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Sansa’s totally nervous on her first day at her new school.
Princess of Dorne Preparatory for Girls is stunning. The soaring entrance looks like modern art, all the passageways between classrooms are outdoors, and palm trees soar into the pale blue sky like something out of a cinematic dream. It’s like nothing Sansa’s ever seen before, not in real life, and she has to take a deep breath in order not to panic and run back to her brothers’ car before they drive away.
She’s only been here for ten minutes, but she’s already silently freaking out. Everyone is so gorgeous, put together, and intimidating—and all it does is remind Sansa how much she feels out of step and out of sync. She’s new to Los Angeles, new to everything, and her dad’s new job is really stressing him out although he doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s a long way to go for someone born and raised in Michigan.
True, Sansa has been at private school her whole life, but this is something different. Arya’s still in eighth grade, so she’s at a different school with Bran and Rickon, and their older brothers are at an all-boys high. So Sansa is all on her own here at Princess of Dorne.
She’s tried hard to look nice for the first day, but can already tell that she stands out just by the way she walks. She bought the required school uniform at the repository with her mom, anxiously picking over the different school sweaters and styling herself to look neat and pretty. But the girls that she sees sauntering across the manicured lawns and sloping walkways don’t look like they put much stock in neat and pretty. Somehow the same uniform that looks crisp and pristine on Sansa is the height of disheveled cool on the other girls, through some magical alchemy of accessories or attitude, or probably an inaccessible mix of both.
Don’t panic, she tells herself, drawing in a deep breath. Just… go.
On autopilot, she walks through the school’s double doors and into the main office—she knows where it is because she visited that Saturday with her mom when campus was totally deserted. Practicing her deep yoga breathing, Sansa approaches the desk and clears her throat.
The secretary looks up at her and smiles widely, eyes lighting up. Like everyone on this campus, she’s gorgeous, not to mention a dead ringer for Eva Longoria, and her friendliness makes Sansa feel just a little bit better. “Good morning! How can I help you?”
“Hi… My name is Sansa Stark, and I’m new. I…”
The secretary taps the side of her glasses and nods thoughtfully, cutting Sansa off mid-thought. “Sure. Just let me just look up your class schedule, okay?”
As Sansa waits, a blonde girl with double-pierced ears comes up to stand beside her. (The girl is not, Sansa notices, feeling conspicuously dorky, wearing a school-approved sweater.) Leaning on the desk, the other student lets her eyes slide from Sansa’s face all the way down to her feet. Then she looks up to meet Sansa’s eyes with a sly, somewhat approving grin. Flustered, Sansa looks down at her shoes—they’re Keds, but nothing is wrong with them—and then nervously back up at the other girl.
The blonde girl opens her mouth as if to say something, but then shuts her mouth with another grin. Weird. Wait… did she just… check me out? Is that what just happened? Sansa turns away, cheeks burning, trying to focus entirely on the secretary.
“Here’s your schedule, sweetie,” says not-Eva Longoria, and Sansa all but jumps to attention. She quickly accepts the printed-out piece of paper she is given. “Homeroom should be just about over, but your first class is in the west wing of the main building. Would you like me to show you where that is?”
“No, it’s okay, thanks,” Sansa says hurriedly. She already had a hard enough time convincing her mom not to take her to school this morning; the last thing she needs is another grown-up to hold her hand. She’s not five years old.
“Thank you, though,” she adds, politely, and the secretary tips her head, looking genuinely touched. She presses a hand replete with pearly pink nails to her chest, and Sansa tries not to look at her cleavage. “No problem, sweetie. Have a nice first day.”
Sansa turns, studiously not looking at the other student, and heads for the door. She’s already feeling the nerves twisting in her stomach, but can’t resist one look over her shoulder as she’s about to leave the office. The blonde girl isn’t looking at her now, though. Instead she’s bent over the desk making the hot secretary laugh, drawing one leg up over the other as she tells a story. It looks for all the world like they’re… flirting.
Weird. Sansa shakes her head, and focuses instead on her class schedule and trying to figure just exactly where she is supposed to be. Which way is west, again?
Maybe I should have accepted that offer of help, Sansa thinks wearily when she walks into her first class twenty minutes late. The school isn’t that big, but this whole outdoor hallway thing is ridiculously confusing.
