Chapter 2 - Brand New Friends

                                    

                                          
"Hey, Kimura!" 
                          
    I looked up from my bento lunch with a hand covering my yawn, mentally preparing for the Newspaper Club hounding me for an interview again, only to find the Hitachiin brothers standing above me with their fancy lunches. "Can we join you?" they asked in unison. 
                          
    It hadn't even been 24 hours since I'd sort of met them, but somehow they learned my name. And chased me down in the winding Academy gardens. 
                          
Scary. 
                          
    "Uh, sure?" I said, surprised. I moved over, making space for them (and another friend of theirs that I hadn't noticed) in my gazebo. The twins slid into the cement bench across from me, and their friend sat down beside me. Birds chirped, filling the awkward silence. I took a few bites of my salad while I waited for someone to say something. 
                          
    "Maybe we should introduce ourselves," one of the twins said with a wink. "I'm Hikaru, this is my brother Kaoru, and this is our friend Haruhi Fujioka. She's in our class too." 
                          
    Kaoru frowned at his brother, and Haruhi kicked Hikaru under the stone table. I didn't quite understand what happened, but I pretended not to notice.
                          
    Smiling, I nodded at each of them in turn, feeling awkward. "It's nice to officially meet you all, I guess. Also nice to meet another girl who wears the boys' uniform." 
                          
    "Likewise," Haruhi answered with a half-smile. She unwrapped her own bento box and started eating. I tried not to stare, but her lunch looked so good; it was almost all food I wasn't allowed to eat anymore: a sandwich, little fishy crackers, two pieces of candy, a handful of raw carrots, and a fragrant curry in a thermos. She must have noticed my creepy staring, though, and asked, "Everything okay, Kimura?" 
                          
"Ah! Y-yeah, sorry," I stammered, burying my face in my hands. "I'm not used to having other people eat with me... and your lunch looks really good. Not to be weird." 
                          
Haruhi looked from her bento to mine and up at me. "My lunch looks better than yours? Are... are you kidding me?" 
                          
"No!" I laughed. "I'm on a weirdly strict diet for a movie I'm in over the next break. So I'm starving pretty much all the time." I tilted my bento toward her, revealing my meager meal: a half-eaten 'salad' of lettuce and tomato (no dressing), brown rice, celery, and a string cheese. 
                          
Ergo: hamster food. 
                          
Haruhi frowned and opened her mouth to say something, when Kaoru cut her off. "Movie, huh?" Kaoru asked, "That must be pretty cool." He tilted his head and took a bite of his lobster bisque. 
                          
I shrugged. "It's okay, I guess," I admitted. 
                          
My mother's taut voice nagged in the back of my head: Don't let people get too close... 
                          
...You never know what they're going to sell to the paparazzi... 
                          
...Don't tell them too much... 
                          
...The only friends you have are your family. 
                          
Hikaru brightened, sitting up straight in his chair and pointing at me with his grapefruit spoon. "That's why your name seems familiar! You were the little girl in that Tom Hanks movie!"
                          
"Small... Sh-..." Kaoru perked up, trying to think of the name, "Short Stuff!" 
                          
Grimacing, I nodded and stared into my sad lunchbox. "Yup, you got me." I pushed my salad around as the twins talked about their favorite parts of the movie, throwing quotes back and forth and imitating Tom Hanks. Kill me now. Please, Odin, smite me from the earth.