Word: cafeterias
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...still in the air, Nancy Giessmann, 62, has just cleared the last remnants of breakfast when it is time to get ready for lunch. Any anthropologist studying the tribes of a U.S. high school would envy the observation post Giessmann has manned for the past 19 years behind the cafeteria steam table. She has watched students' tastes shift from meat loaf to pizza and from nice skirts to shorts with panties hanging out--"If they even wore panties," Giessmann sniffs. She knows that most students these days earn spending money at part-time jobs, but she also knows to call...
...slightly raised area due north of the entrance to the cafeteria is home to the Double '00 Hoes (the name's an inside joke--they define themselves by not sleeping around). All seniors, friends since sixth grade, mainly but not exclusively blond, involved in every sport, play and leadership group the school has, they are called "the Clique" by outsiders, who admit that the "Hoes" own the school. Most of them skip the school cheeseburgers and unpack a brown bag of fat-free Yoplait, a Nutri-Grain cereal bar, some carrots or an apple. Sometimes they splurge on an Otis...
Lunchtime is the atomic age, when all the groups split up and fan out, cluster at their tables or flee the school to the parking lot and the fast-food joints beyond, or settle into their regular spot in the school cafeteria, where everyone has a secret and nothing is hidden...
...milky streetlamps still lit at 5:45. It would be a great morning to be fishing. The school doors are already open when principal Pat Voss pads up the front steps in her cranberry Goofy T shirt and heads for the main office. Nancy Giessmann is in the cafeteria making breakfast, Vron Murphy is in the office doing photocopying left from the night before. The flag next to the front steps is still flying at half-staff, in honor of the teacher who dropped dead in the hallway between periods two weeks...
...first wave of students arrives at 6:55 a.m. Six buses from downtown St. Louis pull in bearing the "deseg" kids, most of whom head for the cafeteria. The band members have practice most days before school; drowsy musicians start stumbling onto the field across from the entrance. Jacob Myerson is upstairs in a dim hallway, sitting on the floor outside Room 319, some 40 minutes early for class, studying vocabulary words. Histrionic. Poignant. Unkempt. Loquacious. He wants to go to Princeton...