Every single head in the classroom snaps around to look at her, and it’s totally overwhelming. The teacher, Ms. Martell according to the schedule Sansa has crumpled into one sweaty hand, clears her throat. “Ah, you must be Sansa.”
She sinks into her seat and tries to be invisible, and to ignore all the other girls staring at her. They don’t stare like girls she’s used to—there’s some wariness but mostly interest, which is new. But Sansa hates the attention, so she opens her textbook to a random page and pretends to follow along as the teacher resumes the lesson. Being the new girl is awful, she thinks miserably. She can’t wait to be just another one in the crowd.
Unfortunately, the rest of the day absolutely sucks. She walks into her classes and no one speaks to her, although everyone looks at her in that strange way that the other girl had. She stifles the urge to cry at lunch and like some bad high school movie cliché, she eats quickly and alone in the girls’ bathroom.
Robb and Jon pick her up after school, driving together from their exclusive all-boys’ high school. “How was your day?” Robb says brightly. Jon turns around from the passenger seat to look at her, too.
“It was… okay,” she says, trying to shrug nonchalantly. “How was yours?”
“It was good,” says Robb gamely, but Jon looks as miserable as Sansa feels.
“At least you two had someone to sit by at lunch,” she complains, and her genuine misery shines through in her tone of voice. Both brothers wince in sympathy, and they sit in silence as Robb puts the car in drive and turns onto La Brea.
“It’s fine,” Jon says finally, once they’ve been driving for a few minutes with the California air whipping through the open windows, “for all of us. First days always suck. It’ll get better.” He puts on a game smile and even Robb nods, glancing to meet Sansa’s eyes in the rearview mirror
Sansa takes a deep breath and convinces herself that he has to be right. On the rare occasions that he’s being optimistic, Jon is always right.
By the next morning, Sansa’s not sure if Jon’s right about things being better, but they definitely are different. She only gets lost once, and she’s happy to feel like she’s catching up in her new classes. A lot of them are the same as what she’d been taking in Michigan, like APUSH and AP Chemistry. She’s catching on, and it doesn’t feel half as awful as yesterday did.
Then just before lunch as Sansa is walking to her new locker and trying to balance an armful of books, she notices that someone is watching her.
It’s a girl with long glossy brown curls, and curious blue eyes. She is wearing oxford style shoes, and her skirt is just barely past her fingertips. Even in a school full of preternaturally pretty girls, she stands out.
Sansa prudently lowers her eyes as she stops at her locker, but she’s mindful that the other girl is still there, watching. Of course at this moment Sansa’s locker code decides to desert her. She can’t remember it for the life of her.
Out of the corner of her eye she sees the girl walking up. “Hey, you’re new, aren’t you?” the stranger says.
Sansa looks up, her heart beating faster. This is the first conversation she’s had with another student. “Um, yeah,” she says, turning and leaning her hip against her locker.
“I’m Margaery,” says the girl, with a bright, white smile. She looks like if Belle and Anna Kendrick had a baby—she’s distractingly pretty in a sweet, open way. “What’s your name?”
“Sansa,” she says, one hand still on her unopened lock. She shifts the books in her other arm, trying not to be too thrilled that she’s actually talking to someone. She’s actually going to have a friend, if she doesn’t mess this up.
“Sansa,” Margaery echoes. “Wow, that’s a really pretty name.”
She blushes. “Um, thank you.” Usually people will say her name is weird, or screw their face up and repeat it a few times before they get it right.
“So do you need some help with that?” Margaery says lightly, nodding at the unopened lock.
Sansa blushes harder, turning back to the lock. She feels really stupid. “No—um, it’s just that—I can’t remember the combination.”
“Oh, yeah, it happens to the best of us,” the other girl says sympathetically. She leans in, looking at Sansa meaningfully, and lowers her voice. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. But you’ve got to have it written down somewhere, right?”
Sansa claps a hand to her head. “Duh! Yes, of course I do.” She reaches into her backpack and pulls out her planner. There it is, her code written neatly on the inside of the first page, where she’d put it the night before her first day of school. She carefully opens the lock, and then glances up to smile at Margaery. “How did you know?”
“You just look like the organized type,” says Margaery with a light laugh.
Sansa bends down to put her books away and when she straightens up, there’s another girl standing beside Margaery. She’s wearing combat boots and has a delicate nose stud, and looks similar enough to Margaery that they could be sisters. “New girl?” she asks conversationally, smiling at Sansa with a certain gleam in her eye. “Hey there.”
