Chapter Text
The students hadn’t noticed one particular absence, for a few days. School had started, and they were swept up with turning in hastily finished homework and catching up with people they had only seen in passing over the summer but were now sitting by in classes. Eventually and inevitably, once everyone had settled into the new year, people began to whisper.
Have you seen her? One girl whispered to her boyfriend in English class.
I heard she was expelled. He responded.
My friend told me he saw her at the Bronze yesterday. Someone else suggested, leaning over their desk to join in.
Nah, the boyfriend lowered his voice even quieter- about to impart the most precious of secrets. I know someone who saw her get on the express bus. The one to LA.
You’re joking! The girl’s voice got a little too loud, and she quieted. I heard the librarian took time off just to look for her.
Buffy wasn’t friends with many people- her tendency to exist behind the impenetrable doors of the school library with her close group of friends and Mr. Giles meant most of the students barely knew her name. But most of them had stories with her as the main character, the center of the action, showing up just when she was needed.
Some remembered running through a neighborhood at night, something following closely behind. They couldn’t get a good look at its face, but they swore later the man had some sort of disease. They remembered running up to their front door and turning just in time to see Buffy emerging from the shadows. Later in the night, tucked safely in their homes and chatting to their friends on the phone, they would rationalize away the fear that had followed them all the way home.
Others promise they were there at the Bronze one night when everyone was taken hostage by a group of strange cultists with insane magic rituals. One man tells his friends he was helping squirrel people out of the building through a lesser known side door while the cult was distracted by the stage, and another girl tells anyone who would listen- a rapidly dwindling number- that she was the first one to be captured and nearly killed on the stage. All of them remember Buffy and her friends storming through the main door, holding wooden crosses, and Buffy doing something to the man on the stage. They all remember her face, uncompromising and fierce, but none of them could recount what happened to the cult.
The rumors warped as they made their way through the students, an interesting background to the repetitive tasks of the new school year.
Well, I heard that she ran away because she got into a gang fight. A boy told his football teammate on a break in practice.
No way, there aren’t any gangs in Sunnydale. His friend laughed.
I’m serious, she was like, way into fighting. The boy shrugged. Became dangerous or something.
A cheerleader, tired after cheering for a team that could barely score through an entire game, turned to her friend. My sister overheard the librarian saying she was kicked out by her mom, I think.
What? Her friend pulled her hair down from its tight ponytail. Why?
I dunno, the cheerleader shrugged, why does anyone get kicked out? Probably drugs.
Rumors never stay interesting for long when there’s no new material to feed them, so by the time Buffy Summers returned to campus everyone had nearly forgotten her mysterious absence. She slowly drifted back into the collective school body, starting by sitting right outside campus with her friends as they ate lunch, then drifting into the school with her mother on the way to the principal's office, then rejoining them in the back of their classes.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn’t realized until she returned that their time without her was filled with hushed glances outside at night, skirting far away from graveyards, and quickly checking the time before leaving the Bronze long before they would have previous summers. Everyone felt the same, but none of them could put words to the feeling of strange comfort when they glimpsed her in the library on their way home from sports, or detention, or their after-school clubs. At least, not yet.