Chapter Text
The day is September 26th 2023.
4:30 PM.
Trent looks up from the mirror to the door of the boys bathroom - it slowly creaks open, wood scraping across the floor, before Justin’s face appears in the frame. He’s grinning.
“Fucking hell, there you are!”
When given the opportunity to get a proper look at Justin, Trent is in absolutely no place to refuse - glancing him up and down, for absolutely ZERO possible benefit of his own, a smile makes it’s way onto his face.
“And what a state you are.” Trent mutters, enjoying the way his best friend’s face falls immediately.
“Erm, I’ll have you know I look just as good as ever,” Justin cuts in, an expression of pure offence written all over every inch of his face, “Don’t I?”
“Yeah, course you do. Just messing,” Holding in a laugh, Trent beckons him over to where he’s already fixing himself up in the mirror, “But your uniform could do with a bit of work.”
“Wha-!”
And then Trent’s hands are brushing over his waist, lifting up the edges of his blazer to tuck the boy’s shirt thoroughly into his trousers, and they’re simply way too close and why are Trent’s hands so cold-
“Getting a bit handsy, aren’t we?” Justin laughs awkwardly, silently missing the touch once Trent’s done fixing his shirt.
But again, his breath almost stops when Trent takes his tie off and fumbles to fasten his top button, his cold hands lingering on Justin’s neck just a moment too long before handing the tie back.
Stepping back, Trent snaps out something barely coherent, along the lines of, “You can do the rest.”
“Yeah…” Justin stares at him, taking in every part of his face and memorising it. Wait, why is he doing that? What’s going on? He’s not into Trent, he’s- Justin’s straight, and Trent is too, right? They’re both straight guys, so that was nothing. Just a… straight thing. Or whatever. It doesn’t matter.
“Justin?”
He quickly snaps back to reality.
“Yeah?”
“You gonna put your tie on?”
“Oh yeah! That- yeah, that.” He fumbles nervously, putting his tie back on and clipping it over the edge of his shirt between his collar.
Now that they’re ready to leave, they turn to the door, and are immediately faced with Harold staring deadpan at them, his face barley visible behind his thick glasses and one hand up to his face. He’s snickering, Justin can see it in the way his shoulders are hunched.
“Sorry, should I leave you two to it?”
“No!”
Trent glances at him from the corner of his eye, “Weren’t doing anything, anyway.” He mutters, shooting Harold a cold glare.
“Didn’t look that way,” Harold insisted, “Looked to me, Trent, like you had your hands allllllllll over Justin. His waist, his neck, his-!”
“It didn’t go any further than that!” Justin snaps, flushing bright red.
“I was just fixing his shirt.” The black haired boy protests, fiddling awkwardly with his blazer, “Didn’t go far at all, it was nothing.”
“Uh-huh. Tell him that.” And Cody has suddenly appeared, too, baring his teeth in a shit-eating grin and leaning against the door. He gestures to Justin, who is bright red and looking anywhere other than his friends.
“It was nothing!” Justin mumbles, and Trent nods.
“Exactly, now let’s go.” Trent, being incredibly eager to move on and forget this, is in fact a bit too quick to forget - in his attempt to leave as soon as possible, he grabs Justin’s arm and drags him out.
5:00 PM
“Iz.” Noah glares over at the ginger girl bouncing off the walls with excitement beside him, letting out a final sigh of relief when she stops and snaps her head around to face him.
“Yessss?” She hisses out, her tongue scraping out through her teeth, which are clamped together in a terrifyingly large grin.
“Oh my days, stop that,” He grumbles, pressing a hand over her mouth, “You’re horrific.”
Somehow, her smile only grows.
Eva flicks her on the back of the head and grabs her by the back of her collar, dragging her back and forcing her to sit down.
“Stay put.”
“I’ll bite you.” Izzy says, fully deadpan and 99% sure, in herself, that she’s being serious.
“No you won’t.” Eva rolls her eyes.
“I’ll try,” The girl persists, watching again as Eva remains unbothered, and then changing her tactic, “I’ll bite him.” She tilts her head to gesture to Noah.
“You’ll give me a disease!” Noah shrieks, “Do NOT get anywhere near me!”
“Do we need to buy her a chewtoy?” Owen asks, looking to both of his (slightly) more normal friends, who give no response more than a shrug.
“Izzy, do not bite Noah.” Eva tells her sternly, which somehow works.
“Right, fine.” The ginger pouts, looking away. The only person who has any sort of authority over her IS Eva, after all.
