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If you were a girl, you might cry a little staring out the plane window. Instead you suck it up like the man you are and remind yourself that this is all for your dad. Besides, it’s not like you’re going to die or something overly-melodramatic such as that. You’ve already bid farewell to the familiarity of the sun; that and your dad would be most of what you would miss.
He’d asked you if you were sure or not. “John,” he’d said for the last time as he pulled into the airport parking lot, “Is this really what you want?”
You’d given him a smile, a hug, and a “Definitely!” in return for his concern.
“Just remember, if you ever get tired of Forks, give me a call.” Of course he’d leave you a back door, he was your father. You just hoped you would do your best to ignore that door.
After that, it’s to Washington you fly. More specifically, Seattle, but that won’t be your final destination. You’ll meet your mother and your sister, Jane, at the airport in Port Angeles. They’ll drive you back to their house where your summer lodging would become your permanent residence.
Forks isn’t that bad. You’d spent a month every summer with your family there, as a sort of apology from your father that you had to essentially grow up without a motherly figure in your life. The sky of the small town is usually overcast, paired with rain and a mildly dreary landscape with a bundled up populace. A great contrast to the scorching heat of Phoenix and the casual wear of short-sleeved shirts and shorts. Once, you bothered to find out the annual precipitation in your summer retreat, and the number was beyond a hundred inches. You couldn’t help but to compare it to the eight inches you normally experienced.
You feel a little sad about leaving behind your dad. You know he’ll miss you as you’ll miss him, but you want to let him live a little. You weren’t about to hold your dad back when he’d done so much for you. It’s your turn to repay that in this tiny way that you can.
When it’s time to board the plane, you exchange goodbyes and heartfelt hugs with your father before sealing the deal and settling into a third-class seat. You opt to pass the time by playing a Pokemon game again on your portable gaming system instead of staring out the window for four hours. From Seattle, you switch flights to get on a small plane to Port Angeles. It is raining when you finally land, setting a clean precedent for your last two years of high school.
“Oh, John!” your mother comes over and sweeps you into her arms the moment you step off, peppering your cheek with kisses. Your younger sister looks like she is about to explode waiting her turn. As soon as you are released from the death grip, you encounter another from Jane, all giggles. You can’t help but at least smile at their enthusiasm, even if your hands are too busy holding your bags to hug them back.
“Well, come on, no need to stand out in the rain!” Mom pushes you over and into the police cruiser while you pull your hoodie over your head. Goodbye shorts, hello parkas.
It’s nice to know your receiving family is absolutely delighted to pieces that you are coming to live with them. It would be no pain sleeping in a house with the two of them.
In the car, Jane chats away from the back seat, talking about how excited she is for school next week, asking how the flight was, and complaining about the plastic seat of the back of the cruiser. Your mother waits a little bit before bringing up the issue of transportation. “John, I found a decent car for you,” she told you, a bit of pride in her voice.
“Tell me all about it,” you encourage her, a bit surprised. You just hope you have enough money for it. There’s no doubt that it’s a ‘decent car.’
“You remember Carleen?” You shake your head. “She sometimes comes over to teach Janey to cook? We’ve been hiking with her before?” This triggers a few memories and you nod compliantly. “Well, anyways, Carleen’s gotten herself a new car and she doesn’t need the one she was using before any more. She said she’d sell it to us, real cheap. Honda, small car, a little beat up,” she goes on to describe it.
“How old is it?” you pry, and her expression flickers to show that she was hoping you wouldn’t press it.
“About thirty, but it still runs well,” she says defensively. “Good enough for you, right?”
“Mom, I don’t really have the money I’d need to fix it up.”
“Don’t worry, John. Mom’ll fix it if-”
“Jane!” Mom interrupts her. “Lookie here, John. I’ll help you out if you need help. I’m not just some lady you get free rent and board from, remember?”
You feel a little guilty about it, even though she’s the one lobbying for you to buy the car. “How much?” you finally ask. You’ll bite, if it’s cheap.
“Here’s the best part. It’s free for you!” she smiles.
“You already bought it? What’s the catch?” Now you are suspicious of your overly-sweet mother. There’s no doubt in your mind what attracted your father, what with his penchant for confections.
