Chapter Text
Regina fucking hated her roommate Heather. Heather was the epitome of the “cool college girl” type that always seemed to outrank Regina in this new college social scene. Heather was book-smart and had undoubtedly been a complete nerd in high school, only discovering boys and booze here at Loyola, but then suddenly becoming a party girl who was still smart and wore ugly fucking turtlenecks on weekdays.
Heather listened to old music and read classic novels whenever she wasn’t studying or partying, but somehow she still had a ton of friends. Like so many friends. Everybody here loved Heather. It was all “Oh you’re Heather’s roommate? I love her!” and “Oh my god yeah Heather’s just so sweet!”
Regina wanted to sock everyone in the face who said stuff like that to her.
And, listen, senior year of high school had been cool and all: Regina had put her absolute everything into lacrosse, and she’d hung out mainly with her new lacrosse friends, like Kristin Hadley. But, Regina’s parents wanted her to leave lacrosse in high school because “Regina, you won’t find a stable, well-paying career playing women’s lacrosse!” and Regina wanted to have as much fun in college as possible, which meant re-entering the ring for popularity.
So, when Regina arrived on campus that fall, she slept with some hot men and partied hard. But for some reason, people at Loyola didn’t seem as enthralled with Regina as people had in high school. Like the men certainly wanted her at parties because no one could deny that Regina George was completely gorgeous, but none of the girls bowed down to her like they used to. Some flirted with her occasionally, but no one wanted to be around Regina for non-sexual purposes.
People here just disregarded Regina as a thoughtless bimbo. And, sure, maybe she wasn’t very academic and had only gotten into this school because her parents pulled some favors, but god! Regina George was NOT a thoughtless bimbo!
Regina was truly clever and witty, she just wasn’t used to applying herself to her academics like her classmates were. They were all “well-read” here, yeah that was the phrase. In other words, they were academics who were good at playing pong. And in Regina’s eyes Heather Thompson embodied this whole cool/smart population.
In her classes, Regina wasn’t failing or anything (she coasted on Cs, and the occasional B if she was lucky), but as someone on track for Law School, she needed to perform better. It was stressful, and Regina didn’t always have time for partying anymore, with all of the studying she needed to do.
She didn’t get how these freaks could do it. They’d even go out on Thursday nights and still get stellar grades, while Regina struggled with her work and had limited herself to one night out a week.
Now, the first semester was over, and Regina was forced to go home for Christmas break and either pretend she was having the time of her life and cruising through her classes or tell the truth and admit to being the total loser she was. She felt terrible. Adults were always saying how college was the time of their life, and Regina felt like a failure for not enjoying it.
She packed her bags bitterly, said a short goodbye to Heather fucking Thompson (her majesty the fucking snob) and stuffed all her things in her car. With the radio on she drove back to her hometown, feeling strangely split between the two places. Home wasn’t quite home anymore, but Chicago wasn’t yet either.
Going back for Thanksgiving Break hadn’t been this bad. Then, Regina had still been in the initial high of it all: the “sleeping with boys, partying all the time” phase, so college hadn’t seemed so bad.
But now it had all sunk in and Regina was somewhere stuck between the identities of “the thoughtless bimbo” and “our daughter who’s moved off to college!”
It started snowing halfway through the drive. Not so much that it would make driving dangerous, but just enough that pretty little flurries swirled around outside and wet Regina’s windshield. It would have been a joyous sight, had Regina not been so deep in resenting and pitying herself.
When she got home, Regina’s mother practically squealed in excitement to have her eldest daughter back, her dad lugged all her stuff inside, and both her parents wrapped her in warm hugs. Even her feisty little sister Kylie hugged her too. Now that Regina was home, she had to admit it felt nice to be back. Not the same, but good.
The next few days at home passed quietly. Regina went on runs with Kristin in the mornings and then watched shitty reality TV the rest of the day, sipping hot chocolate or her mom’s mocktails (which felt childish to drink now, but she drank them anyway because she didn’t want to tell her mother to stop making them).
The Georges’ whole extended family came over for the annual Christmas Eve party and some of the further-traveling relatives stayed over in extra bedrooms. Most of the adults were drunk by the time the clock hit twelve and it became Christmas Day, but they all raised glasses in a jubilant toast anyway. Regina had been included on the drinking aspect of the festivities this year because “a college kid is as good as legal aged,” but she didn’t go too crazy. Drinking with her parents, uncles and grandparents felt strange to her.
