Chapter Text
The cafeteria was overflowing with students. One of them approached Laura and asked her: “Hey. We're doing a lunchtime survey of new students. Can you answer a few questions?” Laura said “Okay”, hesitatingly.
“Is your muffin buttered?”
“What?” – Laura was now bewildered.
“Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?” – the girl importuned.
The moment Laura said “My what?”, someone entered the conversation. And “someone” meant none other than Baal Hadad.
“Is she bothering you? Brunhilde, why are you such a skeez?” he asked. The Valkyrie tried to defend herself, smiling awkwardly.
“I'm just being friendly.”
Baal, however, continued. “Brunhilde. You do not come to a party at my house with Woden and then scam on some poor, innocent girl right in front of us three days later. She's not interested.
Do you wanna have sex with her?” He asked Laura directly.
“No, thank you.” she answered with a sigh of relief.
“Good. So it's settled. So you can go shave your back now. Bye, Brunhilde.”
The Valkyrie walked away, muttering angrily something that sounded like “Prometheus”.
“Can I eat her?” Sakhmet said airily, grinning.
“Oh my God, Sakhmet, you can’t just eat people.” Woden sighed. His head tilt could indicate eye-rolling, but the facial expression was hidden behind his helmet. Meanwhile, Baal drew attention to Laura.
“Wait. Sit down. Seriously, sit down. Why don't I know you?” he inquired, while Laura established eye-contact with her friends. They tried to nonverbally encourage her.
“I'm new. I just moved here from Africa.”
“What?”
“I used to be home-schooled.”
“Wait. What?”
“My mom taught me at home...” Laura tried to explain her situation.
“No, no. I know what home-school is. So you've actually never been to a real school before? Shut up. Shut UP.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“Home-schooled. That's really interesting…” Baal wondered for a while.
“Thanks.” Laura replied.
“But you're, like, really pretty?” he asked her. Laura thanked instinctively.
"So you agree? You think you're really pretty?"
"I don't know" Laura replied, perplexed. Luckily for her, Baal changed the topic.
“Oh, my God, I love your dip dye. How did you do it?”
“Oh, my mom did it for me.” Laura loosened up a bit.
“It's adorable” Baal said, while Woden interrupted, “Oh, it's so fetch.”
“What is "fetch"?” Baal asked with an expression of disgust.
Woden, embarrassed, started to explain himself: “Oh, it's, like, slang. From Valhalla.”
“Could you give us some privacy for, like, one second?”
“Yeah, sure.” Laura hesitated.
The Pantheon exchanged muttered comments, while Luci and Amaterasu again attempted to contact Laura. She, however, couldn’t exactly decipher their (or Pantheon’s) intentions.
She asked “What are you doing?” when Baal’s clique stopped talking. After a moment of silence, he said, “OK, you should just know that we don't do this a lot, so this is, like, a really huge deal.”
Woden added “We wanna invite you to have lunch with us every day for the rest of the week.”
“Oh, okay...” Laura was thrilled, but she tried to limit happiness in her statement.
“Coolness. So we'll see you tomorrow.” Baal smiled.
“On Woden’s days, we wear punk!” Sakhmet almost screamed airily in her high-pitched voice.
The next lunch break, Laura, Luci and Amaterasu decided to go to an almost empty girls’ toilet. Laura recounted her encounter with Pantheon. As she elaborated, Luci’s eyes went wider.
“Oh, my God! OK, you have to do it, OK? And then you have to tell me all the horrible things that Baal says.”
“Baal seems nice.” Laura said, trying to maintain eye contact with Luci, who now seemed angrier.
“Baal Hadad is not nice. He's a scum-sucking road whore! He ruined my life!” she screamed.
“He's fabulous, but he's evil”, Amaterasu added peacefully.
“Why do you hate him?” Laura’s eyes narrowed, and her eyebrow creased.
“What do you mean?” Luci asked.
“Baal... You seem to really hate him.”
“Yes. What's your question?”
“Well, my question is, why?” Laura inquired. Amaterasu was ready to explain: “Baal ruined Luci’s life, because…”
“Only because I spent some quality time with his mysterious boyfriend.” Luci admitted. Her rage somehow disappeared, but she continued.
“Now, look. This isn't about hating him, OK? I just think that it would be, like, a fun little experiment if you were to hang out with them and then tell us everything that they say.”
“What do we even talk about?” Laura asked.
“Hair products.”
“Fucking Tara”.
“Is that an actor?” the girl still was confused.
“Would you just do it? Please?” Luci pleaded.
“OK, fine.” Laura agreed.
“So, do you have a cigarette? Or cocaine? Ideally some cocaine?” Luci asked. It turned out that in fact, no one had the desired supplies.
“What kind of teenager doesn’t even have cigarettes?” she seemed perplexed, full of disbelief.
At this exact moment the bell rang, so Laura rushed to math class. She liked and understood math, and she was sure that nothing could mess her up. Until someone sitting in front of her turned back to ask, “Hey, do you have a pencil I can borrow?” in a smooth, velvety voice. This was an innocent question, but the tone made Laura think about something definitely inappropriate for a math class. She felt like she was hit by a big, yellow school bus. And she stayed distracted till the end of the lessons. When Laura came back home, her parents asked “Hey. How was your second day?”
“Fine.” she said without enthusiasm.
“Were people nice?”
“No.”
“Did you make any friends?”
“Yeah.”