Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Alpha Rat Pack. To the freshmen listening right now: stop and go to  sleep. It's week one, you do not need to be awake right now. It's syllabus week and in two weeks, you'll be craving the sleep you're missing out on right now. To any other fool listening right now, I'm Quark, and this is the hour where I do homework and play whatever I'm currently listening to. It still feels like summer here in the South Bay, so I've been listening to things that feel like summer to me. I'm not sorry if they don't feel like summer to you; it's my show and I do what I want. Here's 'Sleeping All Alone' by Jake Hill."

There’s something soothing in the DJ’s voice that Regina needs, though school only started the day before. Looking at her reading list, Regina’s not sure why she’s a French and Francophone studies and marketing double major when she could have done something easy like real estate–which she already knows far too well–alone. Instead, she’s being forced to learn a ‘second language’ to achieve her French degree even though she’s fluent in French and all her French courses satisfy the second language requirement for her marketing degree. 

SBU is still in non-conference play so Regina was in Los Angeles playing against UCLA instead of reading her syllabi the weekend before school started. There’s far too many expectations on Regina’s shoulders right now, with SBU on a win streak and Regina scoring most of the goals. 

She’s a starter this year, the number 9 emblazoned across her back since her previous captain handed the number down to her. South Bay recruited her because she’s a finisher. It’s not the most glamorous of reasons–the playmaker is always the most appealing for recruiters–but Regina is really good at what she does.  Shots from distance, headers, shots in close quarters, beating the keeper on both near and far post, and putting her body on the line to ensure the ball goes into the net is her specialty (so anything that gets a goal, basically). Being a starter, Regina really shouldn’t be awake at 1 AM during syllabus week when SBU plays Arizona on the weekend.

==

LSBU is a public access radio station run by the students of South Bay University. There’s a tradition of freedom; the station manager never restricts what DJs play, unless it contains hate speech, and while there technically is a faculty advisor, he’s about as present as foreign intervention in Haiti is effective (that is: not at all). All this means is that the garage band boys can play their own music, the indie girls can play what they think is underground and unknown, and Cady can play whatever takes her fancy at the moment. Cady’s shift is a late night spot where usually no one listens, but it means that she really doesn’t have to host, which is better for her introverted nature.

If Cady isn’t at the station, she’s sitting in the STEM building, VEGM (which stands for something–a donor’s name no doubt–but Cady doesn’t remember it), either working on her homework or tutoring freshmen in Physics 31 and 32 (or math, if any other demanding soccer players need it). There’s very few physics majors in Cady’s year, but all the engineering students have to take the Physics 30 series. Fortunately for Cady, she scored high enough on the AP Physics exams that she got credit for the first two classes, taking 33–electricity and magnetism–as a freshman in a season of sophomores and juniors (theoretically she’s on track to graduate early, but she also might pick up a minor to fill her senior year).

Physics is Cady’s one true love. Sure, music is great, art is fantastic, and math clicks in her brain like nothing else, but there’s something about the tactility of physics that makes it more special in Cady’s brain. Her love for Aaron had nothing on her love for physics. That being said, Cady’s interest lies in astrophysics and cosmology, which aren’t the easiest to see and test with her own hands–not that quantum mechanics, the other topic she’s studying, is any more tangible.

DJing and hosting a radio show wasn’t something Cady intended to do when she first arrived on campus. It doesn’t even pay well (it doesn’t pay at all) and Cady chooses to work in the middle of the night even though she has priority as a second year DJ. Cady expected her college experience to go very similarly to her high school experience: go to class, do her homework, hang out with a couple friends. Instead, she’s found herself involved with the on campus radio station, thinking about rushing a professional frat, and part of the Society of Physics students. Of course, she’s also part of the Honours College, a student DJ, and is an avid supporter of the arts (thanks to her closest friends). It’s not a bad life at all, but it’s not what she anticipated. 

==

“And so, my Alpha Rats, our time together comes to a close. Perhaps I’ll take a drive down to Santa Cruz after this to take advantage of the vibes I’ve been working with for the past hour. I suppose I ought to sign off now, though. I’ve been Quark and I always will be.”

Cady and her pink bike make their way from Barney (Barnes Memorial Centre, the dining hall, student union, and bookstore that resides on the near side of campus between all the residence halls) past the dorms and two blocks over after her midnight shift ends. Damian always freaks out when Cady has to bike back to Blue’s Clues in the middle of the night as if she–a white woman–isn’t biking through a majority white suburb of a majority white city (also as if Damian doesn’t demand that she always carries a can of mace on her keys, which are always in arms reach).

She's doing her best to romanticise the little things in life, mostly because Janis, in her relentless demand for whimsy, is constantly on Cady's ass to 'stop and smell the flowers.' Cady's not sure Janis knows what whimsy is. Still, Cady takes her time on her ride home to look at the houses in the neighbourhood and attempt to look up at the stars, but the light pollution is killing the view. It's still warm out and there's a slight breeze, and Cady sort of feels like that meme of a cat sticking their head out of a car window that Damian shoved in her face once. 

Her bike gets tucked into the corner of the backyard next to Janis's before she does her best to not let the back door squeak as she lets herself in. Cady expertly avoids the one squeaky stair on her way to her room, where she gathers her stuff to take a quick shower. While Janis and Cady claimed the master bedroom and they share one of the two bathrooms upstairs, the pipes creak ominously as the water turns on. To be the most respectful roommate possible, Cady doesn't put her music on, but she does hum "People Pleaser" by Black Pontiac, though the loud pipes aren’t doing anything for her reputation as a respectful roommate.

Cady's nighttime routine hasn't changed since she picked up this gig, which could be some sort of problem because she's consistently been getting about four hours of sleep since fall quarter of freshman year. She doesn't mind, though, because it's an easy routine to slip back into after sleeping in for most of the summer. DJing is totally worth it, though. 

Although SBU guarantees housing for all sophomores, Damian's aunt hosts an AirBnB just off campus that isn't really meant to be a college house, but Cady, Damian, Janis, and two of Janis and Damian's art friends live in the house which they've deemed Blue's Clues–based on the sky blue exterior and mystery as to how the five of them acquired the house–for free. Gabby and AJ share a room, seeing as they were roommates in freshman year and they lived together very well. Damian has his own bedroom seeing as he's the only guy in the house, so Janis and Cady share the last room. Technically, it wasn't the last room because Cady got first choice on the room because she was the first of the five to return to San Jose during the summer. As the annoying morning person of the house, Cady and Janis's second floor bedroom faces the street and the sunrise, the bay window letting in the morning sun. Janis isn’t the biggest fan, but she’s become a pro at waking up to see the beautiful South Bay sunrises.

Cady and Janis aren’t the only ones who share a room, but they certainly did get the better deal out of it all. The bay window doesn’t take up the entirety of the wall, with just barely not enough space on either side of the window for a full bed, but neither Janis nor Cady care that much. The master bedroom is cramped between the two of them but the space is like no other that either of them have lived in. 

While Cady isn’t as artsy as her housemates, she’s learned to appreciate an aesthetic: there’s old maps from her time in Africa with annotated areas from tracking herds decorating her walls, photos of her friends from high school and family in Africa, postcards from her dad, and a variety of different posters that she's collected over the years. Janis, on the contrary, has a strong artistic flair that runs through her decor. She doesn’t have any of her actual art on the walls, but many of the sketches she’s done in class decorate the space above her desk. She has an abundance of band posters, random clippings of newspaper titles (the ones Janis deems funny enough), and some of her passion projects (see far too many crocheted plants, which she made because she’s not responsible enough to take care of plants). 

Their aesthetics are quite different in general Cady always prefers a light, airy vibe while Janis prefers a cool, dark vibe, “sort of like a dark cave that’s filled with crystals and a small beam of light is coming in and refracting off all the crystals,” she said once. Cady has cream coloured linens and a light grey duvet and Janis has a plaid forest green and dark grey duvet and grey linens, very nearly the same shade as Cady’s duvet. Janis doesn’t have a bed frame–“for the vibe,” she said when they moved in–and Cady made her a sort of cubby shelving unit that fits under the window seat to act as her bedside table. Cady, in her attempt to be a better woodworker, built herself a bed frame that has shelves around the edges to give her a little more storage for her shoes and some books. Cady has a matching shelving unit to Janis’s at the foot of her bed and a desk opposite it, pressed against the bathroom wall. Janis simply doesn’t have a desk, preferring to do almost all of her work at the kitchen table or studio (not that she has the same workload as Cady). 

Thanks to the three studio art majors of three different emphases (multimedia arts for AJ, 3D studies for Janis, and animation and illustration for Gabby) and Damian in the house, Blue's Clues has a fantastic aesthetic. With Janis, AJ, and Gabby willing to decorate the house with their own pieces or thrifting eclectic pieces and Cady with her expertise in handywork (she's done a lot of strange things in Africa and she took a woodshop class her senior year to expand on said random skills such as making stools and carving little animal figurines), Blue's Clues looks nothing like a college house. There's a chore chart on the fridge, next to a grocery list for communal items. Blue's Clues also doesn't act like a college house. All five of them enjoy cooking, so each of them will cook dinner on their prescribed weekday (Cady cooks on Thursdays) and they fend for themselves on the weekends, but whoever cooks first always makes enough for everyone. They also usually split groceries instead of everyone buying their own, but Cady always pays for her dairy free stuff (damn her lactose intolerance). 

Blue's Clues is an old house. It's a small, Victorian style house (three bedroom but deceptively small); one of a kind in a neighbourhood that was built before HOAs became a thing. There's a small front porch, just big enough for a wicker chair and small, round glass table, under a tiny balcony that houses two chairs and a table that can be accessed through Cady and Janis's room. There's two bay windows, one on top of each other; one in the living room and one in Cady and Janis's room. AJ reupholstered the window seat in the living room during the first week, using a white bed sheet that the five of them doodled on and signed, like the narcissistic artists that they are. It definitely isn’t going to last for two years, but it’s a fun, novel part of the house. 

The kitchen, at the back of the house, has (probably real) hardwood floors, white cabinets, a white tile backsplash, and white tiled countertops. It's a small space with an oven and gas stove, sink, and single door fridge somehow all crammed into the space that is also overflowing with plants (Gabby is allowed plants because she's responsible enough to care for them). There's a slippery checkered burnt orange and cream rug under the table. The table itself is rustic with mismatched chairs that the five of them bought at a flea market (because Cady is nowhere near good enough to make chairs yet). There's random stains thanks to different projects, even though they've only been at the house for three weeks. 

The laundry is in a little closet attached to the kitchen, with a dryer that doesn’t always work. To be fair, Janis also thinks the washer doesn’t work, but that’s only because she doesn’t do anything to get the paint stains out of her clothes other than toss them in the wash, usually long after the paint has dried. 