She mostly talked with her favorite cousins: Violet, who dressed a bit too much like a librarian, but balanced it out with her always-perfect eyeliner (which Regina envied) and Bobby, who was a big lacrosse player like Regina had been and was on the Illinois State University team. Bobby was a year older than Regina, and Violet a year younger. Spending holidays with them had always made Regina feel normal, and in a good way. That wasn’t usually something she would enjoy, but Bobby and Violet managed to do it every year. With them Regina was more relaxed than she was with most people.
The three of them had a tradition of sneaking vodka from under the basement bar and spiking their sparkling cider, more for the sneaky, secretive aspect of it than to get drunk. They’d been doing it since Regina was 13. The tradition didn’t feel as exciting this year though, since both Regina and Bobby were actually allowed by their parents to drink. But, they snuck downstairs anyway for Violet’s sake and Bobby poured the Titos extra dramatically into their glasses, since it was the last year they’d be able to say they’d broken the rules (even if Bobby and Regina were only accomplices to Violet’s crime).
Once back upstairs, Regina, Bobby and Violet snuggled up on the couch by the blazing fireplace and talked to some of the younger cousins. Regina laughed when she spotted her parents dancing boisterously with one of the youngest cousins to Jingle Bell Rock.
A ten-foot Douglas Fir in the corner glittered with all of its shining ornaments, Regina could smell that evergreen scent, and the room sounded like Christmas: all loud laughter and holiday music. It all made Regina feel warm and content, more than she had in all of her past few months at Loyola.
The next morning Regina was dragged out of bed by her mother at 7:30 to get dressed for an 8:00 church service. The family wasn’t very religious, but Christmas morning and Easter pulled them back each year to the “House of God”.
Zipped into a red dress, Regina slouched back in the pew, tired and uninterested. Everyone stood up to sing Gloria in excelsis deo, which broke her from a daze, and when they sat down the preacher started on about the Christmas spirit.
“Christmas is a time of gratitude and generosity. We are grateful for the food on our tables, and we have hope in this holy season for the blessings that come. As we celebrate with our kin today I urge you to give gifts deeper than the physical.” The man made an outward gesture with his hand.
“Today The Lord gifted us his only son, and in the spirit of this sacrifice, now is the time to amend past wrongs and bring kindness into all you do. Today make your apologies, be humble in your gifts, and carry the love of the lord with you.”
Apologies and humility. Regina wasn’t good with those. Well, maybe she could be if she actually gave them a try, but she was too proud to. Why be humble if she wanted people to know how great she was? And apologies made Regina’s lips curl in disgust. Announcing that you were wrong? Why someone would ever do that, she didn’t know. It was self-sacrifice to apologize.
Violet bumped her shoulder and whispered: “Ehem. I think that’s a sign from God to you Regina”
Regina glared at her. “Bitch.”
Violet took on a look of mock-offense. “Don’t you swear in the Lord’s House!”
Fuck you, Regina mouthed instead, then turned back towards the preacher before Violet could say something else.
Regina really didn’t think she was a terrible person or anything. Sure, she did some mean stuff sometimes, but not to anyone who wasn’t asking for it. Like, for instance, if you’re gonna wear a ratty old skirt that looks like your grandma’s cut up curtain, you can’t expect people not to laugh about it behind your back. So really Regina was a perfectly reasonable girl.
As she thought about it she noticed an old woman in front of her that had a few bald patches in her thin gray hair. “Ugh, nasty!” she thought, “Like that’s actually disgusting. Get a wig or some shit; no one wants to see your ratty scalp.”
But then Regina’s breath hitched and she blinked, catching herself. Okay that was, like, actually mean. Like that woman can’t help that her hair is thinning with age. She’s probably just glad to be alive: she looks, like, 90. That woman probably has crippling arthritis and can barely even grasp a brush, let alone worry about hair loss.