“You have to drive Janey to school.”
“Is that it?”
“You betcha, sweetheart,” she threw the pet names left and right. Not looking the gift horse in the mouth sounds like a fantastic idea at the moment.
“Thanks, Mom.” She just hums happily at you in response, and Jane takes up the following silence with more pleasant talk.
As you roll into town, you make sure to take note of the locations of useful spots, now that you would be driving around by yourself. It isn’t too hard, with the size of the town. When you get to the house, you are delighted to find the car already in the driveway. Mom had already done a considerable amount to welcome you; buying you a car, doing the paperwork for your high school attendance. It’s altogether too much, and you give her a nice hug as soon as you step outside of the car. She seems surprised, but accepts it willingly.
Jane takes one of your bags from you and carries it with you up to your room. It’s nothing like your room back in Phoenix, where the walls were covered in movie posters, some of which had outgrown your tastes and others that were still new gems. These walls are blank, but you have a bed, a computer, a keyboard, and a rocking chair. You’d never much used the rocking chair but you think your mom had left it there because she didn’t want your room to seem too empty. Of course it still is, but you have plenty of time to spruce it up once your father gets around to mailing you your posters.
Jane leaves you alone to unpack and you spend the time thinking about school next week. You don’t think meeting new kids and making friends will be a problem. You have the numbers of a few people from your school in Arizona, but you doubt you’ll text them of your own volition considering you’d only gotten them when they had learned you were moving.
Being the new kid is mildly intimidating. You are going to go to a school that has about four hundred students. That makes a hundred kids per grade. You haven’t been in a school so small since elementary, your middle and high schools having easily over a thousand attending each. In addition to going back to the intimacy of early adolescent education, all the kids at Forks High School have grown up together and been friends forever. You just hope you can find some cool people to hang around and that not everyone is a hick or something. You aren’t exactly in a southern small town, but you also aren’t sure if that makes a difference.
Jane’s still in middle school, so you don’t even have the option of hanging out with her friends. Which is almost a blessing in itself, you don’t have to come as ‘Jane’s older brother,’ instead you get to be ‘Chief Liz’s son.’ Even if she’s just a small town’s chief of police, you still feel a little proud she’d been through the ranks and is now a prominent local figure. Not that it’ll make anything easier for you when you meet your new classmates next week.
When you’re done packing, you decide you’d been thinking a little too much and you devote the rest of your evening to dinner and practicing on your keyboard.
You spend the week preceding the first day of school with your family, who take you out to have as much fun as possible. You go hiking, fishing, and do every outdoorsy thing possible in Forks, Washington. In your free time you play on your keyboard or play video games, and even crack open a book or two from Jane’s shelves out of boredom. Your mother also takes time out of her day to take you to the DMV so you can renew your license for Washington.
You can make this work. It won’t be so bad here.
You wish you could say your first day of school came up unexpectedly, however the truth is that you’d all but counted down the days. After you dress in heavy clothing anticipating the rain you could hear striking your window, you settle in for breakfast with your sister and mother. She goes shortly after finishing, leaving you and Jane. “You’ll have to tell me the way,” you say as you wash and dry your dishes.
“It’s not that hard, John. But I’ll do it this time, just for you,” she winks. You’re pretty sure she doesn’t know that that was considered flirting, otherwise she wouldn’t have used it on her brother. You wonder idly if your little sister has anyone she would want to use flirting on.
You are mildly relieved when your dinged-up car starts up without a problem. You had already driven it around a little bit, but the rush of relief came each time it worked. Jane gives you directions and soon you two are pulling into a parking lot. It’s the high school parking lot, but both the middle school and elementary school are right next to it.
“This is the student parking for high schoolers, so you should park here and I’ll just meet you at your car after school. That building over there is the office, your homeroom will be posted next to the door,” Jane informs you while helpfully pointing to one of the many buildings. “I’m off to my first day, now, I hope yours will be as good as mine.” She gives you a hug and gets out of the car to fend off the rain in her jacket and rain boots.