The great room is a wonderfully homey space with plush sofas and a TV that only Damian uses hung over the fireplace. Cady’s favourite spot in the room is a fabric recliner that her dad bought as a housewarming gift; it’s where she does most of her playlist creation. The great room is furnished with an eclectic mismatch of furniture because almost all of it was thrifted. It’s where Damian films most of his videos, though he does all of his “get ready with me’s” in his room. There’s a green, three cushion sofa in the middle of the room, Cady’s recliner, a transitional style floral rug, a bean bag that looks like a billiards ball, and an oval coffee table. There’s not that much decor in the room because it’s a very open space, but what is on the walls is a number of AJ’s prints, plus a couple random posters that Damian brought. 

Janis and AJ turned the living room into a studio right before fall quarter started, preparing for their projects. Sometimes, Cady comes home from her shift to find Janis working on something in the living room, her headphones on and blocking out the sound of Cady entering the house. Cady doesn’t go into the living room very often, mostly because she has no reason to, but the light is really nice, she’ll sit on the window seat and drink her tea, just to enjoy the sun. 

The backyard is bigger than anyone would anticipate from looking at the front of the house. The detached garage acts as another studio for the three artists, with some bits and bobs for Gabby’s figurines (she’s been really into stop motion animation, à la Aardman Animation and Laika), plenty of storage for Janis's yarns and beads, enough paint to sustain the three of them, and Cady's miter saw and hand tools is in the back corner. AJ and Cady spent the first week that they were in the house making a couple garden beds to grow some small vegetables and herbs in the back corner next to the garage and fruit trees that have been there for years, and there's a totally legal fire pit that Cady and Damian built that same week. The back porch is much larger than the front porch and has a sofa and table back there, plus a totally safe swing Cady installed. The rest of the backyard houses furniture to sit around the fire pit and a basketball hoop that came with the house. 

Compared to every other house that college kids live in, Cady finds Blue's Clues to be a paradise.

==

"Well, my Alpha Rats, we find ourselves back in the good ol' LSBU prison on this horrible Thursday night. The quarter system is a sham and I actually have an assignment to work on: it's five problems and due tomorrow at midnight, so I ought to get work done tonight. Seeing as I need to get some work done, I'm putting on a playlist that I usually study to. So have some Slavic trap music with a heavy bassline that keeps me in the groove."

Quark isn't the only person with an assignment to do, and Regina probably shouldn't be awake at this hour doing her vocab for her art history course. It's a global studies requirement, something she only needs to graduate, not for her major, and she's not looking forward to this course. So at 1 AM, Regina is propped up in her bed, staring at a slideshow of the basic terms of art history. Seeing as they are going to Arizona for an away game on the weekend, Regina really should be getting an adequate amount of sleep (she always should be and not just because of the away game), but she's working so she doesn't have to work on this assignment, which is due on Sunday night, on the plane.

Somehow, they’ve managed to cram eight girls into the deceptively large soccer house, Caution Tape. Regina’s roommate, fellow sophomore Maia, is a business major who doesn’t take her studies as seriously as Regina, which is probably granted because Maia aims to go pro while Regina knows her future lies in real estate (God knows why Regina’s studying French when she’s going to be selling mega mansions). 

The Slavic trap music is not what Regina typically studies to, but Regina will listen to anything Quark plays. She’s, somehow, still working on her vocab when Quark’s voice filters back in as the hour finishes up. 

“Well, it appears to have been an hour, but I’ve only done two problems. Lucky for me, there’s no one on deck for their own show, so I might as well stay here until my work is done. If there’s any other losers who are doing homework tonight, call me at (408) 577-LSBU to tell me to change the playlist if you simply can’t study to trap music. I probably shouldn’t be recommending people be up this late to do homework, but I’m Quark and I’m a bad influence.”

Vocabulary isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but for whatever reason, Regina’s struggling to focus. It could be a side effect of the music, which usually never happens to Regina. To be fair, though, Regina was pretty good at managing her time last year and studied with Cady instead of staying up until 2 or 3 AM doing homework (that was until she screwed things up, but it was Cady’s fault, she rationalises, for not telling Regina that she speaks French well enough to understand Regina). 

Frustrated with herself and her inability to focus, Regina buckles and calls the DJ. 

“Hello to my only listener, what are you doing up at this hour?”

There’s something familiar about Quark’s voice, but Regina doesn’t dwell on it for very long. 

“Same as you, Quark: homework. Would you mind if we tone down the energy a little? Unfortunately, trap music and vocabulary don’t go very well together.”

“Sure, might as well. Do you have anything in mind?”

“Video game music, like Super Mario or Undertale.” Regina would never admit to anyone she personally knows that her choice music to study to is the Undertale soundtrack. 

“Okay, nerd. Let’s queue some Toby Fox and do some vocabulary.”

Something about holding Quark’s attention makes Regina smile into the dark after the call ends, glad that Maia isn’t awake to see her be dorky. With a sudden clarity that is only brought about during the witching hour, Regina finds that she’s going to miss the quiet consistency of Quark when they graduate. It’s a useless thought and she shakes it from her brain, too busy to be melancholy about her future. It takes another half hour for Regina to finish up her assignment, turning it in at the lovely hour of 4 AM, two and a half hours before she has to be awake for team lift.

If there’s anything Regina’s known for, it certainly isn’t making good decisions. She totally could have completed the assignment between classes, especially with the pressure of pregame training in the afternoon, team dinner, and the flight in the evening, but that’s kind of asking a lot of her. Also, she’s going to be assigned actual work to do for that art history course, so starting her homework on the day it’s assigned will be the best decision she makes that day. 

There’s no time to be half asleep at weights, but she’s yawning her way through spotting Addie when the team’s AT sidles up to Regina. 

“You’re supposed to be getting eight hours of sleep, George.”

“It’s not my fault that my prof went and assigned me far too much work for the first real day of class.”

“Manage your time better, George. I have your schedule, you have time to do homework today.” 

“Dude, this core class is, frankly, assigning more than it should be. I’m fine, now leave me alone.”

Ever the pleasant, spoiled brat, Regina rolls her eyes and refocuses on Addie, who is definitely laughing at her. 

“Shut your fugly face, Addison,” Regina grumbles as she swaps with Addie, stepping under the barbell to do her set of squats. Addie openly laughs, knowing Regina’s surly mood is only because she got called out. 

Regina, though she plays a team sport, has never been the greatest team player. She gets along well enough with her teammates, even sometimes hanging out with them outside of class, but she prefers the company of Gretchen and Karen (even though neither of them attend SBU anymore). Of her teammates, she’s closest with Maia and Addie, one of her current captains and sort of mentor. 

It’s kind of a wonder that Regina’s still playing soccer–mostly for the love of the game–when she has no intention of playing soccer after she graduates, and if the academic pressure becomes too much, she’ll step away from the SBU Seals. It’s also somewhat shocking that her other teams hadn’t ruined it for her. Her former club teams have never been the greatest team environment and she’s had one too many horrible coaches, and she’s thought about quitting more times than she can count, but Regina George isn’t a quitter. It’s also evidence that Regina truly loves soccer when she, Regina George–daughter of Geoff George and granddaughter of Anderson George of Maison George, the premiere real estate firm of the filthy rich–is the heir apparent to California’s most bougie real estate empire.

After falling asleep during her lecture on French business culture and sleeping in the Volkar Centre for Athletic Achievement through her math class, Regina’s frightfully awake during the art history class from hell. Professor Suzuki’s lecture isn’t engaging and Regina finds her eyes wandering around the class, the back corner of the classroom a great place to observe each and every one of her classmates. There’s one guy in the corner of the room, asleep, face down on the desk. That could be Regina if she hadn’t slept through her first two lectures. There’s a horribly familiar redhead at the front of the class and Regina would love to drop the class before Cady every learns that Regina’s in her class, but Cady’s probably the type to check the people tag on Canvas, so it’s likely that she already knows Regina’s in the same class. In her head, Regina flips a coin to decide whether or not she’s going to drop the class, but good Lord she knows she’s not actually going to drop this class because there’s the possibility that she could fix whatever weirdness she left their not friendship on when she went and screwed up that friendship. 

Somehow, it’s just Regina’s luck that she’s in the same class as Cady Heron while also being in a math class that she’s inevitably going to need help on, based on the fact that she skipped class on day two. Not only is it a math class she might accidentally create a habit of skipping, it’s also calculus. Only good thing is that it’s business calculus, not math calculus, and it might be easier than she’s expecting. Regina pretends that she never saw Cady and just hopes that there’s not a group project for this class. Totally inconspicuously, Regina bolts from the class as soon as the lecture is over, only in somewhat of a rush to get lunch and back to the VCAA to work on homework before training in the afternoon, and totally not panicking over the thought that Cady could see her. 

In her best attempt to be a good student, Regina works on her math homework. Looking at the intro problem set, it doesn’t look like she’ll need Cady’s help, which is a great sign because she will not suck it up and apologise for Cady deceiving her. The algebra actually gets completed easily and she only has a “current events” report to do. Instead of starting her art history assignment, Regina lays on the floor of the locker room for half an hour before training, half heartedly rolling out and stretching, like the good little athlete she is. As she lays on the floor, her mind wanders back to Cady Heron, where it ends up more often than not. It’s annoying and inconvenient, but Regina doesn’t exactly do anything to remove Cady Heron from her mind.

==

There’s no rhyme or reason as to why Cady refuses to let anyone other than her housemates know that she hosts a radio show. It’s not that LSBU isn’t cool; the DJ slots are very sought after positions. But for whatever reason, Cady’s show description only reads “I play what I want. Welcome to the Alpha Rat Pack.” with no links to any of her socials, Spotify included. It doesn’t exactly serve her well (though the late night shift doesn’t either), but her station manager isn’t going to do anything to change her show. 

With SBU being a tiny campus, Cady’s already very well aware of the great mystery of “Who is the face behind Quark?” If she had to bet, Cady would put more money than she has on the Instagram account being run by Damian: he’s about unhinged enough to do something like that, even though he doesn’t even attend SBU anymore (he dropped out to “pursue his online ambitions,” ie do YouTube full time, and occasionally create stupid Instagram accounts to troll on Cady, if her gut feeling is right). 

For a campus radio, LSBU is popular. Not only is the station email overflowing with applications, but site traffic has been up recently, especially around 1 AM, otherwise known as the start of Cady’s shift. 

