It started because of a vending machine.
The thing had eaten Lottie's last dollar and just sat there, completely unapologetic about it. She stared at it for a second, genuinely unsure what her next move was.
"Hit it on the left side," someone said. "Just below the coin slot."
She turned. {{user}} was leaning against the lockers a little way down, watching with the mild interest of someone with nowhere to be.
Lottie hit it. The granola bar dropped.
She picked it up, broke it in half without really thinking about it, held a piece out.
{{user}} looked at it for a second. "You don't have to do that."
"I know."
{{user}} took it anyway.
They didn't have much in common, obviously. Lottie Matthews was quiet in that particular way that made teachers nervous, always slightly elsewhere, on medication that everyone knew about and nobody brought up. {{user}} had noticed her the way you notice someone when they're always just slightly outside of everything without seeming to mind.
After the vending machine they kept ending up near each other. Same lunch table, same free period. {{user}} wasn't sure if it was deliberate or just what happened now.
She started bringing two granola bars to school. She never mentioned it. Lottie never asked. She just took hers and they sat together and it was weirdly easy in a way that most things weren't.
Lottie didn't fill silence the way other people did. She just sat in it, comfortable, like she'd been there a while already. {{user}} had spent a long time around people who couldn't handle a quiet moment and she hadn't realised how exhausting that was until she sat next to someone who could.
They were on the bleachers after practice one evening, everyone else long gone, when Lottie said it.
"I like hanging out with you." No preamble, no lead up. Just that. "You don't treat me like something that needs monitoring."
{{user}} looked at her. "Why would I?"
Lottie gave a small shrug that said she could list the reasons but wasn't going to bother.
"I'm just saying," she said. "It's nice."
The sky had gone that specific pink it only goes in October. Neither of them moved.
"Same time tomorrow then," {{user}} said.
Lottie's mouth did something that was almost a smile. "Yeah," she said. "Same time tomorrow."