Your homeroom is easy to figure out. You’re in eleventh grade, and your last name is between A and F. The hard part is finding it. The classrooms don’t seem to have any particular order and you are eventually fed up enough to walk into the front office to ask for a map. The attendant eyes you suspiciously and you have a feeling she knows exactly who you are. Which is silly, you could be any old freshmen, unless she somehow knows all the middle schoolers too.
After figuring out the location of your classroom with the assistance of the map, you settle into a seat in the middle of the room. A few students are already here and they start staring at you. You get the feeling they’d gossip but they know it’s quiet enough that you’ll hear if they do. Small towns. Nobody would even have the inclination to whisper about you if you were a new kid at a big school. At least the kids here probably don’t bite.
“I’m Eridan.” You notice a kid who came up to you and is now leaning against the desk next to yours. You take in the purple streak in his black hair and the hipster glasses. You wonder if they’re prescription, because they certainly don’t look so.
“Nice to meet you. John,” you introduce yourself, cautiously so because he’s staring at you a little intensely.
“Same to you. Are you Chief Crocker’s son?” You can tell he already knows, so you just nod.
“Hey, stop bugging the new kid, Ampora.” Another boy who had walked in a few seconds earlier started to heckle Eridan. He was wearing suspenders over a pristine white polo and you notice that his eyes are two different colors, oddly enough.
“Go away, Captor, I’m just trying to make conversation,” Eridan says cagily.
“Yeah. ‘Conversation.’ I’m sure,” he draws out ‘sure’ with suspicion clear in his voice. Not quite so clear is a minor lisp this other kid has. “I’m Sollux. You John Crocker?” he asks me.
“No, Egbert,” you correct him. You wonder if your mom had mentioned your name around. Gossip is said to be rampant in small towns, even more so than at high schools.
“What?”
“John Egbert,” you clarify.
“I just assumed you’d have the same last name as the chief,” he shrugs. You go ahead and shrug back.
“Oh yeah, talk like I’m the one messing with the new kid when you’re the one assuming weird things about him,” Eridan pokes at Sollux, both figuratively and literally.
“Don’t touch me, you freak. And how the hell is that supposed to be weird? It’s an easy assumption.” Sollux and Eridan promptly sit down next to you and start bickering at each other while everyone waits for the teacher to show up, occasionally insisting that you input your opinion. It’s kind of weird, but you suppose you aren’t left out at least.
The teacher finally gets there and hushes the class. He starts to call out names while the students come up to grab their schedule. Towards the end, he calls out, “John Egbert,” raising an eyebrow. You get up and grab it, and this time the whispers do break out.
“Shouldn’t we go around and punch some of these dweebs for talking shit about John?” you hear Eridan suggesting to Sollux as you settle back in your seat.
“The only dweeb here is you. They’re not saying anything bad about him, it’s just general curiousity,” Sollux informs him.
“It’s okay, you guys. I don’t mind being a celebrity for a little while,” you joke. It’s actually kind of cool, in a weird way. Your name is on everyone’s lips. Sure it’s a little annoying and you feel a little alienated, but this is probably how real celebrities feel too. Good thing you’ll only be the kind that gets fifteen minutes of fame.
“I’ve got my first period class near yours, want me to show you the way?” Eridan asks, peeking over your shoulder at your schedule.
“What...” you pause.
“Oh my god, Ampora, stop acting so fucking creepy. I swear if I heard your voice coming from a pasty forty-year-old man in a trenchcoat and fedora I wouldn’t be surprised at all.” Sollux starts rubbing his forehead as if Eridan is a big enough nuisance to give him a migraine.
“I’m pretty sure I can find my way. Especially with my handy dandy map.” You pull it out and quickly examine it before the teacher dismisses you. Eridan and Sollux are with you for a little bit of the rainy walk before they peel off to their own classes.
The next few classes go by smoothly because you find out your curriculum in Phoenix was stricter than it is here. The work sounds relatively easy, and even if it isn’t, all of your teachers have to go through the first day routine of outlining the syllabus and explaining their personal classroom rules. In every class, when the teacher lets you loose, you find a handful of people always trying to come up to you and give you the third degree about what you thought about Forks. Mostly girls. You think it’s a little weird, but you suppose maybe they’re just excited that there’s someone to talk to who didn’t throw sand in their face in kindergarten.