Cady applied to LSBU as a freshman during her first fall quarter on an impulse. She’s not the most passionate about music nor does she particularly love having to talk to her audience, but there’s some sort of drug in being Quark for an hour or two, twice a week. When she told Janis that she was applying for a DJ Slot and didn’t have a good name, the two of them–like the teenagers they are–AI generated a list of physics related topics and then DJ show names. Somehow, Quark and Alpha Rat Pack stuck. Cady wishes that she had a better story than “I asked a name generator to give me some ideas,” but not everyone can be incredibly original in their DJ names (at least she’s not one of the chumps that just use their own name). Seeing as her first quarter was fine and DJing was a good not-education-affiliated extracurricular, Cady just kept doing it. As many of the DJs rotated shifts and new DJs were added and dropped, Quark was a stalwart in the LSBU lineup. For the thousands of students with horrible sleep schedules, Quark provided plenty of entertainment or at least tolerable music, and Cady will continue to do so until she graduates (until research takes precedence over being a college student, actually). 

Cady likes to think that she’s good at her job. She’s good at collecting songs that have the same vibe, the same sort of sound. She mixes her show up sometimes, with days that she doesn’t have an imminent due date, she’ll properly host and talk about music, school, or Africa, even. But on the days she has due dates or is up to her chin in grading, she puts on one of her carefully curated playlists. It’s not hard to be good at this job, but Cady takes pride in the fact nonetheless.

Seeing as she’s chosen the anonymous route (apparently the only DJ in LSBU history who has refused to advertise who they are), there’s a weird sort of desire amongst the regular Quark listeners to find out the real identity of their favourite college DJ. Cady won’t be surprised if Damian puts a bounty on her, not dissimilar to the bounty on the original Jeff the Killer image.

The concept of having regular listeners is wild and Cady doubts that she’ll get used to it, even after her four years. There’s only one person willing to listen to Cady’s rambling, and it’s her dad–he mostly feels bad because his research takes him all over the world, so he hasn’t been present for many of Cady’s milestones in life (he was in Zambia when her mom took the teaching position at Northwestern, he was in in the Everglades for her 18th birthday, high school graduation, and SBU move in, and he was in Argentina for when she moved into Blues Clues). Cady doesn’t quite mind, though, because she knows that he listens to the show whenever he has internet access, he sends both her and her mom postcards whenever he can, and they call at least weekly, depending on his availability. Cady makes the absent father jokes pretty often, even though he’s anything but. 

==

“Welcome to week two, my Alpha Rats. As always, I’m Quark, and you’re watching the Disney Channel. Today, I have a selection of iconic Disney Channel music because I want to have fun while I’m not drowning under the weight of all my deadlines. I’ve already done my prelab and started the homework due on Friday, so I have the time to chat. Now, if you’re new around here, here’s a fun fact about me: I grew up abroad and didn’t watch TV until I moved stateside, so I’ve never actually seen any Disney shows in their entirety. Call me at (408) 577-LSBU to badly discuss Disney shows I’ve never seen, alright? Here’s “Determinate’ From Lemonade Mouth.”

Regina’s half asleep, fighting for her life trying to write a report about “Travelers Among Mountains and Streams” on Tuesday night on the couch at Caution Tape, even though she knows that all of her roommates will snitch to their athletic trainer about her lack of sleep. She really should sleep, but she wants to listen to Quark’s show, so she might as well attempt to do some homework while she’s awake. If Regina had any extra energy, she would be arguing with Quark about the virtues of Disney Channel music because what kind of college student in this day and age doesn’t know the classics?

A couple songs play before someone calls in and argues about how important Disney music is to their culture as Gen Z icons. Something stirs in her gut as Quark argues with someone who isn’t Regina about nostalgic music that Quark doesn’t have any nostalgia for. 

“It’s just childrens’ music, you know? You generalise us all as Gen Z kids, but there’s so many international students here. I know Disney is pretty universal but as a non-native English speaker, actually, I never watched English-language shows when I did have the opportunity to watch TV. And I rarely watched TV growing up, mostly because I didn’t have access to internet until I was in about junior year of high school; I moved to Illinois before my junior year and by that time, Disney Channel was past its prime and I wasn’t about to give myself a pop culture lesson while also learning how to navigate an American high school after being homeschooled or schooled in a completely different culture.”

“But it’s not just nostalgia for us! It’s the fact that it practically unites us all. It’s also some sort of additional dividing factor in this generational cultural divide because there’s the distinction between the Nickelodeon and Disney kids; yeah, Disney is iconic, but Nick is better. No Nick didn’t produce pop stars like Disney, but I think that Nick shows just had better moments. You can’t tell me that ‘Take A Hint’ from Victorious is less iconic than Wizards of Waverly Place.”

“I don’t know what either of those are.”

“This is a whole ass crime! You need to be given a pop culture education.”

“It can’t be pop culture if it’s, what, ten years after either of those shows were part of the popular culture. I can talk about the contemporary stuff, but my nostalgia is different than yours, and you can’t blame me for the fact that I had a different childhood than a majority of the American population. That’s like shitting on a Canadian kid because they watched, like, fucking Degrassi or some other Canadian show.”

Regina falls asleep on the couch while Quark continues to argue about growing up not watching TV, her laptop still open on her lap and the lamp in the corner of the room still on. The sectional isn’t the most comfortable thing but Regina has the remarkable skill of being able to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere (she has passed out in the most uncomfortable position on a bus and her teammates have photo evidence of her with her head hanging off the seats into the aisle and her legs bent as if she was sitting normally in the seat next to the window). 

She gets shaken awake by Maya, her goalkeeper and other captain, with breakfast cooking and some of her teammates ready to go to weights. Her neck hurts, her laptop is dead, and her assignment isn’t finished. She has a memory of Quark ending the show yelling “I don’t actually give a shit and Disney Corp should fuck off and die! Goodbye and good riddance, you stupid Alpha Rats that care too much about stupid nostalgia that doesn’t contribute anything to society or the contemporary popular culture. Go to sleep.”

It’s stupid that Regina feels stupid that she wasn’t the one who got to argue with Quark, and her frustration fuels her through the lift. She’s hitting the battle ropes and glaring at the wall, kind of itching for a fight in a way that she never has before. She can tell that Addie is worried about her, and goes to the pitch instead of preparing for her 9:15 French Business Culture lecture. Most of her teammates have 8:00 AMs, so she’s alone on Sullivan Field, taking shots on goal with all the anger in her body. Frustration mounts as one too many shots hit the crossbar or the posts, and Regina nearly screams. 

“Hey, fucker,” Addie’s voice rings out across the empty pitch. 

Regina doesn’t turn around, beaming another shot into the back of the net from two yards out. 

“Regina. Talk to me, please.”

A shot from the top of the box pings off the inside of the post and back out to Regina. She beams the rebound over the bar and nearly starts crying. 

“Georgie, kiddo, talk to me.”

That’s what breaks Regina. It’s a nickname that only Addie calls her, mostly because she’s sort of (very obviously) Addie’s favourite, and Regina secretly likes the fact that she has someone who cares about her, even a little bit more than Karen and Gretchen, or even her boys from home. 

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Regina admits through tears, surprising herself because all of this frustration has built from her stupid, weird non-relationship with Quark and the non-relationship that left a bad taste in Regina’s mouth from what happened with Cady. 

Addie hums, just hugging Regina in the middle of the pitch. Regina George isn’t a quitter and she’s not going to do anything stupid like drop out, but she really wants to because of this weird, internal jealousy of someone she doesn’t know and the stupid non-relationship with Cady and she hates it. Her emotions are stupid and totally not valid, and Regina just wants them to stop. 

“Is this a ‘talk about it’ or a ‘cry it out’ situation?”

“Maybe it’s a kill myself sort of situation.”

“Oookay…” Addie trails off. “You need to schedule an appointment with Hall before our next game or I’m telling Joey to bench you.”

Regina rolls her eyes, Addie taking her dramatics a little too seriously.

“I’m not gonna off myself, chill.”

“Georgie, I can’t tell anymore because you’re out here doing stupid shit like taking shots when I know you should be in class. There’s obviously something bothering you and you’re not going to play if you’ve got something else on your mind.”

“I’m really quite good at compartmentalizing,” Regina grumbles as she pulls herself out of Addie's embrace to collect the balls.

“Regina. Go take a shower and get ready for your 10:20. I’ll clean up here.”

“I’m not going to class.”

“Like hell you are. I will walk you to that class if I have to; you can’t keep skipping class.”

“Fucking whatever.”

Regina storms off to the locker room, but instead of taking a shower, she walks all the way back to Caution Tape, intent on skipping her last two lectures. She doesn’t deserve to be all out of sorts about Quark, but that’s not going to stop her. The cherry on top of it all is that the Cady thing is such a non-thing and it’s still screwing with Regina’s head in a way that nothing ever has before. 

Addie doesn’t follow through with her threat and Regina takes her frustration out on Portland, earning herself a yellow before Joey subs her out for committing one too many reckless fouls. She gets a brace before being subbed off, mentally preparing for the talking to that she’s going to get from Maya, Addie, and Joey. The only thing that gets her through the lecture from her captains and coach is that Quark is hosting tonight. Regina is only half-heartedly listening to Addie restating all of the things she lectured about the day before. It doesn’t even matter: SBU got the win and Regina was a little more aggressive than usual but so what? It’s not like her weird mood was messing with the team dynamic. 

==

“Alpha Rats, I have homework to grade, which is the easiest part of my life, so I’m going to sit here and talk about my least favourite artist: Taylor Swift. You see, my Alpha Rats, she is one of the biggest individual polluters in the world. No, she’s not worse for the environment than say BP or Shell, but she has a platform to do something for the environment and all she does is contribute to its ruin. I understand that her job actually is to tour and perform her music and there’s nothing much that she can do about it because travelling to each location is important, but there’s better ways to do it. And as far as public knowledge goes, she’s not even buying carbon offsets, which is the bare minimum someone of her wealth and status could do to help the environment. It’s not even hard to buy–oh, I’m getting a call.

“Hi there, I assume you’re calling to defend Taylor Swift?”

“No, I’m actually asking how do you know this? If you’re not a fan of her, why do you know this about her?”

“It’s public knowledge. There’s a site, whether it’s trustworthy or not is a different question actually, that reports celebrities and use of private transportation such as planes. I took a look once.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“Well, because my parents are wildlife biologists. My dad travels and studies wildlife and my mom teaches at Northwestern. If you don’t know, I grew up abroad–wherever my parents were studying at the time. I care about the environment, mostly because I grew up appreciating it. Our earth is going to die and people don’t care because they like the music a little too much. Celebrity culture is stupid and the cult following of certain celebs means that people care more about the person than the environment, which is a shame.”

Arguing about the environment is one of Cady’s favourite things to do. It’s somewhat of a fallacy in her anonymous schtick when it’s sort of a defining trait. As is the whole growing up in Kenya thing, but she’s not telling her audience the specifics of that story. She’s not going to become an environmental activist because she knows that won’t do anything, but she certainly will dedicate herself to educating herself, getting her parents to donate to environmental non-profits, and doing what she can to help the environment. 