So, okay, maybe Violet wasn’t entirely wrong. Regina was maybe due to make some amends. She could start off small, like being nicer to her mom or something. Being all soft and kind wasn’t in Regina’s nature, but it was Christmas after all: a holiday of generosity and all that kind of stuff. She figured she could give it a try. Like a little experiment or something. She probably should. People always said it felt nice to be a good person, Regina just didn’t often consider trying to be one. She’d always been more concerned with maintaining facades. She could admit now that especially in high school she had been overly obsessed with her image, but in truth Regina was just immensely terrified of a lot of things.
Buying on-trend clothes and putting together outfits was something Regina could do. She could run and diet and squeeze her body into tight pants and boys would come crawling. Regina could act like she was cooler than other people and sometimes they would believe it - well at least that was how it worked in high school. She could walk into a room and point out who was the most popular, and who she shouldn’t bother talking to. Regina could straighten her hair and flirt, but, well, she did most of it because she was really just fucking scared.
It was all compulsive, really.
It was like she could put together this image of a confident, sexy girl that people liked and then she didn’t have to actually be any sort of real person at all. She could say the things she thought, and be as mean as she wanted, and they wouldn’t think to look any deeper than the surface.
It protected those secrets she buried inside her like a person might bury a rotting foundation under layers of wallpaper: because if she said it aloud then it was real.
In the car going home, Regina watched snow banks drift by through the window, feeling all sorry and frustrated with herself again. It was like, at the same time, she hated how she manipulated people, but she also clung to that skill because it had always been a sort of shield between the internal Regina George and the rest of the world. Because the world was cruel, and Regina was so deeply insecure that she’d rather be completely fake than be genuine and risk being judged.
She hated feeling like this, especially on Christmas, but it was part of the sort of give and take of being Regina George.
At the core of it there were secrets that felt too life-altering to let escape. There was Janis Ian, and how holding her hand at the movies in middle school made Regina think things she couldn’t bear to reconcile. And then there was the guilt of how Regina ran from what she felt for Janis in panic and denial. She hurt Janis terribly in the process and once the initial relief was over: when she succeeded in scoring a boyfriend and cutting all ties with Janis, Regina felt awful. Like crying in her room for days awful. She never forgave herself for it.
And the web of that secret didn’t end with Janis. There was a stupid crush junior year on Cady Herron. Regina liked a lot of things about Cady, like her bravery and how, when Regina first met her, Cady didn’t care what other people thought of her. Regina's breath had caught when she spotted her in the cafeteria that first day and Regina knew she could make Cady her friend, even if it would never be anything more. Because who wouldn’t want to be friends with Regina George? Like come on.
In the end though, that friendship went to shit anyway when Regina found out Cady had lied to her the whole time. But for Regina it also dug deeper than simply being made a fool of. It felt like Regina’s stupid attraction for Cady had fucked her over because, without it, Cady would have never been able to infiltrate The Plastics. If Regina hadn’t thought Cady was stupidly hot from the start, she never would have asked the girl to sit with them at lunch. In some ways that hurt more than her spinal injury had because at least her spine had healed up in a few months.
Yeah, fuck Cady Herron. Any feelings Regina had once harbored for the girl were long gone now. It almost made Regina laugh to think about that crush. They would never have been compatible anyway. And, it was laughable to her now how berserk she’d had gone after she uncovered Cady’s betrayal, airing out the Burn Book and everything. Just plain embarrassing for Regina, even if she’d gotten away with it. But in the end Cady got the apology she deserved.
To others, however, Regina still owed apologies. Karen and Gretchen never deserved the shit she put them through those first three years of highschool. Karen and Gretchen and Janis. Yeah they all deserved apologies, but, Regina thought, Janis most of all.
Regina still thought about her. She had gone all crazy in highschool with those piercings, the baggy clothes, her smudgy eyeliner, and that black box-hair-dye but it was all just so Janis of her Regina had to smile to herself about it sometimes. She wore her anger as a badge of honor during those years. From her pants to her rings, everything about her then screamed “I’m angry!” and Regina couldn’t blame her for that. Janis had always been an outward sort of person. The kind to wear her heart on her sleeve as the expression goes. That girl stuck up for strangers and was kind to people who didn’t deserve it (as long as your name wasn’t Regina George of course). And Regina still missed Janis. A stubborn regret for hurting her drifted back to Regina sometimes at night or when she was sad.
So yeah, Regina decided she would send some apologies. The thought filled her with fear, but Regina had decided she would do it, and when Regina George decided something, nothing would stop her from making it happen.