They mostly start out by asking you about the weather, to which you offer a joke in response. You eavesdrop a little, and find people are talking about how tan you are, how you came from the magical land of Phoenix, and et cetera.
You share fifth period with Sollux again and he invites you to eat with his posse during lunch. You sit down with him and five other kids. A short girl with a cap of messy hair introduces herself as Nepeta to you and proceeds to give you the deets on everyone else. You already know Sollux, who got out one of the newest portable gaming systems as soon as he had sat down, and Eridan, but three other faces are a little unfamiliar. Karkat is a short boy in a sweater it looks like his mom had knit, Vriska is a girl with long blonde hair and a smile of daggers, and Aradia is an elegant girl with an unusual amount of skull jewelry. You announce yourself to them, although you know they already know who you are. Hell, some of them might even know where you live, what with being under the chief’s roof.
That’s when you see them. A bit of melodramatic phrasing, but it’s fitting. Something is different, maybe not wrong, but different about them. You glance across the cafeteria and see four kids sitting at a table in the corner. They all have blonde hair, though each has their own shade of blonde. Two girls and two guys, sitting, not talking, and pushing their food around their plate without ever bringing a utensil up to their mouth. That among many other details is what made them stand out. You have a feeling you were stealing a little bit of their thunder within the school’s rumor mill, and that they were absolutely fine with it.
Every one of the four looks like they were ripped from the cover a magazine. One girl is short with neat hair pulled back by a headband, thin and delicate-looking, wearing a dull pink coat with fur. The other one is abnormally tall, taller than one of the guys even, her hair messy with randoms strands of curled hair, wearing a purple sweater hanging off her shoulders. The guy taller than her has muscles apparent through his hoodie, strong facial features half-hidden by Squirtle Squad shades and hair spiked up like he came from the cover of Shonen Jump. The last one has aviator shades, a slight but tall build, despite being shorter than the other girl, and this one isn’t even pretending to eat, choosing instead to mess around on an iphone with the headphones plugged in.
But aside from their attractive features, there’s something else. They are whiter than anyone else around. Caucasian generally refers to pink-skinned monkeys, but these four are literally that white minus the pink. You would think that they’re albino, except for their hair color and the dark eyes of the girls. You can’t see what eye color the guys have, but you assume they’re the same. Despite their glamorous appearance, they all look like they need a good night’s rest with the bags you can see under their eyes.
Nepeta notices your piqued interest with them. “Those are Dr. Strider’s kids,” she whispers to you, in a gossipy voice.
“Yeah?” you whisper back, letting her have the impression you were ready to get down on some serious girl talk.
“That’s Dave and Dirk Strider, and Roxy and Rose Lalonde,” she let on. “Did you know? Oh of course you don’t, you’re new. But Dirk and Rose are going out! And I think Dave and Roxy might be too? But it’s kind of weird because they all live together. Scandalous!” she giggles, revealing that she doesn’t really care. For some reason, you get the impression that Nepeta is enjoying the conversation a little too much.
“Are they all related?” you ask. You were starting to wonder if they didn’t consider incest a taboo.
“Oh no, that’d be a little gross. Dave and Dirk are brothers and Roxy and Rose are sisters. They’re all adopted. But they certainly look like they would be related, don’t they?” Nepeta answers without a pause.
“Why don’t they sit with anyone else?” you prod.
“They’re all really close and kind of act aloof... When you talk to them. They’re kind of scary, you know? Being so pretty and acting like they don’t even want to talk to you,” she explains, her brow furrowing. “They’re kind of new, like you. They moved here like two years ago from Alaska or something, so maybe that’s part of the reason too?” she adds.
“Either way, they’re just a bunch of freaks,” Vriska says. She’d obviously been eavesdropping on the two of you talking. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about them, John.” That last bit she says with another one of those dangerous smiles. Vriska is hastily turning out to be the female version of a ‘bad boy.’
“Yeah, just a bunch of fucking weirdos,” Eridan is quick to agree.
“Oh, don’t be like that! They just like to keep to themselves,” Aradia chastises them. Sollux takes a break from gaming to nod in agreement but you have a feeling that it’s more to do with Aradia than her defense.