She answers a good number of calls concerning Taylor Swift, mostly from her fans. Cady eventually just starts shitting on her music for her own enjoyment, holding back giggles as she says that Taylor has no variety in her music and every song sounds the same. It’s not even that she dislikes Taylor Swift; pop music just isn’t really her taste. Bored of trolling Swifties, Cady brings up the topic of the Instagram page.

“I think I’ve worn out the Taylor Swift discussion, so I want to talk about who I truly am,” she pauses dramatically, muting the mic for a second longer than necessary. “I don’t know why you all are so concerned with who I am. I’m certainly not MC Mo, so why do you all care? And while I’m speaking about this, which one of you Alpha Rats created the Instagram? It came up on my recommended yesterday, and I am truly befuddled about this. Why is this such a big deal? What do you gain from learning who I am? I just go here, I’m not that cool. Oh hey, I’m getting a call. Hello there.”

“Hi Quark, we want to know who you are because you chose to be anonymous, so you’ve fallen into a trap of your own making. You don’t want us to know who you are, so we’re going to try even harder to find out who you are.”

“That doesn’t even make sense; this isn’t the Streisand effect. I didn’t explicitly tell the audience that I refuse to let you all know who I am, I just haven’t said anything.”

“But it actually sort of is. You don’t want attention on your real identity so we’re all looking for your real identity.”

“You know, the digging is why I’m even more protective of my identity.”

Cady hangs up on the listener, typing out another comment on the homework she’s grading. Some of these Physics 31 students really don’t understand the kinematic equations. The phone rings again, fairly quickly, and Cady picks up but keeps the mic muted and lets the song finish up.

“Hiya.”

“Hi Quark!” Damian sing-songs across the line.

“You’re not on air, D. Why are you calling me?”

“I’m just an avid fan of the show. I love how you introduce me to new music.”

“Go back to editing videos,” she says before hanging up on her best friend. Damian calls again, asking if he can interview her for a video. Cady hangs up on him before he’s finished asking the question. He calls again, and again, and again, until Cady just ends her shift by telling the audience “It seems I have one particularly annoyingly persistent viewer who won’t stop calling, so I’m simply going to end it here, my Alpha Rats. If you’re not a regular viewer, I don’t mess around with annoying little weirdos on air, especially not my friends. Have a good night, my Alpha Rat Pack, and sleep well. Signing off, I’ve been Quark and I always will be.”

Damian’s sitting in the great room when Cady arrives home, the lights on and his makeup done, doing a pop culture current events report. As per usual when it comes to interrupting Damian’s recording, he pauses to ask Cady her opinion on something relating to Aubrey Plaza flirting with someone during an interview. 

“I do not know and do not wish to be flirted with by Aubrey, Damian. You know that I don’t care about this.”

“And that, friends, is Cady in a nutshell. If I knew anything about physics or the current state of affairs in aerospace, then I could actually get her to talk to the camera.”

Cady just rolls her eyes and heads to the stairs. Janis is in the studio and she waves at Cady as she climbs the stairs. The whole house is alive, with AJ in the shower and Gabby’s music playing from behind a closed bathroom door, no doubt working on homework. Since everyone is awake, Cady queues some Sophie Holohan and shoves her hair into a bun for a quick shower, preparing a little lecture for Damian for the morning. She rotates under the spray like a rotisserie chicken for longer than strictly necessary, enjoying the way she’s overheating. It’s late September in California and it’s really quite warm still, but Cady loves a good hot shower, regardless of the temperature (she’s enjoying the luxury of warm water). 

Cady falls asleep with her string lights on and Janis still working downstairs. She stirs slightly when Janis enters the room, the floorboards creaking under foot, but falls asleep easily after. Cady wakes with the sun, as always, and watches the sky paint itself a lovely array of shades of pink while Janis snores lightly from her bed. She and AJ are the only two who have an 8 AM lecture, so she makes the two of them toast and starts the Keurig so AJ can have her morning coffee. California has the wonderful ability of being below 60 degrees in the morning and over 80 by 10 AM, so she puts on a green tee that reads ‘spinach’ in all caps, jorts, and an orange and white flannel. It’s so quintessentially Cady Heron that she stops and takes a picture to send to her mom on the way out of the house. 

Quantum I goes by quickly, and she’s biking over to her art history lecture later than usual because she stayed after class for a bit to talk to Dr. Stewart about a part of the lecture she didn’t understand. Her normal seat is filled by the time she gets to the class, so she sits in an open seat in the back of the class. She’s stuffing her flannel into her stegosaurus print backpack when someone sits down next to her, a familiar presence surrounding Cady. She doesn’t turn to face Regina, just pulling her laptop to take notes. She can feel Regina’s eyes on her, which is only a little wild because Regina’s the one who made their whole friendship weird and ruined it. She doesn’t know what’s going on with Regina, other than the fact that she apparently played really aggressively last night. 

Regina pokes her with her Apple pencil halfway through the lecture, but Cady focuses on Professor Suzuki talking about traditional Japanese painting techniques, jotting down vocab words for their next report. She pokes Cady again in the arm not even ten minutes later, this time with the tip of the pencil and a little bit harder than the first time. The third is even more insistent, this time poking Cady twice in a row. She finally pays her dues to Regina as she packs up her backpack, a tight but friendly enough smile on her face.

“Hi, Regina.” Cady sticks to ‘pleasant enough,’ which should be enough after the French fiasco at the end of winter quarter last year. 

Regina truly looks like she didn’t think she’d get this far because she just says “Hi, Cady.”

A heavy, awkward silence hangs in the air between them, before Regina speaks again.

“Study with me this week.”

“It’s Friday, Regina.”

“Next week, then.”

“Why not?” Cady asks herself, sighing. She really has no idea why she’s agreeing to spend time with Regina, who had been an outright bitch to her the last time they spoke. 

“See you Tuesday in our normal room.” Regina swirls out of the room with all the drama she always does.

We don’t have a normal room, Cady thinks to herself, stepping out of the classroom.

==

Regina’s not sure what possessed her to get Cady’s attention, but she was persistent in her effort, even if Cady looked like the last thing she wanted to do was study with Regina. She dwells on this through her next lecture, but she shows up this time so she’s doing better than last week. It’s most definitely due to Cady’s visible reluctance, and she’s definitely bothered by it. Somehow, Regina takes notes, but she’s not sure what she’s being taught. She’s not sure why Cady was in the back of the class anyway, because Cady Heron always has been and always will be a sweat, and sitting in the front of the class and answering questions is something that she excels at. Perhaps, the delusional portion of Regina’s voice says, Cady knew that Regina was in the class and she sat next to her on purpose, trying to get Regina to make the first move to reconcile their friendship. The delusional part of Regina’s mind also says that Cady is playing hard to get, which doesn’t make sense because there’s no way that Cady is interested in dating her. According to the delusional part of her brain because that’s the only part of her brain that seems to work today, there’s a not less than zero percent chance that Cady is some form of queer, based on her weird ass dress sense (no straight person would tuck a t-shirt that says ‘spinach’ into a pair of jorts and pair it with green high top converse, and it’s certainly not something that straight passing Regina George would even think about wearing). 

After muddling through her math and French classes, Regina attends the appointment that Joey set up with Dr. Hall. She’s truthful enough about her emotions, but not the source. No one, not even her closest friends, need to know that she’s getting all weird about someone she doesn’t even know. 

At training, she’s back on her game. There’s no undue aggression and none of her shots hit the frame, plus her touch is far better than it’s been all season, which is weird because that’s purely a technical thing and not fueled by her stupid emotions, unlike her shots, apparently. Regina, Colby, and Jasper stick around after training is over to play a game of “How’s your touch?” that Regina does her best to show off, but she fails most of the time. Eventually, she concedes and finishes the day out with a simple elevator trap that brings the ball out of the air with the grace of a ballet dancer. 

They have a game against Oregon State at home on Sunday, which means that Regina is grinding away at her homework on Saturday, between the pre-game training in the afternoon and team dinner in the evening. So, she’s planning to sleep early tonight (as long as she’s finished her math problem set), get breakfast in the morning, and go to McCracken to do homework for both of her French classes and the art history course from hell. 

The math homework is surprisingly easy and she’s in bed before 10 PM, which Maia makes fun of her for, but the hypocrite is also in bed, preparing to watch some bad reality TV with her long distance boyfriend. It doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep, though it’s sometimes disturbed by Maia arguing with her boyfriend about idiots on whatever show she’s watching. Regina contemplates throwing one of her pillows at Maia, but ultimately decides against it because she’s too comfortable to move. 

As planned, Regina wakes up early, she walks over to kapej to buy herself an iced coffee and a muffin before trekking all the way across campus to McCracken, the business school. Most people work in either the library or VEGM, but McCracken is the secret ideal study spot. Regina takes over the study room she spent about half of her free time in, dubbing an episode of Phineas and Ferb for an assignment. It’s a stupid assignment, but it’s an easy one–growing up speaking French with her father probably helped. 

Regina’s finishing up recording the dub when Cady Heron of all people shows up. Regina’s feet are propped up on the table, the episode plays on the TV, and she’s speaking into her phone when Cady appears through the glass wall, and Regina pretends like she’s too cool to notice that she’s being watched. It’s certainly not Tuesday yet, so Regina really plays into that ‘too cool for school’ vibe she perfected in high school. 

Maybe she spent too long on her translation assignment, but Regina doesn’t realise that she’s late for practice until Joey calls her. 

“George. Get your ass to the pitch. Maia says that you’re doing homework and I’m inclined to believe her, but don’t let me down.”

The epitome of grace, Regina George, stuffs her laptop and iPad into her backpack and runs out of the building. Unfortunately, this was the one day Regina chose to walk to enjoy the weather, but now she’s regretting the choice as she runs across campus, her backpack bouncing against her back. Not even pretending to be cool (which is very hard to do when her teammates have seen her in probably the least cool moments of her life), Regina drops her backpack into her locker and hastily changes into the spare practice attire she leaves in her locker. By the time she’s on the pitch, the team has gone through the normal warm up and are laughing at her. Good-naturedly, Regina grins and flips off her teammates as she begins her warm up.

“Sorry, Joey, I got caught up doing my French homework and lost track of time, it won’t happen again, I swear.”

“Please don’t.”

Spirits are high throughout practice, full of ribbing when Regina finishes her warm up and joins the team for a technical drill. During a water break, Elise reaches up and ruffles her hair, asking when Regina became such a nerd. Marley, ever the influencer, rounds the girls up to make a TikTok after training, but Regina escapes to the locker room before she can get roped into Marley’s shenanigans. Briefly, she considers going back to McCracken to finish her report on Abe-no-Nakamoro Writing Nostalgic Poem While Moon-viewing, but her desire to go home and lay around for a bit trumps the thought that she should do her homework. She takes a quick shower and then lays face down on the living room floor while some of her teammates return to the house. Addie pokes her in the side with her toe when she walks in.

