Chapter Text
Tad Carruthers wasn’t rememberable.
He was only as special as the other boys at Aglionby, which was to say, he wasn’t special at all. When every student in Aglionby Academy was talented, handsome, and charming, then none of them were. Talented became standard, and handsome became average, and charming became annoying.
Tad was all of those things.
At least his name was easy to remember. He’d seen what would happen to his roommate’s expression every time a teacher asked for a “Loret” or a “Loreet” or, even better, a “Lor-ee-ate.”
“It’s Laureate,” he muttered under his breath on the good days. On the bad days, Tad physically restrained him from standing onto his chair and shouting out the pronunciation one syllable at a time.
Laureate could handle math and played the trumpet in the Algionby band, just as Tad could get decent scores in World History and was a member on the rowing team. Expected skills of any student with an insignia of a raven on their chest would have, interchangeable as any.
Together, they were two more young adult males among a sea of young adult males in matching uniform. Each and everyone one of them shouting and yelling and laughing at only the most absurd things, which became nothing absurd at all, because they were all doing it. No matter how outrageous or unorthodox one of them acted, it was just as outrageous and as unorthodox as the student next to him. Their concession of noises and failed backflips had become the most common behavior observed of their species.
But Tad knew someone who was rememberable.
Or, more accurately, who was unforgettable.
There was one big issue, though: Tad couldn’t see him.
He couldn’t see him anywhere.
That wouldn’t have been half as big of an issue, except that Tad knew that he was a scholarship student, and it was the first day of school after summer break. The first horrific thought that popped into his head was that the school had kicked him out.
He tried not to make it obvious that he was searching for someone in the jumbled heap of students making their way up the stairs to the Borden House for Latin class.
Then he walked down the hall to the class and oh, there he was. Already in the classroom. Tad wanted to facepalm because, honestly, that should not have surprised him. Of course scholarship got there early. He had probably been there for the past hour.
Adam Parrish was the kind of special that thought he could blend in with all the unspecials. He did it well, most of the time, but anyone who stared at him long enough would pick out that there was something about him that didn’t belong in the room full of people he was in. Something that was better suited on its own, so people could see it better, appreciate it more.
Waves of overlapping conversations trailed in behind Tad as students piled into the room.
“Where have you been on break, man?”
“Cape, always, where else?”
“So boring. Vail.”
“Mom broke her ankle.”
“Oh, you know, we did Europe, hobo style.”
One guy passing by asked Tad about his vacation. He didn’t know him well, but they were on the same rowing team, and Tad vaguely remembered telling the guy that he was going to see family before summer had started.
Tad happily added to the clutter of noise, putting in his two cents. “Granddad said I needed to get some muscles because I was looking gay these days.” By the expression on the guy’s face, Tad rolled his eyes and enlightened him, “No, he didn’t really say that. Speaking of which, here’s Parrish.”
Sometimes Tad wondered if Adam was even aware of how unforgettable he was.
He thought it would be a good idea to remind him.
Tad wasn't sure, exactly, how to do that though. He briefly toed with the idea of saying something. A simple "Hey, good morning," would suffice, if he wanted Adam to think he was as special as the next person to pull up in the McDonald's drive-thru.
He came over and cuffed him upside the head.
Adam Parrish blinked up. One way, then the other. Tad had to wonder how he didn’t notice that he had walked up beside him. Even with the noises filling up to the classroom ceiling, he should have heard him coming. Tad made enough ruckus when he walked for anyone in the building to know where he was at all times.
“Oh,” Adam said when he saw him.
Tad grinned, charmed by his standoffishness.
“Oh,” Tad mimicked back to him benevolently. So badly he wanted to ask about his vacation, but he refrained. Adam was staring at him and Tad knew he was going to lose his nerve in about ten more seconds.
So instead he turned to the seat that Tad would have taken if this person didn’t exist: one of the Lynch brothers, the scary one, the one that was reclined back in his chair, legs on the desk, eyes closed.
He was off his guard, so Tad raised a hand to cuff him too, just to show Adam that it was in Aglionby culture to greet one another with some form of a physical hit.
But, yeah, no. That was a stupid idea. It was also in Aglionby culture that invoking a Lynch would most likely end in death and Tad wasn't really in the mood to die so soon into the school year. About an inch into the swing he chickened out, but Adam was still watching him, so Tad went for drumming his fingers on the Lynch’s desk instead. That was still a greeting.
Tad moved on and sank into the chair that looked like it was the most difficult for Adam to see from where he sat.
Many of the students had conjoined at the front of the class, admiring what was written on the blackboard, and by admiring, they were snickering at it. Only two people had been in the class before the rest of them had arrived, so either Adam or the Lynch must have written it. Therefore, it had been the Lynch. Adam would have never written a thing on the blackboard without permission. The Lynch would have only written something if he didn't have permission.
Tad didn’t care for it. He couldn’t read Latin anyway. He simply slumped onto his desk, letting his face press into the wooden surface.
“Dude, class hasn’t even started yet,” said the same guy that had asked about his vacation, laughing as he took the desk next to him. Tad was touched by the gesture, enough so that he scraped together enough will to live to lift his head back up. Fellow rowing team members had to stick together.
He grinned at the guy, but the guy quickly became distracted by something another guy was saying, so Tad returned his focus to ahead of him, just in time to see one of the students appear in the doorway. Tad recognized him in an instant, but not because he was a member of the rowing team too, and not because he was also the captain of the rowing team. It was because he was Richard Campbell Gansey the Third.