Margaery shoots her a covert, sideways look. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Sansa echoes shyly, holding onto the edge of her locker door.
“This is Elinor, my cousin,” Margaery says. She jabs at Elinor with an elbow and Elinor dodges out of the way, snorting with amusement.
“Come with us,” Elinor says, smiling at Sansa. “To lunch. I promise she’s better behaved with strangers.” This last part is directed at Margaery, who just laughs and rolls her eyes.
“Okay,” says Sansa, smiling back genuinely at both of them.
They go outside for lunch. “This is Sansa,” says her new friend Margaery, and everyone waves and choruses hello. They’re all sitting around a concrete table in the gorgeous courtyard of the school, and all look as if they could have stepped off the pages of Nylon. There’s Myranda, who Sansa recognizes from her chemistry class. There’s another cousin of Margaery’s, Megga, and a handful of other girls whose names escape Sansa as soon as she learns them.
Hopefully she’ll have plenty of time to learn those girls’ names, Sansa thinks, her head spinning slightly. That is unless she does something painfully uncool and they decide to oust her, like revealing just how little she knows about what people do for fun in California or, like, getting something stuck between her teeth. She puts a hand over her mouth automatically.
“So, Sansa,” says Margaery, smiling. “Tell us about yourself.”
She lowers her hand, smiling nervously. “Well, I just moved here from Michigan, and I’m a sophomore. My dad works in the Palisades, and I have two older brothers who go to Aegon Targaryen.” There’s a chorus of recognition from the girls at the mention of their brother school.
“Well, Michigan, welcome to Princess of Dorne Prep,” says Elinor drolly. She takes a bite of her apple, grinning wolfishly at Sansa as she chews. “Or, as we like to call it, Princess of Dykes.”
Sansa almost chokes on a spinach leaf.“Oh, um, really?” she says, trying not to sound like an idiot. It’s no use. She lowers her voice, trying not to sound as uncertain as she feels. “Are you serious?”
Elinor smirks at her. “Dead serious, new girl.”
Are all the stereotypes about girls’ schools true?! “Oh,” she says, trying to play it off, play it cool. Maybe they’re just trying to throw her off balance or catch her off guard. Maybe this is a test. “Um, I… didn’t know that.”
“Yeah,” Elinor says, her mouth curling up with bored amusement. “It’s like lesbian central up in here.”
“Oh,” says Sansa, and it comes out more like a squeak. But luckily Elinor has already turned to her neighbor and started chatting about something else. Sansa turns back to her salad, hoping that her completely neutral expression will counteract the fact that she’s still blushing.
But Margaery is watching Sansa like a hawk, and when she catches Sansa’s eye, her face softens into a killer smile. “So what about you, Sansa? Are you bi, or whatever?”
So much for trying to live in obscurity. “Well, um, I’m straight,” Sansa says uncertainly.
Everyone’s heads whip around.
“What?”
“I—yeah,” Sansa says, blushing. She sets down her fork. She’s never really thought about it before, but—
“Don’t you get tired of giving blowjobs?” Elinor asks, looking like an anthropologist who’s just discovered a rare example of the female species. “I mean, I love my boyfriend, but it’s all he ever wants.”
Sansa coughs. “Um—”
“And isn’t it annoying coming up with all the date ideas?” A girl with long, glossy black curls rolls her eyes. “Boys are always like, ‘I don’t know, what do you want do?’”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Or isn’t it annoying to always have to worry about birth control?” Megga chimes in. “I mean, safe sex is one thing, but—”
“Um, I really don’t know,” Sansa cuts them off, blushing even harder. She’s not usually one to share about her love life, but this is too much. “I’ve only had one boyfriend.”
Everyone exchanges significant looks. Really significant looks.
“You know… you don’t really know what you like until you’ve tried it,” Elinor insinuates, smiling.
Margaery rolls her eyes. “Down, girl. You have a boyfriend, remember? And Sansa doesn’t have to know just yet exactly how she identifies.” She takes a bite of Caesar salad and tips Sansa a magnanimous smile.
Sansa understands that she’s supposed to feel grateful about this intervention, but she just feels slightly dizzy. Uncertain, she ventures, “Wait… so you’re all… not straight?”