Team dinner is a tradition where the whole soccer team gets together at Caution Tape to eat a good meal and bond before a game, either home or away. The sophomores are cooking today, and Regina’s cooking the veg. She choses a recipe that Shane taught her in high school when they were both trying to get scouted by colleges (Regina committed to South Bay while Shane started working at Maison George in construction and renovation instead of going to college). Even with a nutritionist, it isn’t easy to eat well on a SBU meal plan, and even though Regina has to cook for herself now that she lives off campus, team dinner is usually the night that she eats best. 

Caution Tape is located sort of near frat row, but it’s so far from a frat house. It’s an old Victorian house–five bed, two bath–three blocks off campus and about half a block away from frat row. Regina and Maia share the room in the back left corner and everyone says that their room looks like a Pinterest post. Regina sleeps closer to the window, her corner of the room covered in band posters, pictures from her vacations with Gretchen and Karen and random snaps from senior year with Aaron and Shane, and prints of some famous art works. The two of them are anti-big light and always have string lights or their desk lamps on instead of the fluorescent ceiling fan light, and even have a little disco ball hanging from the fan. Their room is all clean lines and light, neutral colours, with the occasional pop of colour thanks to their posters. The only real difference from her bedroom at home is the distinct lack of her dad’s shrine to her (he’s saved every medal and trophy she’s ever won, including the AYSO participation trophies). 

The house has been occupied by women’s soccer players for five years, through which it has seen at least 18 occupants and even more visitors. It’s an absurdly large house and Regina truly plans to live in it for the next four years, even though it means she occasionally has to help host parties. 

The dining room is crammed full of soccer players, stuffing their faces with a lasagne and a medley of roasted veg, each trying to talk over each other. Camille and Regina debate the state of European women’s football, all in French because Cami is about as French as she could be (as in grew up playing for PSG and was almost traded to Paris FC before deciding to play college soccer). The conversational French is good practice, even though Regina is also fluent in French (as in grew up speaking French at home with her dad, who is fluent in French). Cami is a senior and is planning to go back to Europe to play professionally, instead of playing in the NWSL, and Regina has vague plans to visit her to be taken around Paris by a true local, especially because her dad grew up in Brittanny and she’s only visited the George family estate outside Brest. When Cami asks where she’s been, Regina knows that her non-French speaking teammates will only understand that her family is from a city in France known as Brest (pronounced breast, yes), and she’s inevitably going to be made fun of, but they can’t really make the gay joke because they don’t know she is at least some form of queer (she has to be, or else the weird maybe crush she has on Cady is not actually a crush). Somehow, she’s actually the token queer on the team–not that they know–on the most straight-presenting women’s sports team on campus. 

After dinner and the freshmen have done the dishes, they pile into the sitting room to talk about individual and team goals for the game, plus go over game footage–at least until Regina falls asleep with Jessie on her lap in the corner of the sectional. Somehow, it’s been an exhausting day and she really hasn’t done anything. Regina’s shaken awake by Addie, the sitting room empty except for the two of them and a blanket tossed over her. 

“C’mon, kiddo. It’s bedtime.”

“I was fuckin’ asleep,” Regina grumbles, but tosses the afghan off herself and very walks upstairs with her captain. 

She just tosses herself onto her bed and falls back to sleep almost immediately. She hears Addie laugh at her from face down on her bed, still not in her pyjamas. 

==

There’s a text waiting for Cady in the morning from Regina, asking her to go to the soccer game in the afternoon. It’s too early in the morning for dealing with Regina, so she tries to not think about it, but the text stays in her mind as she gets ready for the day. It haunts her as she talks to her parents–her dad finally has cell service at the foot of the Andes–to a point where he asks why she’s so distracted. 

“Well, there’s this girl–“

“As in girl or girl?”

“I don’t even know. She kind of friend broke up with me midway through last year–I think I told you at the time–and we share a class now and she invited me to her soccer game today, even though we haven’t really talked since the day she sorta maybe broke up with me.”

“Well, do you want to be friends with her?”

“Again, I don’t know. I think she was flirting with me in French and it might be a little bit my fault because I didn’t tell her I speak French, but it’s not like it came up in conversation. And at the time I wasn’t interested like that, but I can’t tell if she took it the wrong way and thinks I turned her down or for homophobic reasons.”

“Are you going to patch things up? It sounds like this girl is back in your life now, so you ought to decide if you’ll hear her out and if whatever reasons she gives are enough for you to forgive her.”

“I think so. But for now, she’s just a friend.”

“Do let me know if this changes, Cads. I need to know if I need to fly to California to give her the shovel talk.”

“Dad!”

“Elijah, stop harassing your daughter,” her mom finally speaks up, badly disguising laughter. 

Other than discussing her non-existent love life, talking to her parents is nice. She’s only teased a little and her dad is beaming with pride when he hears about the research opportunity she has with SLAC, should she apply (obviously she will, but she doesn’t tell either of them that she’s looking for an internship at Fermilab). She’d forget about the invite to the soccer game if she could, and even though she has work to do, Cady fills her water bottle and puts a ball cap on to go to the Godforsaken soccer game. 

Cady doesn’t even know soccer, so she really only is going for a girl, which is only slightly pathetic and Janis tells her so. Now, Cady isn’t completely ignorant about soccer–she spent most of her life in Kenya and often kicked the ball around with some of the kids her age in the village–but she doesn’t understand the rules, which only kind of annoys her. She ends up sitting in the home stands reading The Defector instead of watching the soccer game, but she looks up from time to time to watch Regina. She doesn’t mean to ogle, but Regina George is unfairly pretty, even when she’s playing soccer. There’s not a hair out of place, her ponytail pristine after being fouled and shoved around, her prewrap headband intact after multiple headers. Cady feels like she should be jealous of Regina’s perfect hair, but there has got to be some sort of magic that keeps her hair in perfect condition. 

Aside from her hair, everything about Regina on the field screams “I work incredibly hard to be here.” There’s grass stains on her uniform and a glistening sheen of sweat that, weirdly, Cady can see from her corner of the stands. Everything about her demeanour screams “I love what I do,” especially the giant grin on her face after she scores. It’s a different smile than when she got that B on her stats exam, and Cady wants to see it more, even if that means attending soccer games when she harbors no interest in the sport. I really am pathetic, Cady thinks as she ambles down from the stands, hesitantly standing at the fence to catch Regina’s attention. 

“Cady! You made it! Did you enjoy the game?” Regina’s behaviour is giving Cady whiplash. 

“I don’t understand soccer,” Cady admits with a shrug, accidentally bringing attention to her novel. Regina eyes it for a moment before looking at Cady again. The intensity of her eyes makes Cady want to cower, but she holds her ground and waits for Regina to say something; she asked Cady to be there, after all. 

“Well, I’m glad you came. Get dinner with me tonight.”

“I have plans with–”

“Cancel them. I’ll pay, you choose a restaurant.”

“I’m going out with my roommates tonight.”

“Boo, you whore. I’ll see you on Tuesday,” Regina dismisses her, turning on her heel and walking away. Her behaviour has never made less sense. 

==

Damian got his first paycheck from YouTube on Friday, so he treats the house to the In-n-Out drive thru (the paycheck was not for very much, but Blues Clues is still celebrating) on Sunday night. The five of them eat animal fries in Damian’s car (Cady sits in the middle seat) and it’s the greatest time of Cady's life; she doesn’t even feel bad about declining Regina because while she totally could have skipped on this, this is infinitely more fun than a weird dinner with Regina George. 

The Blues Clues five pile into the great room after eating the best burgers on the West Coast to watch How to Train Your Dragon, instead of the assignments that the four students should be doing. Cady stays in her recliner and works on some playlists for her next couple shifts while Damian preps the kitchen to film a cooking challenge with Janis and AJ. She’s adding a couple Wiley Beckett songs to her ‘Autumn Soundtrack’ playlist when Damian starts his intro, stops his intro, and starts his intro again.

“Hi to the girlies and the gays! I’m Damian and today, two of my roommates are tackling cooking, except I can’t hear, Janis can’t speak–thank God, she’s finally shutting up–”

“I resent that, asshole,” Janis interrupts.

“And AJ can’t see. We’ll see how this turns out.”

Damian asks Cady for help taping Janis’s mouth shut and secure a blindfold over AJ’s eyes, and then asks her to play some music in his headphones on her way out to the back porch, where she’s planning on attempting to stargaze and grade, though the light pollution won’t do her any favours. She puts her own earbuds in, allowing Joe P’s lyrics to drown out Damian yelling at Janis to “just mix it, fool!”

Gabby finds her in the wood lounge chair next to the fire pit, also searching for refuge from the chaos in the kitchen. Cady’s never been particularly close with Gabby, but there’s a special sort of bond that comes with getting out of Damian’s videos and avoiding the imminent chaos. Cady’s working on a playlist called ‘Pedro Páramo,’ full of weird and slightly off putting vibes, the warm, late October evening almost lulling her to sleep. It’s the weekend before week three and she doesn’t have any pressing deadlines, so she allows herself to float in the pleasant half-asleep state. A particularly loud clatter from the kitchen startles her into awareness–no doubt the Three Stooges dropping something like a pot onto the tiles–and she realises that she should be romanticising life, per Janis’s goal for the school year, instead of falling asleep outside. When she tells Gabby that she’s going for a bike ride, Gabby just tells her to double check that she has her pepper spray. 

Cady knows the neighbourhood well enough that she sets out, turning left out of the driveway, and just goes where she wants to. It’s not late enough into the month for Halloween decorations to pop up, so Cady just goes for a ride. The lights shining from windows leaves a weird sort of melancholy in Cady’s chest, the knowledge that other people have lives completely separate from hers paints a sort of liminal ‘do I really belong here?’ emotion that she can’t place in her mind. It’s great playlist inspiration, and she makes a mental note of looking for songs with the same sort of vibe. Of course, her very important work of romanticising life is interrupted by Regina George, because everything good is ruined by her.

“Hey, Cady,” Regina crows, stretching the vowels out, when Cady picks up, clearly at least a little tipsy.

“Hello, Regina.”

“I’m drinkin’ ‘cause we won the game an’ I got player of the match, so the girls’re makin’ me do a dare, ‘nd it was to call my most recent contact, which just so happened to be you, somehow. I dunno how ‘cause I definitely called Shane after the game but I texted you before the game.”

“Yeah, that’s surely a mystery.”

“I dunno why I have to do the dare because I was the best player, they should be celebrating me, not makin’ me do some stupid shit like this.” 

“This is them celebrating you, Regina.”

“You’re not makin’ sense.”

“And you’re a little too drunk for me.”

