The Click Before the Lead

By the third lunch, I knew which table Oren would choose if I got there first.

It was near the middle of the cafeteria, beside the aisle where people came and went with trays. There were quieter tables along the wall. We had used one of those the previous day, though neither of us had called it quiet. The middle table made a different kind of statement: we were eating lunch, and anyone could see us doing it.

I set my tray down at the end and kept my notebook beside it. The list was inside, folded between pages of class notes. I had brought it without deciding to share it. That counted as a decision at this school, though the system had no way to record indecision as a category.

Oren arrived with a mechanical pencil tucked behind his ear. He looked at the empty chairs, then at me.

“You came early,” he said.

“I wanted to choose the table before the table chose me.”

He glanced at the aisle, where a student had just backed into a chair and apologized to nobody in particular. “Good choice.”

He sat across from me. No one announced our names. No warning appeared on the screens. A lunch period could pass without the school making itself the most interesting thing in the room, though it rarely managed this by intention.

Oren put his pencil beside his tray. Its paint was worn down near the grip, and the metal tip had a small dent. He saw me looking.

“Found it in a classroom,” he said. “I asked around. It’s nobody’s, apparently.”

“You asked the pencil?”

“I asked the people.” He pushed the pencil into a straighter line with his thumb. “It needed a new spring.”

The familiar explanation should have made the meeting ordinary. Instead, I found myself aware of the chair across from me, occupied because he had chosen to occupy it. Three lunches in a row, with the same person, might have been the beginning of a routine. A routine was just a choice repeated often enough to become easier to notice.

“Does it work?” I asked.

He pressed the top once. The lead advanced with a small, clean click.

“It does now.”

I looked down at my food. I had written that sound down. Not this pencil in particular, since I had never heard this one before. The other one. The one he tested before putting it away, always once. A tiny click that could disappear under trays scraping and cutlery and the ventilation system.

Oren started eating. I tried to do the same. The list stayed between us in my mind, where it was both private and increasingly inconvenient.