“We’re all gonna be late in a minute, get going.” Noah reminds them, as Owen immediately sticks to his side and Eva drags Izzy off.
She mouths, “I’ll drop her off in Science” as she goes.
He just has to pray she doesn’t start a fire - or that she at least doesn’t get caught, because when he looked around, he realised he wouldn’t be too upset.
“Right, let’s go.”
5:30 PM
Lindsay isn’t ‘particularly intelligent’, and she thinks she would know if she was because then people would stop calling her such a dumbass. Whatever, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day, because people like her and she’s pretty, and she’s always gotten by with that alone. Sure, she’d like for someone to remember her for something, anything else, but all she NEEDS to do is finish her GCSEs with at least a few passes to feel a sense of accomplishment.
“Linds.”
Breaking her out of a trance, she hears Heather’s voice from inside the cubicle behind her.
“Yeahh?” Lindsay calls back, finishing applying her mascara and tucking it into her pocket.
“Spray,” Heather demanded, “Can you pass it through?”
Nodding to nobody but herself, Lindsay rifled through her handbag and found an old PS spray - wherever her current one had gone, she couldn’t say, but this would have to do. She kicked it under the gap between the floor and cubicle door, and heard a hum of acknowledgment from Heather inside the stall.
“Is that okay?”
“It’ll do, yeah”.
Still waiting for Heather, Lindsay put on yet another layer of lip gloss and checked all of her nails. She quickly brushed her hair and rerolled her skirt, until finally her best friend stepped out into the open and fixed herself in the mirror, too.
“Right, we’re good,” Heather checked her phone, “Anddd we’re about to be late, and I don’t need Blaineley on my case anymore right now, so let’s go.”
Their eyes meet for a second, and there’s no sense of familiarity, no friendliness caught between them. Do they even like eachother? It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day. They’re both only here to graduate.
Heather and Lindsay are strangers, really.
6pm
Bridgette is pretty much doing perfectly - other than the irritating stain landed on her shirt (because of Duncan), she’s had as close to a flawless day as you can get at school. Breakfast was good, school lunch was tolerable, all of her classes have been easy and she even had a cover. And now that she’s sat watching Geoff chase Duncan across the school field, it’s finally coming to a close.
Is she into Geoff? Not really.
Is Geoff into her? Maybe, but probably not really.
But dating him hasn’t done her any damage so far yet, anyway. He seems okay, at least compared to her last boyfriend (and what a freak he was), and her friends actually like him! And his friends, while a bit odd, are actually sorta nice and she likes them a bit more than she likes Geoff in the first place. Not in a romantic way, though. They’re just cool to hang out with.
She glances up from examining her nails, just in time to see Geoff tackle Duncan - he’s got the boy pinned to the ground, and they’re both giddy and laughing their heads off. Like hyper little kids. She smiles faintly and looks to her left, where DJ is staring after the duo intently.
“Y’alright?” She asks, nudging him gently with her elbow.
Seemingly caught off guard, DJ nearly jumps off the picnic table when she speaks - whether it’s her voice or the touch that startles him, regardless it takes him a moment to calm down and finally face her.
“Sorry?” He gasps, “What did you say, Bridgette?”
“I was asking if you were alright.” The blonde says quickly, getting a quick nod in return.
“Yeah, yeah I’m okay. I should just… it’s getting kinda dark now. I should probably be going home, you guys too,” DJ trails off, as Geoff and Duncan approach. He’s clearly avoiding something, but it doesn’t really matter what, because before she can follow up, Duncan (sort of, unintentionally) does it for her.
“DJ, you going home now? Should I walk you?”
He sounds oddly concerned - at least for him, anyway - which is sort of sweet.
“Uh,” DJ takes a good moment to think about it, “Sure.” He swallows, hard, and tucks his hands into his blazer pockets.
Geoff watches this unfold, and then slowly turns to her.
“Bridge?” It sounds kinda unnatural coming from him, “Do you… um. Uh. Do you want me to walk you home?” He fumbled the words, but not in a nervous and endearing sort of way - more that he’s forcing himself to say it. But he did put up an effort, bless him, and she’s bored so she’ll humour the idea.
“Yes,” She nods, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure.”
When the group of four part, and become two sets of two, and go their separate ways, Bridgette immediately finds herself a bit bored. She goes on her phone to text her sister that she’s coming home, but then gets distracted by a message from a groupchat.