“Nuh-uh. I’m a delight!”

“Sure,” Cady says, allowing the disbelief bleed into her voice, still pedaling down the street, her button up fluttering in the wind.

“It’s true, baby, it’s true. Why are you doubting me?”

“Parce que je peux, ma chérie. Tu as merdé et j’ai plein de raisons de douter de toi” Cady switches to French to give her a little bit of a memory jog that surely is barely evading the head on collision with Regina’s face, a la Air Cañada Flight 759. 

“Je suis désolée, mais je sais pas comment j’ai merdé!”

“We’ll talk on Tuesday, Reggie,” Cady says softly, unable to contain her affection of the exasperation in Regina’s voice, reminiscent of Cady’s first explanation of standard deviation and the bell curve. 

“Fine,” Regina says, a little bit more than petulant. “I’ll see you Tuesday.” She then hangs up kind of aggressively, missing the ‘end call’ button at least twice, going by the loud taps that can be heard on Cady’s end. 

Her bizarre day just got even more bizarre, and Cady laughs the entire way home. When she gets home, her first instinct is to tell Janis, mostly because she needs to tell someone else about the absurdity that is Regina George. The trio are cleaning up the kitchen to film the taste testing portion, but Cady just tells Damian to turn on his camera and listen to her story. She recounts the last couple days concerning Regina–being well aware to not say her name outright because who knows who watches Damian’s videos but all of them (Gabby entered the kitchen to hear this and try the probably bad brownies) know exactly who Cady’s talking about–and then the conversation she just had while Damian, Janis, and AJ clean up, though their progress is halted when she starts telling them about the drunk phone call. Damian shrieks, Janis laughs, AJ’s jaw drops, and Gabby muffles her laughter into the back of her hand when she finishes her story. 

“I’m going crazy, right? There’s no way this girl is for real right now.”

“Bitch she’s the apex predator; she can get away whatever the hell she wants, and she wants you!”

== 

“Good evening, my Alpha Rats, and welcome or welcome back to midterm season. I was assigned an essay today, but I have my first midterm on Thursday, so it appears I’ll be ensuring that I know how to code. And not to be predictable, we’re listening to the Oppenheimer soundtrack. Lock in and build some atomic bombs, Alpha Rats.”

Regina really shouldn’t be awake because she’s in Washington for a game against Gonzaga tomorrow and she really should be well rested, especially after a travel day, but instead she’s sitting in the dark, Quinn fast asleep in the bed across the room, and typing her paper on French business culture. She’d forgotten that she has an away game and had to cancel on Cady at the last minute, memories of her call on Sunday lingering in her mind as she sent the message, flushing her face a bright pink. 

The Regina George of South Bay can’t really be seen this flustered over a girl. The Regina George sitting in a hotel in Seattle is allowed to be embarrassed because of how she acted around the only girl she’s ever had a crush on. The Regina George of Echo Park still doesn’t completely understand her feelings about girls and lashes out, angry at whoever it is that makes her feel this way. Regina exists in a horrible cycle of different versions of herself, living in the past, the present, and the stolen moments where she doesn’t have to think too hard about who she truly is. She loves her father unconditionally, but he was the one who taught her about appearances; about how appearances make or break reputations. Maybe she took that lesson a little too seriously because there’s probably four people in the world who truly know Regina George: her father, Shane, Aaron, and Kylie. And the problem is that she wouldn’t have it any other way, even though she only takes time for herself under the cover of darkness, acutely aware of the roommate a couple feet away, comforted by the voice of a stranger on the internet (kind of). Moments where she doesn’t have to school her features into a glare or dismissive stare are precious. Sometimes Regina wants to be free from the burden of her future, but she knows her role and how she’ll have to sacrifice happiness for who she’s expected to be. 

Gonzaga is an unexpectedly tough battle, the just barely sees SBU squeak by, the rain compounding on Regina’s mounting frustration through the game. The Bulldogs are physical and aren’t afraid of throwing Regina around–literally–which isn’t endearing this team to her at all. She’s just about ready to start fighting back when Joey subs her off, most definitely knowing that Regina isn’t afraid to throw punches, even if it means getting carded. 

Post game, after plenty of shit talking, the team goes out for dinner to debrief and begin preparations for UDub on Saturday. Briefly, Regina wonders if Cady watched her game. It’s a long shot, seeing as Regina didn’t tell her about the game, but the schedule is readily available on the SBU Women’s Soccer Instagram. Between bites of her veggie burger, Regina imagines Cady, under the cover of darkness–though it was hardly dark at the lovely hour of 7 PM–watching soccer on her laptop while her roommate slept soundly in the bed across the room, much too similar to how Regina listens to Quark. 

Thursday is spent watching the lectures she missed on Wednesday and working on assignments between lift in the morning and a midafternoon training. Of course, Regina and her horrible sleep schedule are awake for the normal Quark show.

“Alpha Rats, if you ever need help coding MatLab, call me at (408) 577-LSBU because I think I aced that exam, and by God do I hate coding. By the way, to the new Alpha Rats, I may be attending this Jesuit institute but I will be proudly blasphemous if the joke lands better. And with that, I bring you Myrrh.”

The song that starts playing begins with “I need you to kill me,” and it leaves Regina miffed as to what is happening. Obviously, Regina understands the joke and the significance of myrrh; she didn’t attend church for 18 years to not understand the reference. She’s only somewhat dedicated to doing her assignment, and her mind wanders back to Quark: are they the kind of person who creates titles for their playlists, preserving the right to play whatever they’re in the mood for, or do they title it with a date, planning out their broadcast weeks ahead of time? Are they the kind of person to add songs to their playlists, willy-nilly as they listen to music, or do they sit down and listen–really listen –to the songs they chose for each playlist? Each time they speak, is their speech thought out and rehearsed throughout the day, or do they just speak their mind into the mic, building segues and jokes on the fly? Were they flying by the seat of their pants? Was this more than just a hobby? Would Quark ever reveal themself to the desperate masses that are their Alpha Rats?

Regina listens to an hour of morbid music, just to hear Quark sign off, like the girl with a pathetic crush she is (can she call it a crush when Quark is a nameless, faceless stranger?). She’s yawning through Quark’s final words to the audience.

“Well, it appears my hour is up, my Alpha Rats. It’s been a pleasure. Don’t read too hard into the playlist or else I might have to do something about it. I’m Quark and I always will be.”

It’s underwhelming at best, and it plants seeds of doubt as to why Regina is awake after midnight when she knows she has an early practice tomorrow. Then again, Regina remembers that she’s only slightly pathetic, puts her laptop on the desk, and gets comfortable in bed. As she’s falling asleep, Regina wishes that she had Quark’s Spotify because there was one song on that ‘Myrrh’ playlist that she found to be adequate enough to put on her playlist, but she doesn’t know the song. 

Friday’s pregame routine and traditions are followed to a tee, even everyone’s ignorance of Regina’s obvious lack of sleep. Addie, as always, concerns herself with glancing warily at Regina, as if looking hard enough will make Regina sleep more. Between her recorded lectures, assignments, and team bonding, Regina manages to sneak a nap into her packed schedule, regardless of the fact that it was during the lecture she was watching and in front of all her teammates as they had their dedicated study time in the hotel conference room. She really is at fault for the prank that Paige pulls, but she smears shaving cream all over her face–where her team got the shaving cream she’s not sure. Regina, in all her maturity, doesn’t even think about retaliation, just wipes her face on her shirt (impropriety be damned, she’s not going to go back to work as this much of a mess) and rewinds her lecture. Addie takes pity on her and brings her a damp cloth to clean off her face. 

Without fail, Regina’s fail is the topic of discussion during team dinner, but she takes it in stride and is mysterious enough for the girls to think that she has a secret lover that she was up late texting. It gets her plenty of teasing, but it’s preferable to the alternative (the alternative being them continuing to pester her about why she’s up late because there’s no way that she’s going to tell them that she stays awake to listen to a radio show). Without being the calculated and cunning Regina George she could be, the girls assume that she’s either up late texting Aaron or Shane (or, if she wants a scandal, both of her boys). For whatever reason, the girls decide she’s dating Aaron, and it wouldn’t be the first time she pretended to date him. 

Saturday’s game against UDub is only kind of a mess. Midstride, applying the high press that SBU is kind of known for, Regina appreciates the fact that she didn’t tell Cady about the game because she doesn’t want Cady to see her team falling apart (they’re down 2-0 in the first half and it’s the worst showing they’ve had since the pregame match against Stanford where Maya had lost the ball to the Cardinal high press). 

The flight home is also a mess (for Regina personally) because she spends the two hour flight back to San Jose sulking, like the very mature young woman she is. She doesn’t finish her art history homework and turns in her math homework two days late and it’s only week three. She shouldn’t be falling apart already.

“This week, my Alpha Rats, has started in absolute shambles. I had a midterm yesterday morning that did not go well, so I’m praying for a good curve. I have a German paper due on Friday, and I’m not sure why I, in all of my wisdom, went ‘yeah, I’ll learn another language,’ as if I don’t speak Swahili, French, and Afrikaans. And to make all of it worse, I have an in-class essay for my RTC on Thursday, so you’ll all get to hear me bitch about that. And because I’m suffering, I’m going to play the shittiest music you’ve ever heard–unless you’re a fan of Midwest Emo. Here’s ‘midnight doomer cruise’ by Any Two Words.”

Evidently, Quark is just about as much of a mess as Regina, and that thought isn’t comforting. If she’s assumed correctly and Quark is older than herself (she made the assumption on the basis that no freshman DJ would be as calm behind the mic as Quark has always been), it truly is a bad sign for Regina’s college career. Maybe she should get her life together and stop staying up just to listen to Quark. 

==

Regina hasn’t talked to Cady since the day that she received that weird phone call from her, and Cady isn’t bothered, despite what her roommates claim. She returned to her seat at the front of the class for art history so Regina hasn’t pestered her mid-lecture, she hasn’t reached out to reschedule their study date (if it could be called that). And Cady is completely unperturbed by this development because the Regina George who dropped her ass the moment that anything weird happened would totally desert her again after a tipsy phone call. 

No, Cady isn’t expressing her disappointment in Regina through her music choices, Damian. She chose to play Modern Baseball because she’s feeling a little depressed after her absolute disaster of a Quantum I midterm. 

Janis, who is taking a drawing class, is sitting on the couch in the booth, a sketchpad open in her lap, sketching Cady in the dim lamp light as she researches recipes to try instead of doing any of her homework. Cady finds that she severely dislikes anyone being in the booth with her. She tries to just let Everybody’s Worried About Owen’s voice wash over her, though his music is closer to folk punk rather than Midwest Emo. Janis, Cady knows, doesn’t listen to LSBU. Damian, on the other hand, is quite the devoted Quark fan, as if he weren’t already the most annoying roommate she has. AJ and Gabby don’t listen to her shows either, though both of them occasionally listen to LSBU shows. 