He was the kind of guy to speak with teachers in the halls, like he was now. What they were talking about, Tad couldn't imagine. He had never engaged in a conversation with a teacher of his own volition unless it was to plead for an extension, but Dick Gansey seemed to be completely at ease. He bid the teacher goodbye and stepped into the classroom.
He wasn’t late by the class standard, but he was late by the standard of the migration of students that Tad had been swept up in.
Dick Gansey, though, never traveled with the other migrators. He only traveled with two people: one of the Lynches, and always the same one, and…
Dick Gansey took the seat in front of Adam with a sigh. He turned around and said to him, “Jesus Christ, I haven’t slept a second,” and then extended his fist. Adam bumped knuckles with him.
These were the two people Adam hung out with. Dick Gansey, whom Tad suspected was related to some sort of royal line on the other side of the Atlantic, and the scary Lynch, whom Tad suspected was wanted for murder. They were the few in school who were as special and as interesting as Adam was. They gravitated towards each other, those few rare gems in a world full of gravel.
Tad let his face hit the desk again. He didn’t lift it again until the new Latin teacher walked in, since the one from before summer had died or something.
Loud noises didn't often catch an Algionby student's attention, but the absence of it did, so when the class fell into a sudden silence, Tad lifted his head and—
God damn it, this new teacher was just as refined. Too refined, Tad thought, for Aglionby. Look, even Adam's eyes were lighting up, and that wasn't an easy thing to do. Tad would know. He had tried. Keyword here: tried.
The teacher swept off his dark coat as he took in what the Lynch had left on the blackboard, which still looked like a jumble of poorly written letters to Tad, but clearly the teacher was getting something from it.
“Well, look at you,” he said. His eyes lingered on Adam, Dick, and the Lynch—because of course they did. “America’s youth. I can’t decide if you are the best or worst thing I’ve seen this week.”
Depends on which one of us you’re looking at, Tad thought idly, already losing interest. He traced the lines in the wood of his desk.
“Whose work is this?” he asked next.
Lynch, Tad and everyone else answered in their heads. No one dared speak it for Algionby culture and the fear of invoking the Lynch's wrath.
“Vocabulary’s impressive,” the man continued as he inspected the words. He tapped his knuckles against a few of them. “But what’s going on with the grammar here? And here? You’d want a subjunctive here in this fear clause. ‘I fear that they may believe this’ —there should be a vocative here. I know what’s being said here because I already know the joke, but a native speaker would have just stared at you. This is not usable Latin.”
The Lynch was pissed, more so than his usual default state, but Tad had trouble noticing that when his head was swimming with words like “subjunctive” and “vocative.”
“Good thing, too, or I’d be out of the job. Well, you little runts. Gentlemen. I’m your Latin teacher for this year. I’m not really a fan of languages for the sake of languages. I’m only interested in how we can use them. And I’m not really a Latin teacher. I’m a historian—”
Then why was he in their Latin class, was what Tad wanted to know.
“—That means I’m only interested in Latin mechanisms to—to—rifle through dead men’s papers. Any questions?”
Yes. Many. Tad had many questions, but he didn't know how to even begin deciphering the mess in his head to pick out one that would make sense. Every student eyed the new teacher with the same lack of understanding that Tad felt, so that at least made him feel a little bit better.
He perked up when Adam raised his hand.
The teacher pointed to him.
“Miserere nobis,” he said. “Timeo nos horrendi esse. Sir.”
Tad blinked. No one was surprised that Adam knew the language well, but he could fucking speak it?
“Nihil timeo,” the teacher replied. “Solvitur ambulando.”
Ambulance? Tad wondered, head hurting. He gave up. This was the equivalent of that Spanish conversation he had heard between two people in the grocery store yesterday. He had stood right next to them in the dairy aisle and could hear them clearly, but that didn't count for anything when he still walked away having no idea what had transpired next to him. They could have been criticizing his Minecraft shirt and he would have never even known.
Adam and the new teacher could be criticizing his Minecraft shirt right now for all he knew.
Without raising his hand, the Lynch then joined the conversation with a, “Heh. Noli prohicere maccaritas ad porcos.”
“Margaritas” was all Tad heard from that.
“Are you pigs, then?” the teacher then asked. “Or are you men?”
Depends on which one you’re looking at, Tad repeated in his head.
Adam’s Henrietta accent came back into play then. “Quod nomen est tibi, sir?”
“My name,” the man began dramatically, sweeping away a huge junk of the Lynch’s writing on the blackboard and then picking up a marker and replacing it with letters of his own. “is—”
Colton Armhandle or something. Tad didn’t know, he had stopped listening. He tuned out the fancy Latin conversation and moved his gaze to the window, watching the tree outside ruffle with a small breeze. At least a tree couldn't understand Latin any better than he could. He took a deep breath.
Wait, how many classes was he going to have with Adam Parrish? Armhandle was still distracted with speaking to—surprise, surprise—Adam, Dick, and the Lynch kid, so Tad could swipe his schedule out without too much worry of being seen. He unfolded it from under his desk. If he only had a few classes with him, then that wouldn't be so bad. He didn't mind that they shared Latin class. It didn't matter if Tad was distracted during Latin because he sucked at Latin anyway.
His eyes widened in horror as he read the paper.
He returned his face to the desk.
This was going to be a damn long school year.