Spinach Teeth & Social Hierarchies

The high school cafeteria operates like a pyramid scheme nobody actually signed up for. Varsity football players at the apex, then cheerleaders, then regular people, and somewhere near the bottom, me and my smoothie.

My mom's going through this health phase, so now I'm that girl carrying around a green sludge that's mostly spinach and embarrassment. I tried explaining this to Marisa yesterday, but she was too busy hyperventilating about Kai.

Kai's the new junior who transferred in last month. He's gorgeous in that way that makes everyone act weird—quiet, always wearing that same black hoodie, sitting alone at a table by the windows. He's like a sphinx or something, all mysterious and unreadable. Marisa's been conducting a full-on surveillance operation, which she calls "research" but is definitely just spying.

"You should talk to him," she insisted during third period. "He drew something in art class that looked just like that tree outside the gymnasium. He's observant."

"He's observant because he doesn't talk," I pointed out.

But then came Monday, when I finally did it. I marched up to his table with my spinach smoothie and zero game plan.

"Hey," I said. "You're Kai, right?"

He looked up, and his eyes were seriously unfair. "Yeah."

"Cool. I'm Jade. I like your hoodie."

"Thanks. You have spinach in your teeth."

The social pyramid collapsed in that moment. I could feel Marisa watching from across the cafeteria, probably live-texting everyone she knew. I wanted to dissolve into the linoleum.

But Kai just smiled. It was small and kind of lopsided. "I mean, you're still standing there. That's brave."

"It's not brave," I muttered. "It's failure."

"Or it's just spinach," he said. "Nobody actually cares except you."

He pulled a sketchbook from his backpack and flipped to a page where he'd drawn the cafeteria—people at tables, the food line, a tiny figure with green teeth standing frozen near the windows. Underneath he'd written: "social pyramids are just shapes we make up to feel better about being awkward."

"That's... weirdly deep?"

"I'm deep," he said, closing the book. "Also, I lied. There's no spinach. I just wanted to see if you'd believe me."

I stared at him. "What?"

"You're so worried about fitting into the pyramid that you forgot to check if the problem was even real." He stood up. "That's the thing about hierarchies—they only work if you believe in them."

He walked away, leaving me with my smoothie and the most confusing interaction of my life.

Marisa appeared beside me five seconds later. "What happened? Did he ask for your number?"

"No," I said, checking my teeth in my phone camera. No spinach. "He just destroyed my entire worldview."

"Same thing, honestly."