The weight of Janis’s gaze isn’t nearly as heavy as Regina’s. It doesn’t burn into her skin like Regina’s, but it’s the same sort of criticality that weighs heavily on her mind as she fiddles with the mic, getting ready to wrap up her show, but Janis indicates that she’s not done yet. 

Cady takes her cue and says “I am no longer fighting for my life and have reconciled with my failing grade, so I have decided to change the mood. Since I have spent the last hour grieving for my GPA, we’re going to get a little upbeat, but I don’t actually have anything prepared, so I’m actually going to spend the next ten minutes queuing songs instead of doing my homework. I fear getting pummelled into the ground by quantum physics makes DJs unprepared.”

Every time she reveals something about herself, Cady worries that people will connect the dots on who she is. There’s only so many students at South Bay who grew up abroad but graduated from an American high school and are studying quantum physics. Cady should probably be more careful, especially with Damian running that Instagram–which he still won’t confess to. She queues some what she calls white boy indie, so some david hugo, CODY JON, and Ori Rose, among others. 

A ball of paper hits the side of her head as she’s working on a MatLab script for her prelab. Looking around, this isn’t the first projectile Janis has hurled at her head, and she doesn’t even look sorry about it. She flips the sketchbook to Cady, who has to roll her chair across the small room to see the drawing of herself at the booth. Janis, who is usually quite confident about her art, starts rambling.

“I know that there’s no colour, so I couldn’t really capture the light and the scale is so small that shading just turns you into the void, so I haven’t. I’d prefer to finish this with watercolours, honestly, because I could capture the light, but I’d have to come back for my reference.”

“Janis,” Cady starts, but ends up laughing softly, ever impressed by her roommate. “I’m obsessed with you. Is this really how you see me?”

“You really are an artist in here, Cady.”

She knows that she’s blushing and that Janis is totally going to make fun of her both on the way home and the entire time that they’re getting ready for bed. DJing, in Cady’s mind, isn’t an art; she collects songs and plays them for an audience, she isn’t creating new music for people to listen to. The only art in this is the way Cady orders the songs, and half the time it’s just the order she listens to and finds the songs. If Janis is to call anything she does art, it should be her woodworking. Cady likes attempting to make furniture and carving in her incredibly limited free time, and those are far closer to art than anything Cady does as Quark. Art, Cady knows, is subjective, but making playlists isn’t an art. It’s essentially the same as collecting trinkets; the only difference is that she gets to show off her collection. 

Of course, Blues Clues is lively as ever, so Janis starts the debate of whether or not DJing is an art with Damian, who is editing a video on his laptop in the kitchen, and AJ, who is painting what looks like a new tag but Cady isn’t sure because she doesn’t ask about her roommate’s illegal activities. Cady rolls her eyes and makes her way upstairs, eager to take a shower and go to sleep. 

Cady falls asleep to Spotify’s “liminal” playlist, even though she has about 200 playlists on her Spotify profile and one of them has a lot of these liminal-type songs. Janis is still awake (because there’s no way that she woke up before Cady), sitting up in bed and crocheting what appears to be a sweater. Cady, and her 8 AM quantum physics, and AJ, and her 8 AM writing, bike to campus together. Although they bike to and from campus together, Cady never sees her on campus; AJ spends most of her time in Jundt Art Centre while Cady is either in VEGM or Barney, though her main study spot when she truly has to get work done is McCracken Hall. True to form, after her three lectures, Cady heads to the LSBU office to get some work done, ignoring the impending group presentation in art history. Professor Suzuki gave the info about the final presentation in class, stating that it’s a group presentation–the students get to choose their own groups–doing an analysis of a work of their choice. She refuses to think about how she only knows one person in that class, and said person’s eyes bored into Cady’s back the entire time that Prof. Suzuki was explaining it. 

Cady buys herself lunch from Barney as she tries and fails at her quantum homework. Aside from the DJ in the booth, the only other person in the LSBU office is the General Manager, Gio, who thinks that Cady is fit to take over the station when he graduates next year. This is exactly what she didn’t want, but sophomore-Cady finds that it isn’t as foreboding as she thought being on the LSBU staff would be. While doing her quantum assignment, one of the DJs doesn’t show up. None of the standby DJs are in the booth or answering their phones, so Gio nominates Cady to go into the booth. She closes the curtain over the window to the Barney basement hallway.

“Friends and foes, I’ve accidentally stumbled into the booth. I’m Quark and I’m not supposed to be here, but no one else is here so this is now my show instead of–whose shift is this? Oh, it’s Shared Custody today, so Dillon is bunking off. For shame; you’re not my real dad, actually. I was going to play this tomorrow night, but I suppose that this is as good a time as any to present to you all, Repent.” 

She pulls up Repent, not knowing if anyone would catch the joke of the title, but it’s a long stretch and not her greatest work. “St. Cecilia’s” starts playing over her headphones, and she pulls up her assignment again. The only problem is that she kind of actually has to host, seeing as it’s a daytime show. She lets three songs play (“St. Cecilia’s,” “Saint Bernard,” and “Mary on a Cross,” by Animal Flag, Lincoln, and Ghost respectively) before unmuting her mic. 

“How do the daytime DJs do this? I much prefer my normal shift. Anyway, if you don’t know: I’m Quark, I normally host on Tuesday and Thursday from 1 to 2 AM. I play what I want and if you don’t like it, you can argue with me, though it’s never going to work in your favour. Can I call you all my Alpha Rats if this technically isn’t the Alpha Rat Pack? Well, Alpha Rats, this is 107.7 LSBU: the underground sound. Here’s ‘Common Cold’ by Super Whatevr.”

The song doesn’t exactly fit in with the theme of the playlist, but the vibe fits thematically. Cady really hopes that people have the capability of understanding the joke, but the decidedly not religious (and-slash-or anti religious, Cady hasn’t decided yet) connotation of the entire playlist may not suit the daytime listeners, as it would the blasphemous nighttime listeners. It only takes one more song (“God Must Hate Me” by Catie Turner) for someone to call in, asking about why her show is called the Alpha Rat Pack. 

“Why not? Dillon’s is called Shared Custody. There’s a show called Estranged Children, there’s Little Stinkers Radio, there’s Sunday Scaries. Why is anything called what it’s called? Should I play ‘This Song is Called it’s Called What it’s Called’?”

“But what made you choose ‘Alpha Rat Pack'?”

“I’d like to preserve my air of mystery, quite honestly. But if you look hard enough, maybe do some research if the puny Alpha Rat brain can handle it, you’ll find some sort of connection between the show and my name.”

“Are you insulting me right now?” Indignation bleeds into the caller’s voice.

“Only if you think I am.”

Cady hits play on the next song (“The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage” by Panic! At The Disco) and mutes herself before thanking the caller and hanging up. Daytime radio kind of sucks. She gives up trying to actually host, just playing her music, like normal, until she gets another call.

“What’s the joke of the segment today, Quark? I don’t get it.” 

This is her favourite part of her show. 

“Well, if you take a gander at the listening history and use that minuscule Alpha Rat brain of yours to remember that the name of today’s show is Repent, you’ll find a common thread through this playlist, mostly through the titles. It’s not my best work, honestly, but I was going to do more work on this before I broadcasted it. It will have to do, though, and I’l have to scrounge around for another playlist for tomorrow night. Let me know when you connect the dots. Until then, this is ‘Lent’ by Autoheart.”

When the song is over, the caller’s figured it out.

“The common thread is some sort of connection to religion, isn’t it?”

“Right you are, my good sir.”

“This isn’t even the first vaguely religious one. Are you trying to get in trouble with the school?”

“I, as a DJ, have a certain degree of freedom. As long as I’m not taking the mick out of a certain someone–which would constitute bullying–or spewing hate speech, I’m allowed to do whatever I want. And what I want to do is play songs that have vaguely religious sounding names. At least I’m not playing Myrrh again; I don’t think that would go over well with the daytime listeners.”

“What, you think they can’t handle it?”

“If you got out of class, turned on the radio, and heard grown men whining about wanting to die, would you be very happy?”

“You have a point.”

“And that, Alpha Rats, is not how to argue with me. And wow, look at that, it’s been an hour I’m handing you all over to your next host, uh, Not Mickey Mouse–who in the? I’m Quark and I always will be.”

Cady plays one last song (“GUILT (INTERLUDE)” by Waterparks) and hands the headphones over to whoever Not Mickey Mouse is (some freshman DJ that she hasn’t really met yet, mostly out of her reluctance to attend the LSBU socials, which will have to change if Gio is prepping her to be the next GM). She managed to do exactly half of a problem (she’s one sixth of the way done with the problem set) while she was on air, so she settles into the couch to keep working on her time and relativity problems. A rotation of DJs, some of whom Cady knows and some of whom Cady doesn’t know, come in and out of the office. She’s starting to drown in her homework and it’s only week four. 

== 

Regina is a stickler for tradition, routine, and consistency, which is why she listens to the “Lift” playlist that she and Shane made in high school when they started working out together, instead of the radio station. It’s why she always partners with Addie during the pregame lift, why she goes to bed at 9 PM and wakes up at 7 AM listening to Gretchen’s traditional Spanish folk music playlist, why she has a carefully constructed game day ritual that spans the entire day, regardless of whether or not it’s a home game. The specification of calling it a game day ritual is intentional and solely because it includes her dedication to her post game routine as well as her pregame superstitions (she could be a hockey goalie with her quirks). 

One: Regina doesn’t drink coffee on game days. She drinks a Celsius at least three hours before warm ups, usually after her breakfast of a slice of toast (multigrain bread with oil-based plant butter and Knott’s Berry Farm blackberry jam), a banana, and glass of water (it used to be orange juice until she ran out and didn’t have time to buy a new bottle but scored a first half hat trick and made the cleanest tackle she’s ever made, so it stayed water after that day). 

Two: the pregame walk. Typically a team event at away games, but Regina walks from Caution Tape to the VCAA and Salmon Stadium before home games. She listens to a Karen-made “relaxation” playlist that consists of bossa nova and walks the only slightly meandering path to campus and then the most direct route to the VCAA. 

Three: Aaron’s pregame playlist (made for himself when he was playing soccer in high school but Regina started using it after a double header where they listened to it together and both won). There’s no traditionally “hype” or “walkout” songs, mostly because Aaron isn’t a fan, but there’s certainly high energy music that does the job. It’s a mix of songs Aaron really likes and and songs that actually get him hyped, a lot of which is EDM. The only thing Regina allows to change is the order; the playlist always on shuffle. 

