Chapter Text
Soulmates are fucking bullshit, and Jade is sick and tired of pretending like she gives a fuck about them. As far as she's ever really been concerned, soulmates are just a shitty lie made up so that school counselors don't have to deal with as many sad, pathetic kids coming out of a divorce. Jade is convinced that they're not real - why the fuck would they be real? It's unbelievable to her that so many people, almost everyone she knows, has just decided that they're real, that they're destined to find their perfect match, that they're supposed to wait until they find their soulmate.
And sure, maybe the lack of colour in her world is a little difficult to explain without using the concept of her not having met her supposed soulmate yet, but that could entirely be for some other reason. Everyone in her life is so intent on finding their soulmate, so intent on waiting ever so patiently for them, and it pisses Jade off.
Everyone acts like just because they've got a soulmate, if soulmates were real, that they're not allowed to have fun with other people. Jade knows for a fact that if soulmates were real and she had one, she'd be pissed off if they had never dated someone before her. Which is another thing that Jade has never been able to understand, never been able to wrap her head around. What happens to the soulmates who can't stand each other?
What happens to the soulmates who hate each other, who argue and yell and who are very against being with each other? She's never understood the logic behind it, and she doesn't think that she ever will. Just because you're soulmates with someone doesn't fucking mean you automatically know everything about them. It doesn't mean that you immediately start dating, and it certainly doesn't mean you fall in love with them right away.
Jade sighs as she walks along the hallways of Hollywood Arts, listening to Cat ramble about something behind her. André and Robbie trail after them, and she's fairly certain that she can hear Beck up ahead of them, but she doesn't care all that much. They broke up about a month ago, mostly on her terms, and it's been a little more than difficult to get back on speaking terms with him, let alone hanging out terms.
They're making progress, though, and Jade isn't all that upset about it. Not as much as she had been at first. She gets to her locker before everyone else, watching as Cat skips past her, the usual bounce that she has in her step seemingly amplified, much more present than it normally is. Robbie leans up against a locker next to her, and André ends up at her other side, making wild gestures with his hands as he continues to talk to Robbie about whatever bullshit that Jade doesn't care about.
"Jade," she sighs, twisting the lock on her locker to the side. "Jade," she jerks her head to look at André, who gives her a small smile. "Have you heard about the new girl that's coming here? It's been a long ass time since Hollywood Arts has gotten anyone new. I'm pretty sure her name is Tor-"
Jade rolls her eyes, grabbing a few books from her locker before she slams it shut, brushing past Robbie. "I don't give a shit." Jade calls over her shoulder, continuing to walk. She makes her way throughout the hallways with ease, zig-zagging through the crowd of kids without even bumping into them. Not on accident, at least. Jade watches as half of the crowd parts out of her way, smiling a little to herself as she sees a few people scramble away from her in a desperate attempt to avoid coming in closer contact with her than they have to.
She eventually gets to her stupid art class, shoving her backpack under the long desk that she sits at, sighing as she realizes that she's the only one in the room. Of fucking course, the one class that she gets bored in the most is the one she has to be earliest to. She's going to kick André's ass for making her want to escape the stupid conversation he dragged her into.
She thinks that art is arguably one of the stupidest classes that the world has to offer, and it isn't even because she just doesn't like it. What's the point in fucking colour theory when only a handful of students can actually see colour? Luckily, her art teacher isn't a complete fucking idiot, and married someone who she actually loved rather than her soulmate, which is the only thing that Jade can actually respect about her.
With a sigh, Jade pulls out her sketchbook from her bag, tapping her pencil against its binding for a few seconds before she flips it open, ignoring the previous drawings that litter the pages. She flips to an empty page, a mostly empty page, and starts to write. Jade is so incredibly well aware that she's supposed to draw something rather than create a story, but she could care less. She writes a few ideas down as they flood her mind, pausing every few seconds to consider if those ideas could be incorporated into one of the thousands of plays that constantly infest her mind.
It's another few minutes before people start to flood into the class, and Jade closes her sketchbook as soon as Beck sits down next to her. Their teacher comes in a few minutes late, just like she almost always does, and Jade only half listens to the shit she says, bored out of her fucking mind. She'd usually spend this time complaining to Beck about whatever project they'd be forced to work on, complain about how annoying Cat is, or how much she wants to strangle that goddamn puppet of Robbie's, but now she's only able to sit there silently with her thoughts.
