someone was Cassie Roxburgh, arguably the most coveted girl at Staley. Not only did she model for a local agency, she was also a sponsored surfer and had a mature, wise-beyond-her-16-years vibe with her husky voice and no-nonsense attitude.
“Sorry, what?” Emi was still star struck by the spectacle of Cassie Roxburgh standing a few inches away, shimmering like someone on a magazine cover.
“Lunch,” Cassie said. “You going?”
Emi was tempted to check behind her to see if Cassie was actually speaking to someone else. She fumbled with her lock. “Uh, sure.”
Cassie was joined by several other girls, including Jamie Terada and Stephanie Kane. They were all juniors and surfers -- the sun-bleached beauties who conveniently missed school whenever there was a south swell.
Emi walked in silence as they walked to the cafeteria and made their place in the lunch line. Emi pretended that she didn’t have a pre-packed lunch in her backpack and followed along, too. Halfway through the line, they were joined by two junior boys, Erik Braga and Asher Lee-Anderson. Tagging along was Asher’s little brother, a freshman named Kennedy. They all cut in line. Nobody behind them protested.
“Fresh meat,” Erik said on finding Emi in line with them. “Who’s this?”
“Emi Kapono,” Jamie said. “Her dad’s Eddie Kapono.”
“Her cousin’s that new girl, Charlotte Banks,” Asher said sharing an intense look with Kennedy.
“Ah yeah? My dad knows your dad,” Erik said. “Sweet.”
They got their food and sat at one of the front tables, the unofficial junior section of the room. Students always plotted out their turf at the beginning of the year. The seniors had the best spot: their own separate room adjoining the cafeteria.
Emi craned her neck, checking to see if Kainoa and the rest of her old crowd had arrived. Not yet. She looked in the other direction to the cross-country table, where Josh occasionally lurked. He wasn’t there yet, either.
Sitting across from her, Cassie and Stephanie were laughing at something. They both turned, still rosy-cheeked to address Emi.
“So, we’re hoping you can settle this bet for us,” Cassie said. “It’s been an ongoing thing for a couple of years now.”
“Oh?” Emi said, smiling uncertainly and feeling conspicuously out of place.
“Yeah, so you…” Stephanie interrupted herself to laugh. She started over again. “Okay, so, you’re dating that sophomore guy, right? The hot one?”
“Josh Sta -whatever-ski,” Jamie interjected.
“Stokowski, you dimwit,” Erik said through a mouthful of refried beans. “Stokowski. It’s not that hard.”
“She knows who I’m talking about, you guys,” Stephanie said with mock annoyance. “It doesn’t matter.”
“So are you dating Josh, Emi?” Cassie finally said once everybody had stopped talking at once.
Emi would have lied or embellished the truth if she thought she could get away with it -- she could tell she only had their attention because they thought she had some interesting connection to Josh -- but lying would only invite further problems in the long run. “No,” she admitted. “We’re not dating.”
“Ha!” Jamie interrupted triumphantly. “I told you, Roxburgh…I told you!”
Cassie burst out laughing. “Wait, wait,” she said. “Emi, but you’re going to luau with him, yeah?”
“I don’t know,” Emi said. “We haven’t discussed it.”
“You’re friends with him?” Cassie pressed.
“Who are your sources, anyway?” Emi asked curiously.
“Nojiri. That little liar,” Jamie interjected.
“Anna Nojiri said you and the Hottie were playing tongue hockey together after school yesterday, right outside Coffee Talk.”
“Oh, that,” Emi said. “Yes, he lives around there.”
“Ah-ha, so you’ve been to his house?” Stephanie said, evidently intrigued, leaning forward.
“You girls are such creepsters,” Erik said loudly. “You’re like stalking the little sophomore dude and freaking out his girlfriend.”
Everybody burst out laughing and talking at once. “No!” Jamie said. “We have to settle this once and for all!”
“Settle what?” Emi asked, now truly curious.
Jamie and Stephanie exchanged a smile, like they shared an in-joke that was very amusing.
It was Asher who finally explained. “They think our resident Pretty Boy is harboring a deep dark secret. They’re taking bets what it is.”
Jamie began counting off on her fingers. “So far we have drug problem, steroid abuse, bastard love-child from some girl he knocked up…”
“Every love-child is a bastard,” Kennedy interrupted. “They’re synonyms.”
“You know what? Shut up,” Jamie said.
“I hope you realize she’s probably going to go back and report all this to Josh and he’s going to know you’re all completely out of your minds infatuated,” Kennedy said, jerking a thumb at Emi.
“I’m still placing my bets on ‘gay,’” Erik chimed in.
“You’re just jealous because Josh is like twenty times hotter than you,” Stephanie said.
“Considering he’s prettier than most of the girls on this campus, that’s not saying much.”
The banter went back and forth for a while. Emi temporarily stopped listening because she noticed that Natalie and Marina had walked into the cafeteria. Because Emi was seated right next to the front entrance, she knew her inclusion at the junior table was impossible to overlook. Natalie and Marina must have spotted her and marveled. Inwardly, Emi rejoiced, but she tried to keep her expression cool, like sitting there was a normal, every-day occurrence. She was so busying affecting nonchalance that it took her a moment to realize Cassie was asking her a question.
“I hope we aren’t insulting you,” Cassie said. “I mean, if you’re friends with him and all.”
“Oh, I’m not insulted,” she said.
“So do you know anything about him?” Stephanie asked.
Emi chose her words carefully. “If Josh has a love-child, he hasn’t told me about it.”
“Hm, very mysterious,” Cassie said. “He’s so brooding. It drives me crazy.”
“Why don’t you talk to him yourself?” Emi asked.
The table erupted into laughter again, and suddenly they were all talking at once about the many times Cassie had tried approaching Josh.
“One time in the library, he told me to ‘buzz off.’ It was actually pretty sexy,” Cassie said.
Kennedy shook his head. “That makes no sense.”
“Maybe it’s a reverse psychology tactic,” Erik suggested. “Like he’s really doing this all on purpose to woo her.”
“So what else,” Jamie asked Emi eagerly. “What about his parents? What are they like?”
“I haven’t met them.”
Emi had all the girls’ attention, but she knew she would lose it fast if she professed her total ignorance about Josh. Quickly, she added, “But I met his siblings. He has five of them.”
“Ooh. Are they all as hot?” Stephanie gushed.
Emi shook her head. “He’s adopted.”
“Aw,” Jamie pouted. “I was imagining a whole brood of Josh look-alikes with identical, perfect hair-dos.”
“Actually, they’re nothing like him,” Emi said. “And they all have special needs.”
“Special needs? Like they’re retarded?” Erik asked.
Jamie pushed him again. “Don’t use that word. My brother’s mentally handicapped.”
“Yeah right,” Erik snorted. “You don’t even have a brother, Jamie.”
Jamie started laughing obnoxiously, which started everyone else up again too, either with her or at her, Emi couldn’t
tell. Even though she didn’t see the humor, Emi pretended to join in anyway, to be polite. The whole set up was something of a let down. She had been expecting the juniors to be a little more sophisticated and a little less stupid. But Emi knew she shouldn’t be picky. After all, it wasn’t every day she got to sit at the junior table.