It’s not like she’s really overthought her sexuality, but she just kind of always assumed that everyone was pretty much… straight. She’s had a boyfriend, she likes kissing boys; it always seemed pretty simple. So to be confronted by a group of girls open-mouthed in surprise over the fact that she’s straight is pretty surreal, to be honest.
“Well, I’m bi,” says Elinor, eliciting a round of appreciative nods and winks. “Me too,” choruses almost everyone.
“Me too,” Margaery says with a cute little smile, which causes about half the girls roll their eyes dramatically and identically. “What?” she says, dropping her mouth open with mock dismay.
“Gay,” says Elinor, leaning forward and poking Margaery in the chest.
Margaery laughs and clutches her chest. “Did you just poke me in the boob? God, you’re such a lesbian,” she accuses.
Elinor rolls her eyes and sits back. It’s pretty clear that she and Margaery are the queen bees of their clique, and they come to heads over issues quite a bit. “Excuse me, but fucking guys to let you into the best clubs doesn’t exactly count as love,” she says pointedly.
“I can be bi if I want to be bi! Oh my god!” Margaery rolls her eyes. “I’m probably the only girl in the world whose friends are more adamant about her sexual orientation than she is,” she complains to Sansa, smiling.
Sansa is starting to get that feeling. She smiles weakly.
“Just because I don’t like guys for anything more than sex doesn’t mean I’m a lesbian.” Margaery pouts and turns back to her salad, and continues picking out all the croutons.
“You need to just own your gayness. My god,” Elinor says, reaching over and eating the discarded croutons off her cousin’s plate.
“But yeah, it’s not like we’re all fake lezbos, making out at parties for our boyfriends,” Myranda chimes in helpfully, and then pauses. “Although we do that too.”
Sansa’s head is spinning. “Um, okay,” she manages, turning back to her lunch and trying not to look as utterly overwhelmed as she feels.
Elinor leans over and pats her on the hand. “Don’t worry, Michigan. You’re get used to it.”
Really? Sansa thinks, her head practically spinning. She imagines cartoon birdies chirping and zooming around her head in circles—that’s how confused she feels right now. But if this is what it means to have friends here, she’ll do it. These girls seem nice, even if their take on sexuality is a bit… over Sansa’s head. She takes another bite of her sandwich, and then glances up.
Margaery is staring at her, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She’s been watching Sansa with her head tipped to the side. When Sansa meets her eyes, she just smiles.
At dinner that night, Sansa is happy to share her good news when her dad asks her rather formally, “So, Sansa, did you have a good day?”
“Yeah, I made some friends!” she says, almost over-eagerly. Everyone smiles at her.
“What are they like?” says Sansa’s mother, frowning at Arya as Sansa’s little sister wipes her fingers on her T-shirt instead of on her napkin.
Sansa thinks. “Well they’re really nice and very, um, glamorous,” she says at last. “They know a lot about things I don’t really know about.”
She looks up, and is surprised to see that everyone is looking a little bit concerned.
Her mom leans in. “Now, Sansa, I know that the crowd at your new school might be a little fast. But you know that doing drugs or drinking too much is serious, and not something to mess around with.”
“No, no, not like drugs or anything!” Sansa says hurriedly. Oh my god, my parents are ridiculous. “Just—they’re just showing me what people do for fun in California.”
Her dad nods thoughtfully. He looks tired, as always. “Be careful,” is all he says, and she feels an overwhelming wave of fondness for him.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” she says, wondering for a moment what he would say if she told him the truth about her sophisticated new friends. “I will.”
Margaery and her friends adopt Sansa quickly into their fold. She sits with Myranda in chemistry and studies for APUSH with Elinor after school. She sits with all of them at lunch, and Margaery meets Sansa at her locker after fourth period every day so they can walk down to the courtyard together.
As the weeks go by, Sansa actually feels like she’s adapting to her new school. The schoolwork isn’t so hard, but she feels pretty lucky to have a whole pack of friends to tell her about other things, the kind of things that aren’t exactly on the curriculum. The Princess of Dykes thing, for instance. And it’s when the whole crew is out shopping on Melrose that Sansa begins to understand just how little the dress code matters.
“This is so cute,” Myranda choruses, holding up a necklace with a bunch of tiny crosses dangling from it.