It’s a load of really shitty photos of Alejandro, most of them taken in Mr McLean’s maths room, where somehow he still looks good in all of them. It’s kinda frustrating, actually, that he’s good looking, because she knows he’s a snide piece of shit somewhere in there.
It’s just so hard to hate the guy, isn’t it?
“What are you-…” Geoff coughs, “What are you looking at?”
“Just these.” She tilts her phone screen to show him, and he takes a second to take them in.
“Still looks good in all of ‘em, doesn’t he?” Geoff remarks, but there’s no bitterness to his voice at all, which is the strangest part.
“Guess so.” Obviously he does, but Geoff is technically her boyfriend, and he’s too nice for this. She puts her phone away, and tries to strike up conversation. She gets him going about how much he hates Maths, and that’s it ; they’re occupied until they reach her house.
7:00 PM
The school tours have finished - finally, god bless - and Gwen can finally go home. She puts all her shit back in her bag and slings it over her shoulder, slipping her other arm in the hole and sighing as the weight on her bags worsens. Ow. What the fuck does she even have in here?! She’s going to be feeling this for a month, give or take a couple weeks more or less. Whatever.
Eager to escape, she beelines for the exit, and-
“And where are you going?”
Oh fuck off.
Why her.
Courtney is stood before her, face twisted and eyes squinted tightly.
“You haven’t tidied up at all!” The brunette says scornfully, earning an eye-roll from Gwen.
“Oh get lost, ‘m going home. You can take this up with me tomorrow, I can’t be arsed,” she snaps, making an attempt to push past - a hand drives into the space between her ribs and pushes her back, “Fuck off, Courtney, I’m serious. I’m going home.”
Maybe she’s being a little harsh.
She has had a bit of a bad day, all things considered.
“Gwen-!”
“Shift.”
And of course, Courtney doesn’t budge, so what other choice does Gwen have but to barge past.
“Aren’t you going to help tidy up?” Courtney insists, and Gwen exhales sharply.
“It IS tidy. You just want to suck up extra to the teacher,” And she’s right, of course, the room is as spotless as it was when they walked in, Courtney just wants a chance to tidy up a little more so the teacher likes her a little more, but that’s simply not Gwen’s problem.
“I do not!” Courtney is indignant, tiltihg her head up and looking down her nose at Gwen.
“Oh, just get lost.”
“What is your issue today?! You’re being so aggresisve.”
There’s a pause, where Gwen considers telling her everything. Why? Why not.
But she doesn’t.
“Shut up,” And she turns, and she leaves.
7:15 PM
“Ty,” Leshawna catches the bawl he’s somehow flung her way, and holds it close to her chest, “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”
Tyler glances over at her from where he’s hunched over on a bench, with about as much energy as a wet cat - he looks like one too.
“…’s nothin’…”, His voice is thick and he swallows past a lump in his throat - he gestured for her to pass the ball back, which she does, and he only just catches it. He dribbled it off the floor a couple times, taking deep breaths.
“Don’t sound like nothing,” she insists, “It sounds like somethings wrong. C’mon, spill. You can tell me anything, y’know that Ty.”
“I know…” It comes out as a low rumble, bubbling up from his chest, “I mean, most things-… I don’t know what to do.”
Leshawna watches him intently, giving a firm nod and encouraging him to go on, “Mhm?”
“That’s… not going to work on me, Leshawna,” he pauses, “It’s… private, I… think. Ahh, I don’t know, it’s… uh, complicated?”
She rolls her eyes, “Course it is.”
“I’m serious!”
“So what, is it a crush or something?”
Tyler looks at her slowly, “No…? That wouldn’t be much of a secret.”
“Ay?”
He blinks, tilting his head, “Doesn’t everybody know?”
She looks outraged, brows furrowed and eyes sharp.
“What? What don’t I know?!”
“The only person who doesn’t know I like Lindsay is Lindsay?”
“You like Lindsay?!” She sounds incredulous, almost tripping up as she runs over and grips him by the shoulders.
“Course I do,” he mutters, blush creeping up his face, “Doesn’t everybody?”
“She’s not exactly my type, but she is pretty.”
“And she’s nice.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Tyler gets to his feet, tucking his ball under his arm and adjusting his back (all of which he luckily does without any incidents) and starts walking off.
“Wait, since when though?!” Leshawna calls after him, frantically gathering her stuff and chasing behind him.
Only later did she realise she’d been outsmarted by Tyler, really, and she’d have to ask again another time.