Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

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The second in an occasional series about lunchtime conversations at area schools.

• Food groups

They call it the cage.

Which it is. A metal gate creaks and moans as it slides shut, keeping the teen masses inside the cafeteria. Each day at lunch, they serve their time: 20 minutes.

Let us join them, as lunch ends this early March day at Roanoke’s Patrick Henry High School. The teenage crowds gather behind the gate. A history teacher, a gray-haired woman with glasses perched low on her nose, waits on the other side. She wields a Big Gulp and a no-nonsense look. She won’t spring them. Not until the bell.

From the inside, a young man cries for freedom.

“We’re caged in like animals!”

“Because you act like animals,” responds the teacher, with the biting sarcasm that could only come from years of working in public education.

Ah, the rules. They are as much a part of high school as reading, writing, and arithmetic, parties, proms and Facebook. Here, in the space between first and final periods, teens teeter-totter between obeying authority and reaching for young adult freedom.

Some restrictions are old-school: no chewing gum, no passing notes, no talking in class.

But in a post-9/11 world, the list of don’ts grows.

Rules surround students, even finding their way into lunchtime conversations.

The complaints
Senior Megan Jenkins, 17, sits with friends at a table with the topography of a beach — sandy salt grains and french fry crumbs as hard as seashells.

“They cage us … in the cafeteria,” she says, “So we can’t get out.”

Alex McFadyen, 15, sweeps his hand like he’s picturing a marquee: “PH: the minimum-security prison.”

He pauses, studying the pizza slice on his tray.

“They already have the food part down.”

The list of complaints is endless: they are not allowed to hang out in the cafeteria in the mornings unless they buy breakfast; they must stay inside during lunch.

If you’re late to school, you must sign in and wait for someone to escort you to class.

Megan: “I’m a senior. I think I can find my own way to class.”

She high-fives fellow senior Madonna Justice across the table, celebrating that they are graduating soon.

Alex (a sophomore): “I have two more years of this stuff.”

The reasons
The jail comparison. The prison analogy. Teachers have heard it all.

History instructor Mary McBurney, on cage-guarding duty this day, says teenagers are hilarious. They’re also more than willing to share their opinions.

“Kids always think they’re in jail if they can’t do what they want when they want,” she explains.

For upperclassmen, the rules can be as hard to swallow as leftover cafeteria grub.

After all, the list of do’s and don’ts has changed.

Until early 2006, the campus was collegiate — complete with a quad and 10 separate buildings. There was freedom to roam and a spot to play soccer during lunch.

Now, after $46 million in renovations, the school is under one roof. Five lunches happen each day, stretched across a two-hour period starting at 11:15 a.m.

The campus is connected, and hence, the need for the gate. It blocks kids from sneaking into an extra lunch, and stops teens from wandering early from the dining hall.

There are nearly 2,000 students at PH. Even if 50 leave lunch for the bathroom or lockers, odds are, McBurney said, someone will disturb a class.

Ironically, the restrictions are supposed to prepare teens for life after high school, when they are disciplining themselves.

So when McBurney hears students say they are in jail, she just tells them if that’s the case, she’s in there, too.

Living with rules
Uniformed and armed, a Roanoke police officer patrols the cafeteria’s checkered linoleum. Teens drop jackets on a table before snaking through the lunch line — deterring students from stuffing stolen apples or milk cartons into pockets.

Junior Glory Bowman, 16, has grown used to all this. She has no problem breaking a rule under the officer’s watchful eye — producing her cellphone midmeal and showing how she hides it between her knees for texting during class.

“You get pretty professional at it in this place,” she says.

“I’ve learned to text without looking,” another student adds.

Yet spring break is coming soon. One girl here is going to Italy, another is traveling to Georgia for volleyball.

Freedom from classes, homework and rules for a week.

Senior Jake Parry, 18, whom the girls call “Sandra,” is not going anywhere.

Glory: “Sandra hearts Roanoke,” she teases. “He spends his mornings up at the [Mill Mountain] star … every time he’s at the market, he cries just a little bit.”

Jake/Sandra: “There’s nothing to do in Roanoke, and I can’t afford to go out of town.”

Even freedom from school has its limits.

Released at last
Keith Graham, 16 and a rebel, normally grabs lunch at McDonald’s. That’s also against the rules.

“I didn’t have gas,” Keith explains this day.

Instead, he sits at a cafeteria table crowded with athletes. He squeezes ketchup onto his chicken sandwich with hands weighed down by gold rings. If this were a John Hughes movie, across the room, Molly Ringwald would be writing his name on her Trapper Keeper.

Keith flips open his cellphone (broken rule No. 2) to show off a picture from a party.

Darren Thomas, 17: “We just try to make school fun, even though we don’t like it.”

Ronnie Thomas, 16: “I like school. I got a 3.7 [grade point average].”

Darren, on his younger brother: “He’s a nerd.”

Lunch ends, the gate slides open. The once-caged are now free. So Ronnie takes a liberty.

“You suck, Mrs. McBurney,” he says, smiling as he leaves.

She scoffs, realizes he’s kidding and taunts back.

The teacher gets the last word. And you, son, just got served.