“Isn’t that, like, sacrilegious?” Sansa says uncertainly. Myranda’s mouth falls open and she grabs Sansa’s arm, smiling like Sansa’s her child who’s just said the most adorable thing. “Did you hear her?” Myranda says loudly. “She just asked if this was offensive!” Margaery strokes Sansa’s hair as she passes around the table of accessories. “You’re too cute, new girl.”
Apparently the girls have no regard for personal space, because they all crowd into the same dressing room to try on designer miniskirts and free-trade lounge clothing.
“I love this,” says Elinor to her reflection, stretching out her arms in her red long-sleeved henley. She whips around to inspect the tag. “Ooh, and it’s organic cotton, too! I’m totally wearing it tomorrow.”
“But that’s against dress code,” Sansa points out.
Elinor turns to look at Sansa, tossing her glossy brown hair over her shoulder. Her nose stud twinkles as she grins. “Here’s the thing, Michigan. Dress code only really applies for a few things—skirt length is one of them. I mean, hello, it’s Brentwood, if they threw girls out for piercings they wouldn’t have any students left.”
“You have the most perfect body,” says Margaery suddenly, as Sansa changes into a body-hugging pink skirt. Sansa blushes.
“Um, thank you?”
Margaery just smiles at her and turns to change herself, into a white lace shirtdress with a collar. Sansa can’t help but stare back, just a little. Margaery’s back curves and she had two perfect dimples at the base of her spine. Margaery straightens and Sansa whips around quickly, hoping that Margaery didn’t catch her staring in the mirror or anything.
Margaery has a nice body too. Not that Sansa cares one way or another, really.
“What do you guys want to do after this?” Myranda says loudly as she’s checking out, buying two different pairs of Splendid sweats in bright colors. She turns all the way around to look at all of them. “You should come over to my place—we can watch Whip It! and do our nails. I just got the newest Essie collection.”
“OMG,” says Elinor. “I’m so there. I’d let Ellen Page sit on my face any day, she’s adorable.”
Margaery, standing in line with a rose-printed scarf, moves up to pay. She laughs. “My god, Elinor. Restrain yourself.” To Myranda, she adds, “Do you have the latest color Essie just put out, the lavender one?”
“Yeah,” says Myranda, moving away from the counter with her shopping bag in hand. She sighs. “Ellen Page is like my dream woman, though, especially after that speech. Don’t you think so, Sansa?” she adds, sidling up next to Sansa and cuddling against her. “Would you make out with Ellen Page if she asked nicely?”
Sansa laughs, and spurred on by adrenaline and daring, she blurts out, “Yeah, I like brunettes.”
All three girls, who have brown hair, literally whip around and stare at her. Their mouths may or may not hanging open slightly. Sansa smiles awkwardly and coughs, but she isn’t going to pretend like she’s not enjoying it.
“Well damn, straight girl,” Margaery says playfully after a moment, and gives Sansa a little tap on the ass as she passes by. “Let’s go!” she adds over her shoulder, jangling her Jeep keys in the air.
Sansa knows enough by now to just laugh it off. She’s learned that she actually kind of likes the attention—it’s like being their mascot or something. Even if she still doesn't quite get why they're all so obsessed with her being straight.
Margaery is chatting with Sansa after school when Sansa’s brothers’ car pulls up. “I have to go,” she says, making an apologetic face and gesturing at the car.
“Okay. Bye, girl.” Margaery blows her a kiss, and Sansa responds accordingly, smiling fondly as she turns away.
“Looks like you made some friends,” Jon says, smiling at her knowingly as she slides into the backseat.
“Yeah,” Sansa smiles back, fastening her seatbelt. The boys have made friends, too—Robb made it into the lacrosse team and Jon has been making bookish friends on school newspaper.
“Can I tell you guys something?” Sansa says suddenly. The boys look at her. “At this school, it’s so weird, because, like… All the girls are gay. Or bi.” She pauses. “Is it like that at your school, with all those guys?”
Her older brothers exchange a look, and then say almost exactly at the same time, “No.” They both burst out laughing, but then grow serious again quickly because what Sansa has shared is apparently a revelation.
“Are you serious?” Robb muses, stroking a hand through the bristly red beard that he’s been carefully growing in an attempt to look more manly. “Damn… that’s hot.”
“Robb,” she says complainingly, and her older brother ducks his shoulders, laughing. “What? It is!”