You stop staring straight on at them, thinking maybe you are being a bit rude, but you still sneak glances throughout lunch. After about the fourth time, the one with aviator glasses is gazing right at back you, his face completely impassive. Or, at the least his face is turned in your direction, it’s hard to tell with those shades on. You don’t look back again.
A few minutes before lunch ends, they all stand up nearly simultaneously and take empty trays over to the trash before leaving. Which is weird, because you could’ve sworn that they never actually ate any of the food that had been on them.
“John? What class do you have next?” Nepeta asks you, interrupting your thoughts.
“Biology,” you respond, smiling a little. Science has always been one of your favorite classes. The group mumbles a little bit and it turns out nobody has that class with you.
You all file out of the cafeteria and start to part your ways. Leaning outside next to the door you just exited, is the shorter of the Lalondes. You wonder briefly who she’s waiting for before she unexpectedly comes up to you.
“Hello. You’re John Egbert, aren’t you? I’m Rose Lalonde,” she introduces herself with the voice of an angel, sliding a mittened hand forward for you to accept. You grab it lightly and are surprised to find it a little cold. She hadn’t been out in the cold so long as to make it that way.
“Nice to meet you,” you say, a little confused. Your little lunch friends had said they keep to themselves, so why is Rose going out of her way to talk to you?
“What class do you have next? I was hoping you’d let me have the honor of escorting you,” she smiles and again you are surprised by the harmonic voice.
“I have Biology, with...” you struggle to remember your teacher’s name without pulling out your schedule.
“Ms. Holden. She’s the only one that teaches biology.” And she’s still smiling at you. It’s getting a little creepy and you laugh nervously.
“Yeah, well sure. You can walk me there, if you want,” you answer. When a pretty girl offers to hang out with you, if even for only a moment, you know you’d be a fool to refuse. She starts walking and you follow next to her, forgoing your map for the first time today.
“So, how’s Forks?” she asks eventually.
“It’s fine. I’m already used to it, I’ve been coming here during the summer as long as I can remember,” you answer earnestly.
“The weather is marginally nicer in the summer, I have to admit. Isn’t it a bit dreary, though, compared to Phoenix?” she implores, her eyebrows raised slightly in curiosity.
“It is a bit like I just got out of the frying pan only to fall in the fishbowl,” you say for at least the sixth time today. You’d been getting the same question, so why not the same response?
“I’ve heard,” she frowns, looking a little disappointed. “How’s your first day going so far?” she questions, bringing the upturn back to her lips.
“Kind of boring, to be honest. What else should I expect, though?” You say it rhetorically but she still doesn’t miss a beat in responding.
“Who knows? Maybe it won’t be as boring as you think.” And there’s a mischievous glint in her eyes that has you worrying. “Here’s your class,” she gestures to the building next to you. The warning bell rings across the campus. “And just in time, too.”
You start to walk up the steps before you remember her. “What about your class?” you ask while turning around, “Won’t you be la-” You stop. She’s not there anymore.
You blink, and decide to just go inside. You’re the last person in the class and the teacher waves you over to her desk.
“John Egbert, right? Here’s a syllabus for the class and it looks like there’s an open seat by Dave for you to sit in,” she titters and hands you a syllabus. You glance around the classroom and are greeted by two-chaired black-top tables filled by chattering teenagers. All of the seats are taken except one near the back and by the pale white Dave Strider.
You resign yourself to the seat, seeing how you don’t have any other options. It’s as you’re shuffling down the aisle, stepping over and skirting around backpacks, that you peek up at your soon-to-be tablemate. He’s watching you walk over, a girl drops her books on her desk next to you, and the impassive expression is immediately gone. His previously indifferent expression is replaced with one of revulsion. His upper lip curls back and his teeth clench while his eyebrows pitch down angrily. It was an abrupt enough change that your foot catches on someone’s backpack a little and you stumble. Instead of falling flat on your face, you grab the corner of a table and get your balance back.
“Real fucking smooth, Egbert,” Karkat says, being the occupant of the table you latch on to. This temporarily distracts you, because you thought no one in your lunch group had had Biology this period. You choose to ignore him and keep going on to sit down next to the disgusted Dave. As soon as you sit down, though, he jumps up and grabs his stuff, slinging his pack over his shoulder and making for the front of the room.
