Twon receives a triple portion of food. The lunch lady happens to be his aunt and is generous with his portions to begin with. Mr. Blackmon nibbles from a container of carrot sticks and a Baggie of pumpkin spiced granola. We turn our noses up at it when he offers some.

The Special Ed students are allowed to be with our classes during lunch and enrichment. Most times we choose to take our lunch back to our classroom. If we are going to be designated “special,” we are going to take full advantage of that status, flipping things so that it’s a privilege. In our room, we can talk freely the entire period, unlike the regulated cafeteria where students had to be quiet except for the final ten minutes of lunch, when they are free to chat. Today I convinced everyone to eat in the cafeteria (so that I can observe people, but I leave that part out).

The school cafeteria doubles as the auditorium, so there is a raised platform that can be closed off by the thick burgundy curtains. Me, Nehemiah, Twon, and Rodrigo sit around a table on the stage. The perfect perch from which to see how the different players operate in their natural element.

“What do you see, Thelonius?” Mr. Blackmon wanders over. The way he watches me watching folks annoys me. His scrutiny makes it hard for me to focus.

“What do you mean?”

“When you look out at the rest of your class, what do you see?”

This time of day is the toughest for teachers to corral us. All our energy builds up to this point and we tick away the minutes all morning, waiting for release. Whatever tattered bits of discipline remain in us fray to shreds and the teachers resign themselves to managing the unruliness. We outnumber them.

There are perfectly valid reasons to be scared of spiders, just not the ones people typically think of. The number of spiders should make folks break out in cold sweats. Numbers can tell an interesting story. Spiders are in just about every home, to the point where you’re never more than a few feet from a spider whether you can see them or not. The larger ones can feed on lizards, birds, and even small mammals. If you were to add up the weight of all the spiders in the world, it would come to 25 million tons. Combined, they eat between four hundred and eight hundred million tons of prey in a year. If you add up the weight of all the adult humans on the planet, it comes to about 287 million tons. In other words, the sum of all the spiders could eat all of us and still be hungry come snack time.

The numbers don’t lie, but you can make them tell whatever story you want.

Having drawn the short straw today, Ms. Erickson’s been sentenced to lunch duty. She patrols up and down the rows of tables with a soft glare on her face meant to silence any stray whisperers. She places orange cones on the ends of each table, signaling silence to allow the students “the proper concentration” to finish their lunches. On days like breakfast days, we accomplish that task within minutes. The only people still eating are those who suffer through home-packed lunches of cold SpaghettiOs, stale chips, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (especially since the jelly had all morning to soak through the bread). Some kids open books and duck their heads to pass the remaining time. Others fidget, barely able to contain their anxious energy. A few slip out their cells, keeping them out of the eyes of teachers since phones are “forbidden.” Everyone competes to get away with as much chatter or game playing as Ms. Erickson’s back allows.