“Actually,” Jon says suddenly. “Sam may have mentioned something about that. He said all the Princess of Dorne girls were… well, not quite straight.”
“So is there any special reason you’re telling us this?” Robb says to Sansa with sudden interest, and Sansa swallows hard.
“No, of… of course not.”
“Uh huh,” says Robb after a moment, his eyes flicking to her in the rearview mirror. He makes a left onto Doheny and flicks on the stereo. They drive for a few moments to nothing but the sound of Robb’s iPhone on shuffle, the Civil Wars playing softly as they go.
“It’s fine if you do like someone, you know,” Jon says gently, turning around to look at her. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay, or liking a girl.”
“Yeah, I—I know. My friends are always teasing me about it,” Sansa says slowly. “But I don’t know, you know? It’s just so weird, because at school it’s the exception to be straight.”
“What about that girl you were talking to?” Robb asks suddenly.
“Who?” Sansa’s just playing dumb—she knows exactly who her brother is talking about.
“That girl you were talking to, when we picked you up. She looked pretty interested.”
“Robb,” says Jon, but he sounds amused.
Sansa just laughs weakly. “Oh, that’s Margaery. She’s just a friend.”
“Looks like she wants to be more than friends,” Robb says, sending a shiver of electricity up and down Sansa’s spine. Then he laughs and turns back to driving, like he’s completely unaware of what he’s just done.
“Let’s go out for coffee after school,” Margaery says on Thursday, smiling at Sansa with eager eyes. “Just you and me.”
She hesitates.
“Come on! I’ll drive you home.” When Margaery smiles like that it’s hard to deny her anything.
They cruise down the Pacific Coast Highway while listening to Sky Ferreira, and Margaery parks her convertible at a meter. Then they hit up the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on the promenade and Margaery pays for both of them, silencing Sansa with that flash of a smile. “You want a cold drink, right?” she says, and before Sansa knows it they’re both outside with double caramel frappuccinos in hand.
“So how are you liking it so far?” Margaery asks, biting the tip of her straw with her perfectly white teeth. She cocks her head and clarifies, “The school?”
Sansa sips her drink slowly to avoid brain freeze. “It’s good! Just overwhelming. But the classes aren’t too hard.”
“Yeah, I heard you’re a real whiz kid. Super smart,” Margaery says appreciatively, even warmly, and Sansa blushes. That’s the thing about Margaery—she can make Sansa feel more special than anyone else, even if it is about something as mundane as grades. “And the whole straight thing? Have you rethought that?”
Okay, that sort of came out of left field. Sansa can’t see Margaery’s eyes behind her sunglasses, so it’s hard to pinpoint the other girl’s expression. So Sansa just tries to laugh it off.
“Haha! Nope,” she says after a moment, trying to sound witty, but it just comes off as incredibly awkward. “Still straight!”
“Wait, so,” Margaery pushes up her sunglasses up onto her head and stares at Sansa with doe eyes, “you wouldn’t want to kiss me? I’m like, totally gross to you?”
Sansa stares back at her. Is she serious? “Um, no, Margaery, I didn’t say…”
Margaery looks genuinely hurt. “So you wouldn’t even want to touch me?”
“Well… I…”
Sansa chokes, and Margaery laughs, breaking her hurt look in the blink of an eye. “Oh my god, Sansa! I’m only kidding. You do exactly as you like. Make out with whoever you want.”
Wait, was that like an invitation, or…? Sansa’s still processing this, trying to make sense of it when Margaery stands up. “Do you want to go have sushi?” she says, standing and finishing her drink, and Sansa just blinks up at her stupidly.
Once again, she’s too slow on the uptake. Sushi will just have to do.
Elinor’s boyfriend is having a party, and it’s the first real party Sansa has been to since coming to California.
The first thing that crosses her mind as she walks in the door is that it’s not like parties in Michigan. Not at all.
“Oh,” Sansa says faintly, seeing Myranda and Elinor intertwined on the kitchen table surrounded by an appreciative crowd of guys… and girls. Well, that’s new. “They weren’t kidding about the making out at parties thing.”
Margaery just laughs. “God, they’re such attention whores, but I love them. Let’s get you another drink, new girl.”