“Sorry, Ms. Holden, feeling pretty bad. Gonna go to the nurse’s, alright?” he gets out in a strained, yet somehow melodic voice. Then he leaves without waiting for a response from her. The teacher looks affronted and a bit astonished for a few moments before collecting herself and starting up class. What the heck was his problem? It’s not like it could’ve been you, even though he was staring at you when he switched from normal to disgusted and then immediately bolted when you sat next to him. He must’ve just been sick.
During the first break, Karkat turns around to you and gives you a look of incredulity. “What the hell did you do to Strider? He looked like he was going to hurl as soon as he saw your face. Even I don’t think you’re that ugly,” he says in a frustrated manner. You hadn’t heard him talk too much during lunch, but he seems to be constantly angry in a passive way.
“Maybe he just wasn’t prepared to sit next to all my awesome,” you joke.
“Wow, what a laugh. You’re such a fucking comedian, Egbert,” he says, tacking on a sarcastic ‘ha ha’ to the end.
“He could’ve been scared that my rad jokes would make him die of laughter.” You lean back in your seat and the teacher quiets the class to get back to teaching.
At the end of the period, Karkat turns back to you again with a raised eyebrow. “If any old brainless chump needed help finding his next class, it’d be you,” he states with certainty.
You wait for more, trying to see if he was going to humor you by asking you what you have. He just sits there stubbornly so you decide you can help out. “I have gym.”
“Well isn’t that perfect, I do too. I just hope you’re decent enough with a ball that I can get out of this day without a black eye,” he insults you. You think that’s his thing, the insulting.
“Hey! I have perfectly fine hand-eye coordination, thank you very much,” you ascertain.
“We’ll see. Just follow me before you fall in a bush or something.” Now he actually seems a little concerned and you oblige. Gym turns out to be a fun affair, because you are actually good at sports, and it ends with Karkat free of injuries. The bell rings and your first day of school is finally over. While you’re leaving, your gym teacher tells you that the front office attendant wants to see you.
You wonder what she could possibly want while you walk out and over to the small building. The sky is still overcast, and you’re thankful yet again that the rain has yet to start up again. You notice Jane waiting for you by your car and you wave to her and unlock the car from the distance.
When you come into the office, Dave Strider is there, talking to the attendant. He didn’t notice you, and you wait patiently for him to finish.
“Are you absolutely sure there isn’t any other period I could take Biology?” he implores her and you can’t believe your ears. It was definitely about you, you could just tell. If he had been merely sick then he wouldn’t need to change his period, and if there was a scheduling issue, he would’ve fixed it up before school started. That combined with the timing of his abscond from Biology made you certain you were the problem.
Suddenly, his back stiffens and he turns around, as if he’s just noticed someone came in. His face is still impassive as he stares at you, but you can tell his mouth and eyebrows are fighting to stay that way. So in the end, he still looks angry at you. “I can see that it’s impossible. So sorry for bothering you,” he says over his shoulder to the attendant while he starts to leave.
“Something on my face, Strider?” you throw at him. It was getting a little ridiculous how he was treating you like the scum of the Earth when you were just the new kid.
The comment breaks his poorly feigned nonchalance and his eyebrows raise in surprise instead of anger. He opens his mouth to respond before quickly closing it and hurrying out the door.
You walk up to the attendant, noticing how she’s a little stunned at the exchange. Dave Strider sure likes to leave authority confused. “Ms... Copeland?” you glance at her nameplate, trying to figure out why she would call you to the office. She finally greets at you and asks you about your day and if you needed anything, trying her best to smile pleasantly. You reassure her that your day was wonderful and no, you don’t need a thing.
You make your way to the car, the rain beginning to lightly pick up again. You’re glad the day is over and you don’t have any more classes to trudge between. You open the driver’s side door of your car and slide in next Jane. “What’s been keeping you?” she asks.
“The front office lady wanted to see me,” you answer, pulling out of the parking lot. And for the rest of the ride while Jane tells you all about her day, you spend time wondering why Rose came up to talk to you, and why her brother was so quick to hate you.