Null Pointer

Stealing Mart's Food

Sleepyside Junior Senior High School decided to try splitting the population into two lunch periods in order to make the lines and crowds more manageable. On the one hand, it meant, for the first time since the club’s creation, that the Bob-Whites didn’t have lunch together. On the other hand, it meant that Mart and Di had lunch together without Trixie and Honey. In theory, Dan also had lunch with them, but he was usually too busy to eat with them. Most of Di’s art class friends also had the other lunch, so most days they sat with Mart’s basketball friends.

Mart opened his lunch, his stomach growling. He grinned, delighted, when he found a container of fresh cherry tomatoes in his lunch. Moms had just picked them yesterday.

Tad Webster tried to grab one of the tomatoes. Mart smacked his hand away. “Go get your own!”

“There’s nowhere to get cherry tomatoes like Crabapple Farm’s,” Tad pointed out.

“Not my problem,” Mart replied, popping a handful of the succulent tomatoes.

A few minutes later, one of the other guys tried to snag a tomato and got his hand swatted as well.

Di watched, bemused, as she ate her lunch. When she finished her lunch, she casually reached over and picked out one of the tomatoes. Mart didn’t even comment. Tad did.

“Are you really that smitten?” Tad demanded. “You’re just going to let her do that?” He waved as Di ate another tomato. Tad tried again to appropriate a tomato for himself and once again, Mart hit his hand away. “You are that smitten,” Tad muttered disgusted.

Di shrugged. “It’s simple. I’m allowed to share his food.”

“I bet that’s not all you share,” one of the other basketball players muttered.

“It had better be all they share, or Mart’s in big trouble with Mr. Lynch,” Dan pointed out, joining them for a quick sandwich at the end of the lunch period.