They detour into the living room for a few shots. Then at the impromptu bar they run into Myranda, who has apparently extricated herself from her table show. “Having fun?” Myranda slurs, and then draws her hand down the side of Sansa’s arm, admiring the tight black Forever 21 dress they’d all talked her into buying. “God, you look hot tonight, straight girl.” She smiles. “If you’re not busy later, I’m totally—”
Sansa can’t say she’s not turned on, but Margaery rolls her eyes and nudges Myranda back with one bare shoulder. “Get off her, you big slut.”
“Oh, yeah,” Myranda says, clutching her drink and winking at Sansa, “that’s right. Margaery dibs’ed you so… it’s hands off for the rest of us.”
Margaery slaps her on the arm. “Myranda!”
The horrified look on Margaery’s face could just be Sansa’s imagination, since Sansa is two shots in and foggy with alcohol at this point. As it is, she just finds it amusing. “Where’s my drink?” she says demandingly, wrapping her hands around Margaery’s arm and speaking right into Margaery’s ear.
Margaery’s lips part slightly and she lets out a little noise. “Um, wait,” she says, with a giggly hitch in her voice, and leans forward to mix two drinks. Myranda gives them an appreciative look and backs away. “Have fun, girls,” she says meaningfully, and then melts back into the room, staggering slightly in her platform heels.
Margaery turns her head, brushing foreheads with Sansa as she hands her the mixed drink. “Want to go out back?” she says softly, and Sansa nods, unwrapping herself from Margaery’s arm to accept her cup.
Very few people are out by the pool in back, and the backyard is dark. They sink into reclining chairs and sip their drinks, which are something orange and something pink with a straw. Sansa really likes the straw.
Halfway through her drink Sansa realizes that the alcohol is making her flirty, and bold. Is she really that hot, to have all these girls fawning over her? She doesn’t think so. It just seems like everyone at Princess of Dorne is oversexed—Sansa’s just an ordinary girl from Michigan, after all.
But here she is alone with Margaery, so there’s nothing wrong with testing the waters, right?
“Did you really dibs me?” she says flirtily, leaning over and channeling her best Megan Fox.
Margaery laughs, and it’s like a purr. “Oh, my god! No!” She leans back and rests her head against her chair, then bites her lip, like an invitation. “Maybe. Yes.”
Sansa doesn’t say anything for a moment. Alcohol is thrumming through her head.
“Does that weird you out?” Margaery whispers, leaning over in her pool chair. Reflecting the faint light from the glowing aquamarine pool, her eyes are gleaming in the dark.
Sansa doesn’t say anything; she finishes her drink first, sucking it down until there’s nothing but ice left. Then she pouts, widening her eyes. “Are you saying that you wouldn’t want to kiss me? That you find me totally gross?”
Margaery’s mouth drops open slightly as she realizes what Sansa is doing. “You learn fast, new girl,” she says admiringly. Then her voice drops again. “So… does that mean I can kiss you?” she says softly, and Sansa, thinking of nothing in particular except yes, looks at her and nods. So Margaery leans over and kisses her, soft and sweet with just enough tongue, and it’s really nice.
“Were you waiting to do that ever since you saw me?” Sansa accuses, coming up for breath after a while, and Margaery laughs breathlessly.
“Would you totally hate me if I said yes?”
Sansa laughs and instead of answering, she leans in and kisses Margaery back.
“So are you still straight?” Margaery whispers after a few minutes.
Sansa pulls away and bursts out laughing. “My god, what is it with you and your labels? I don’t know! I never kissed any girl but you.”
“Would you say that you’re maybe… heteroflexible?” Margaery says cautiously. Sansa rolls her eyes, smiling.
“And what is that supposed to mean?"
“Straight with exceptions,” Margaery clarifies, looking at Sansa hopefully through her long lashes. “Nonbinding. You can change your mind at any time.”
“Fine. Works for me,” says Sansa, and it also works for her to climb onto Margaery’s lap and make out until they’re both panting and breathless.
When they appear at school on Monday holding hands, Elinor’s eyes practically fall out of her head.
“Margaery!” she yelps, bounding across the hall. “What did you do? We had one straight friend. One!”
Margaery just smiles. “Sorry, bitch,” she answers like a movie star, and pushes back her sunglasses farther back on her head. Then she looks at Sansa, squeezes her hand, and smiles.
Sansa smiles back. No, correction—she doesn’t just smile. She beams.
Heteroflexible. Yeah. She can definitely work with that.