It doesn't help that Beck won't look at her, he won't even look in her direction, and Jade wishes that she could be angrier about it. She expended all of her anger on the first week of their breakup, and now she's far too exhausted to even attempt to raise her voice or attempt to get any sort of reaction out of him.
The class goes by slowly, it always does, but Jade manages to get through it, somehow. She stands up, shoves her sketchbook back into her bag, and slings it over her shoulder, stalking out of the room. A hand on her shoulder stops her in her tracks, and she whirls around, fully prepared to punch whoever is touching her in the fucking face, but only can frown when she turns back to face Beck. "André was going to tell you that that new girl is going to be in Sikowitz's class. She's supposed to be pretty talented, or whatever," Beck tells her, looking bored. Jade thinks that her plan to punch the person touching her in the face has come back in full swing. He sighs after a few seconds of silence. "I guess what I'm trying to say is just to play nice. Don't-"
Jade scoffs, jerking her shoulder away from his grasp. "You can go fuck yourself if you think that I'm going to listen to you," she sneers. "You're not the boss of me. You're not even my friend," Jade snarls, even though the second part of that sentence isn't true, and the both of then know it. The air between them is tense, it's nearly suffocating, and it makes Jade want to both retaliate and run away at the same time. Though, right now, the urge to punch Beck is almost overwhelming. "Fuck off, Beck. I don't give a shit." Beck just shrugs, brushing past her without saying another word, and it makes her so incredibly angry. Jade pushes down her rage, breathing out for a second before she follows after him, annoyed about the fact that she has to spend another class with him.
She takes the long route to Sikowitz's class, and when she reaches the door, she decides that she really, really doesn't want to be there. An uneasy feeling of dread, one that Jade really fucking hates feeling, washes over her, and she quickly turns around, stalking towards the doors that lead to outside of the building.
She makes her way outside, circles around the campus twice, and stalks back inside of the school. She wanders around the hallways for a bit before she gets bored, and with a quick glance at her phone, decides that it's probably around the time she should actually show up to his class. Jade pockets her phone and starts to move, her hands at her sides as she walks, a little slower than she has to.
Jade tilts her head to the side as she hears something sort of like arguing coming from Sikowitz's room, frowning a little as she gets closer. As she almost reaches the door to the classroom, Jade stumbles forwards, snarling as she whirls around on her feet to beat the ever loving shit out of whoever decided it would be a good idea to shove her, and-
There's a girl standing there, a girl with a stupid look on her otherwise, admittedly, pretty face. She's stood there with her books clutched to her chest, and while everything about this should be normal, there's just a few things about the situation that are anything but.
For one, Jade doesn't recognize her at all. She has to be the new girl that André and Beck told her about. Jade briefly wonders what she's here for, if it's for acting or for art or for writing. She realizes that she doesn't actually give a shit a few seconds later.
Two, she mostly just looks stunned rather than scared. That'll probably change as time goes by and she learns that Jade isn't someone she wants to fuck with at all.
And three, arguably the most important of the things that Jade's realized, is that she's wearing a shirt that happens to be a colour Jade doesn't know the name of. The lockers are no longer grey and white, her outfit is no longer just solid black. The girl stares at her, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted as if she's coming to the exact same realization that Jade has come to, is still coming to.
The girl takes a step back, and Jade does too, unable to tear her gaze away from the other. She doesn't know the name of the colour that the girl is wearing, but it matches her eyes, which are brown. Jade knows that one, she knows that colour. She obviously knows her colours - red, blue, green, yellow, shit like that, but she's never seen them before, she can't place what colour is what. As much as Jade hates to admit it, even if she's only admitting it to herself, whatever colour the girl is wearing looks good on her. Really good.
Soulmates are fucking bullshit. They're lies made up by school counselors who don't want to have to deal with as many sob stories coming from kids who are fresh out of divorced homes. Soulmates are stupid and they're supposed to be fake, and there's a part of Jade that is clinging so desperately to those ideals, to those false ideations that she created in her head, but there's no denying what she sees in front of her. There's no denying the colour that her world has suddenly exploded with. No matter how hard she tries, Jade can't escape the fact that she's seeing colours, and she can't escape the fact that she's seeing those colours because of the girl that is standing in front of her.
There's no denying that Jade West, no matter how much she was convinced she didn't, has a soulmate.