Archive of Our Own ^beta

As far as Sarah Jacobs was concerned, Bad Things came in waves of three. 

Her dad getting injured and subsequently losing his job at the local packing plant was only the first streak in what she was sure to be a truly sucky year. It was quickly followed by her school being shut down, citing a ‘serious’ mold infection that had claimed a portion of the already decrepit boiler room. She was only nine brutally short months away from graduation, and now she, her brother, and all their friends had to pack up shop and start all over again at a completely new school. Even worse, according to the manila envelope that was stuffed into her family’s P.O. Box that morning, they were being sent to Central High, the snootiest school in the whole damn district. 

All there was left to do now was wait for the final Bad Thing to come to pass. Whatever the hell that would be.

“Maybe something Biblical.” Her friend Smalls suggested. “Like locusts. Or a flood.”

“God, I wish.” Sarah pressed the toe of her scuffed sneaker against one of the skateboards Smalls used to slide herself underneath engines at the garage where the Serpents kept most of their vehicles. Sarah had never been too mechanical minded herself, despite growing up surrounded by motorcycles, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help Smalls with her latest ‘Baby’. A term she used for all her cars, no matter how run down or souped up they were. The latest was a particularly dented Camero that Smalls had found wheel-less by the vacant lot near Central Square.

“People are insane to throw a beauty like this away! Listen, I can hear her crying.” Smalls had dramatically collapsed onto the hood of the car and pressed her ear on the rusted, yellow finish. 

Sarah had bitten her lip to keep from laughing. “How do you know that’s a ‘she’?”

“Oh c’mon Sarah, it’s obvious.” Smalls dramatically rolled her eyes. “It’s her essence, the way she speaks to me. I’d be a shitty mom if I denied who she was!” 

So the Baby was transported back to the Serpents’ garage and Smalls since had spent every waking moment she could trying to get the car back in the shape of its former glory days. Which, judging by her sharp eye and knowledge of everything car related, was sometime back in 1987. 

The whole process looked futile to Sarah, but in the very least, she was more than happy to hold the screwdriver while the other girl did most of the heavy lifting. She traced her grubby thumb over the grooves of the handle as she thought over her current predicament.

“Hey, you don’t seem too pissed about this. How come? South Side was your school too.” 

Sarah could hear Smalls snort from under the hood. “Yeah, when I bothered to show up.” She stuck her smudged face out from the car and gave Sarah a disparaging look. “I’m also not as paranoid as you. Seriously Sarah, how is this a bad thing? South High was a shitshow, everyone knew that. At least now we can spend our government mandated hours at a place with toilets that actually flush. And computers that don’t look like they came off the set of Friends.” 

“If we had gotten the funds for it we could’ve all that shit too!” Sarah clutched the screwdriver harder as her eyebrows scrunched together in frustration. “Think about it, that building had been run down for how many years? Then out of bliue there’s suddenly a health risk and everyone’s just so fucking concerned about it? We’d been coughing in that mold for decades! Why now? The solution isn’t to funnel us around like a bunch of rejects, they should’ve given us a school that worked!”

Smalls turned away from her Baby and gave her friend a deadpan stare. “Typical Jacobs.”

Sarah found the closest wash cloth and tossed it at her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re always finding something to get all self righteous about. And you can be such a fucking Debbie Downer about it too. Davey’s the same way. Why can’t you just accept that maybe a good thing came out of a bad thing and leave it at that. Why ruin the moment by thinking too much?”

Sarah grimaced and crossed her arms. “Davey’s not self righteous, he’s just a wet blanket. He only gets self righteous if Jack hypes him up enough about something.”

“Hypes him up, huh? Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Sarah fought the urge to throw something else as Smalls’ smudged lips pursed into a smirk.

“First of all, ew. Second of all, Jack likes to get everyone on his side, not just Davey.”

“Yeah, but he only tries hard at it when Davey’s around.” Smalls batted her eyelashes suggestively as she wiped her stained hands on her even more stained wranglers. Sarah stuck a finger in her mouth and pretended to gag.

“Never mention my brother in anything vaguely romantic again. I remember when he was in diapers, he’s not allowed to grow up. It’s too weird for me.” 

“Speaking of which, what does Mister Wetblanket think about all of this?” Smalls asked coyly.

Sarah sighed. “He loves it. He’s a junior, so it’s not as much as a transition for him, and he’s excited about all the AP classes he can finally take. Plus Jack is gonna be with him, so he thinks this’ll be a great educational experience for all of us.”

Smalls ducked down again into the front of her car. “Are those his exact words?”

“You know my brother, of course it was.” Sarah opened The Baby’s grey-yellow door and slunk into the front passenger seat. She pressed her feet up against the front and slung her long arms around her knees. “See, that’s why I’m so pessimistic about this. I want to balance things out so he won’t get his hopes up too much.”

She could see Smalls’ quizzical face from the other side of the windshield. Her voice was slightly neutered from the broken glass. 

“What do you mean?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you hear about all those angry letters? Those people protesting outside of city hall?”

Smalls scrunched her face up in confusion. “Who the hell was protesting?”

“Parents. Central High parents. They don’t want us there. Not them, not the teachers, definitely not the students. We’re gonna be on their turf. I don’t like the odds of that.”

Smalls smirked. “What, you think some Central bimbo could really hold her own against us?” 

“That’s not the point!” Sarah shook her head in exasperation. “Their turf, their rules. We can’t go in there with our fists up, we’d be expelled in a second.”

Smalls threw up her smudged hands in exasperation. “See? Typical Jacobs! Who the fuck cares? It’s just school! It’s not like it’s important!”

“But it-” Sarah bit her tongue, withholding whatever sanctimonious crap was about to tumble out of her mouth next. It was sometimes too easy to forget that out of all her friends, she was the only one with parents who had their high school diplomas. It was like being stretched in opposite directions; her family’s need for maintaining some semblance of stability, and her friends’ instincts throw it all away. School had always been a series of necessary disappointments, but she had always gone, because there really was never any alternative for her. When she and Davey first started hanging around the Serpents it felt like a breath of fresh air, free of any judgment or stressful expectations. But most of them dropped out before senior year. There was going to be a big road trip to Niagara Falls just at the beginning of next summer, and Sarah had been seriously considering ditching her graduation ceremony to join them instead. Except now she was going to Central. And all of a sudden graduation meant something now.

She could vaguely hear Smalls knocking on her window. She sighed as the other girl slunk into the other seat of the car. 

“Hey, you’re not scared, are you? You know, if someone gives you a hard time I’ll just beat the shit out of them for you, right? We’ll just wait till they're outside school lines and then we’ll pounce!”

Sarah gave a small laugh and rubbed her face. “Thanks for the offer but I think I’ll pass.”

Smalls held up her hands in defeat. “Suit yourself. But I’m not gonna let you turn yourself into a doormat. Remember, you’re a Serpent now. No one can tell a Serpent no.”

“No no no no. NO!” Katherine furiously shook her head as Darcy dropped what must have been enough glue and construction paper to start a landfill onto her lap. “I refuse to take part in this!”

Darcy rolled his eyes. “Jesus Kath, tell me how you really feel.”

“You already know how I feel!” She scooped up the arts and crafts in her arms Madonna and Child style and searched fervently with her eyes for the supply closet. She had always been exempt from taking art due to a slight case of carpal tunnel syndrome, and this room was completely foreign to her. That was probably why Darcy chose this particular place to meet. He wanted to throw her off her game. 

“Just because an entire other school is gonna clog up our halls for the rest of the year doesn't mean we have to roll out the red carpet for them!” She clutched the papers tight against her chest as she marched over to the other side of the room. She could hear Darcy sighing exasperatedly behind her.

“Okay, first of all, it’s not a whole school. South Side is being divided into the rest of the district. We’re only getting about thirty students or so. And secondly-” Just as Katherine was about to reach for a set of drawers that looked promising, Darcy forcefully pushed himself between her and the handle. “As a member of the student council, it is, in fact, your job to make the new kids feel as welcome as possible.”

Katherine grabbed a nearby marker and shook it in his face. “You know, that’s something that pisses me off too. Why did I ever let you convince me to join student council?”

Darcy shrugged. “You tell me. I’m just a ton of fun to be around, I guess.”

Even when they were fighting, Katherine was eternally grateful Darcy didn’t bring up any other potential reason why she needed to join student council. Like the fact she had been kicked out of the editor’s position at the school newspaper last June and now needed something new to bulk up her college transcript with. Or that she wanted to spend as little time at home as she possibly could. 

But being part of the welcoming committee to those South Side thugs? That was going too far. Katherine glowered down at the arts supplies still clutched against her chest.

“What are we even supposed to be doing with this crap away? Do they do finger painting at South Side?”

“I thought it would be a nice gesture to make name tags for everybody. You know, as an ice breaker so we can learn each other’s names faster.”

“We won’t need to identify them with name tags. I’m pretty sure they have gang insignia for that.” Katherine hissed as she dumped the glue and paper at a nearby table.

Darcy’s face hardened into a glare. “You know who you’re sounding like, right?”

“Don’t say it.” Katherine held up a finger in warning. But Darcy continued. 

“Your dad. Who I’d like to remind you is at least partially responsible for all of this.”

Katherine threw up her hands in frustration. “Why do people keep saying that? My father is not the mayor. He’s just friends with the mayor. Honestly I have no idea how that stupid rumor got started.”

That was a lie. And Katherine knew that both of them knew it. There was a slight pang of guilt in her stomach. Darcy was one of the few people she felt like she could truly be honest with. And just because she was lying to herself didn’t mean she had to lie to him too. Joe Pulitzer might’ve been one of the biggest names in real estate in the entire New York state, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t fiddle in other fields as well. Like philanthropy, so that nearly every building in town had his name on it. And everything he couldn’t get his paws on, Joe always knew the right friend to snatch it up for him. 

It was no secret that South Side High had been a wreck for years, but for some odd reason it was decided that now was the time to finally shut it down. Only two weeks into the new school year, no less. And in the week that it was announced Katherine noticed her father had been spending an usual amount of time in his home office, talking on the phone, his tone varying from loud and vulgar to sugar sweet. 

She knew that voice. It was a voice that had been used on her in the past. And she knew that whatever was about to come after it wasn’t going to be very good.

But that was all out of her control. So she focused her anger on smaller, more manageable things, like sharing the hallway with a bunch of kids who would probably knife her if she looked the wrong way. 

“Uh, Kath? Are you okay?” Darcy was staring at her expectantly, his still body blocking her way to the art drawer. 

“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know!” She picked up a piece of blue construction paper and began shredding it in her hands. “You know how I feel about change! It’s gotta happen gradually. Everything’s always so chaotic at my house, school is the only place where it all feels normal. And now that’s being taken away from me.”

Darcy sighed. “Change is inevitable Katherine. But it’s your choice whether you’ll let it affect you.” He pushed himself out of her way and started back to the front of the classroom. “I’m going to find Bill and the others. Could you glue that paper you’re destroying back together? We’re working with a limited budget here.”

“If you say so Mister President.” Katherine gave a mock salute and rolled her eyes as he closed the door behind him. She clenched her jaw tight and began to grind her teeth together, cringing at the dull sound of molar rubbing up against molar. Just because things were changing again didn’t mean they would have to change her. Or even affect her. She was, after all, Katherine Pulitzer. She was a rock amongst waves, a pillar that could be never shot down. Nothing could change her.

Not even if she wanted it to.