Four: her sort-of meditation that she does in the locker room after warm ups but before the line up announcement. A part of her club coach’s pregame routine, Regina closes her eyes and pictures herself taking her best shot, her best tackle, and what she wants to achieve in this game. She takes three deep breaths–in through her nose, out through her mouth–before opening her eyes, ready for the game.

Five: who and what she plays for. Before every game, Regina wraps her left wrist in white athletic tape and writes why she’s playing in purple sharpie. For the longest time, Regina wrote “REG,” standing for her initials, because it’s most important for her to play for herself, rather than anyone else. Recently, she’s been writing “you, me, and everything in between,” meaning she’s playing for herself, her family, and her team, because she’s evolved and grown, or something, and she’s not being a selfish prick anymore. 

Six: the walk out. During home games, the SBU Seals run out from their locker room to the bench before the starting line up announcement. Reigna always steps onto the pitch–not the grass, just the pitch–with her left foot. This includes the walkout and when she’s going to do the huddle right before she takes the field as part of the starting XI. She’s also careful to always step onto the pitch with her left foot when she’s being subbed on.

Seven: a series of three jumps to reactivate the muscles in her legs while she’s waiting for the whistle to blow. One with her knees to her chest, one with her thighs parallel to the ground, and one straight up with her legs straight. She shakes out her legs and fingers, limber and ready to play some goddamn soccer.

Eight: regardless of the halftime talk, Regina always asks herself what she’s done well and what she can do better. The question that’s even more important is how does she do better? What immediate changes can she make that improves her game? She re-ties her shoes before doing her three breaths again, preparing for the second half.

Nine: cool down. As one of her former private trainers said, she’s young enough that everything she does can improve her body, and any extra work she does can only help her. One of the most important things Steve instilled in her is her dedication to her body, especially her cool downs. Before she stretches out, Regina always does what he calls “full field builds,” in which she runs the length of the pitch, building up speed as she goes along the length of the pitch. After she’s done two, once down and once back, Regina always does a quite slow dynamic stretching routine and then a static stretching routine. She’s not a role model and she doesn’t try to be, so she’s not the type of player who signs things for the little girls in the stands. Instead, she very carefully stretches out while her teammates sign autographs and take pictures with kids. 

Ten: post game, Regina waits until all of her teammates have finished showering to start showering in the locker room. Her teammates think it’s because she’s either doing something she shouldn’t be or is homophobic, which isn’t completely out of the park for a Jesuit institute. Regina generally prefers to shower in the comforts of her own home, but when she can’t, she waits for her teammates to finish showering. It’s not a homophobia thing, or even a ‘I don’t want to be caught looking at my teammates’ bodies because they might be homophobic’ thing; Regina likes to take her time to wash the grime and the game off and reflect on the game. It’s much easier to think about her performance without the 11-plus other girls in the shower, not that her teammates really knew that. 

Eleven: eat dinner–usually some sort of pan seared salmon though the recipe changes from game to game (this also changes depending on if it’s an away game)–while reviewing the game footage. Unsurprisingly, Regina is her own biggest critic, and she physically takes notes when she’s reviewing game footage, which just about everyone she knows makes fun of her for. Progress on paper (well, in her digital notebook) is better evidence of her improvement over time than match results. 

Regina sticks to her routine every game, which is only a little annoying to her teammates, simply because of the time cost. She doesn’t care because her routines result in wins. The superstitions actually have little to no effect on the result, but they help soothe Regina and her racing thoughts regarding her worth as a soccer player, so she continues to do them and even accumulates more. 

==

“It’s so great to be back, Alpha Rats. If you didn’t know, I had to cover for freaking Dillon, who simply no-showed for his shift yesterday, and good lord I do not enjoy daytime radio. I simply don’t want to do homework right now, so I’m grading tonight, which is a brainless enough activity that I’m actually going to chat today. What I’m going to do is make a tier list of all the shows here at LSBU, but I don’t actually regularly listen to this cursed radio station, so I’m going on my limited knowledge of the DJs, their names, their show names, and general vibes. I take any and all listener input, unless you host the show; if you argue about your show and name, you’re immediately F tier because there’s not a chance in Hell your show is as great as you think it is. I'll start with the bot: gets stuck in a loop, playing the same ten songs over and over again. F tier.”

Regina’s not prepared to listen to Quark speak for a whole hour and she certainly isn’t about to focus on her homework when Quark is rambling. There’s something in Quark’s voice that is similar to something that Regina knows, but she can’t tell what or why. It’s starting to annoy her, so she takes a quick break to do the most cursory Instagram search for Quark, even though she knows that they take their anonymity seriously. She stumbles upon the Instagram account whoisquark, which documents the owner’s attempts to figure out who Quark truly is. While she holds a lot of respect for whoever Quark is, the latent desire to figure out who they are wins and Regina scrolls through the account. The most recent post is an image of the window that looks out into the Barney basement hallway with the curtain closed, the caption reading “I ran down here so fast after my class to see if I could catch Quark after they picked up YourRealDad’s (@dtalvarezz_) show after he didn’t show up for his show. Unfortunately, I either missed them, or they haven’t left yet, but I can’t stake out forever bc I have class.”

Regina gets herself comfortable in her bed, Quark’s voice playing in her AirPods. With no intention to do homework and nothing pressing to worry about, Quark’s voice washes over her. They go through all of the DJs, giving anyone who just uses their name and people whose show name includes their DJ name as B tier, though anyone who does both (like amenon of amenon’s beats) C tier, for lack of creativity. Anyone who includes ‘DJ’ in their name is an automatic D tier because “we all know you’re a DJ, you don’t need to tell us. The only person who can get away with it is DJ Khaled, and that’s just barely.”

Quark’s voice lulls Regina to sleep before they rank themself, which is only partially a disappointment. She wakes up with only one earbud in, the other lost in her sheets, and her phone so close to death that plugging it in before lift wouldn’t really do anything. She yawns her way through lift, through her art history, calculus, and French business lectures, and through practice, which is embarrassing when she’s running around playing soccer. Aside from the usual (the usual being her school work, soccer, and annoying Aaron), the art history final is plaguing her mind. She only knows one person in that class, and that person has been hellbent on ignoring her, but she really wants to work with Cady, regardless of their weird history. 

Before she can even think about approaching Cady regarding the project, she has a home game against SDSU and that’s the only thing she allows herself to think about. SDSU isn’t a particularly important opponent, but they like to play dirty, if history is to be believed (by history she means last season when she ended up with a whole cleat mark on her thigh). It’s inevitable that she’s going to have bruises, but not the kind of bruises that she would like. Friday is absurdly busy and Regina wants the whole day to be over, but it stretches on and on and on. It starts with her lack of sleep, continues with the lift (mostly because she hates lifting), the art history course from hell where she stares at Cady for 65 minutes, business calc which isn’t calculus at all, and her French business culture lecture where she can’t comprehend French, despite spending probably a whole fourth of her life in France, and then tries to nap, which doesn’t happen, so she just lays on the couch at Caution Tape looking somewhat miserable. She doesn't have to cook for team dinner, so she continues to lay on the couch, miserably, until the juniors are finished cooking. Aria made Pad Thai, which has peanuts, so Regina can’t even eat it, which makes her want to lay back down on the couch and wallow in her misery. 

Addie inevitably plops herself onto the floor next to Regina, who is laying on the floor, nearly under the coffee table, during the SDSU game film. She knows better than to try to speak to Regina in a bad mood, so she just sits there and watches the game. Regina knows that she’s being unnecessarily angry, at what she’s unsure, but she’s definitely giving off bad vibes to her teammates. As soon as it’s polite, Regina is careful to not storm up to her room, but she doesn’t exactly sneak away. Addie finds her peeling her hoodie off, socks already chucked across the room towards her hamper but both falling short. 

“You’re being a shit, Reigna.”

“Yeah I fucking know.”

“Is it a ‘talk about it’ or ‘stew’ kind of situation?”

“It’s a ‘I want to go out and take shots until I’m not frustrated by my whole entire life’ type of situation.”

“Genuinely, why are you being such a shithead?” 

“It’s stupid and irrelevant and it’ll be gone tomorrow,” Regina snaps, pulling on a t-shirt she stole from Shane, a vintage graphic tee depicting Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. It’s not a pregame ritual to wear one of the shirts she stole from Shane–who essentially was her private trainer through high school–as pyjamas, but it’s the most comfortable shirt she owns and being comfortable is a big part of her ability to go to sleep at an appropriate time. 

“Your weird vibes are freaking out the girls. As your captain, I’m obligated to deal with your wacky ass mood. So what the fuck is up with you?”

“I’m literally fine, Addison.”

“Literally everything about you right now doesn’t scream ‘fine.’”

Regina rolls her eyes at her captain, before tossing her hair into a bun to wash her face. Of course, Addie follows. 

“Georgie. Ignoring me won’t make me go away.”

“Look, Addie, I’m not going to talk about it because this isn’t something I want to talk about. I’m a whole adult and I don’t have to talk to you about my personal shit.”

“Your ‘personal shit’ is getting to the girls. You’re being a bitch and a shitty teammate, which is just a great environment to create right now, when we’re tied with Pepperdine for first, and any points that we drop could lead to us losing the NCAA tournament entry.”

Regina stuffs her toothbrush into her mouth, motioning that she can’t speak to Addie anymore. 

“What the fuck is up with you, Regina? You’ve been in weird moods but this is different from all the other weird moods you’ve been in, and you’re an emo little shit. I’m your fucking captain and you’re the weird little freak who I took under my wing, so I feel some degree of responsibility for your bullheadedness. Stop for just a second and tell me why the hell you’re being such a bitch.”

“You’re not my fucking mother, and be damn glad that you aren’t. You’re not responsible for me and if you’d be so kind, fuck all the way off before I do something you’ll regret.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone until you’ve talked to me. Properly.”

“Addison. You’re hardly the captain we need, especially with the injury that’s kept you off the team for a year. You’re in rehab more often than not and you lack any skill other than pestering me for being in a mood. I’m the only one you ever pay attention to, so how do you think that looks to the freshmen? I haven’t seen you do anything of value on the pitch since before I was even enrolled here. Not to mention that you’re a pathetic little grad student who can’t let go of her glory days. Grow the fuck up and graduate because playing here for the seventh year is just embarrassing.”

Addie looks like she wants to cry, and the vengeful streak in Regina makes her smile sarcastically. She hasn’t snapped at someone like that and it was inevitable after so long keeping her mean streak to herself. Snapping at her captain is much easier than telling her that she’s freaking out over a girl and whoever Quark is, because that means coming out to Addie and reassuring her that she’s not confused. It’s not worth the hassle and Regina just doesn’t want to come out to anyone, not even her dad. Karen and Gretchen don’t even know that she’s gay, and it’ll stay that way until she has to do something about it. 

“You’re an ass at best and a bitch at worst, Regina George. But don’t think that I won’t keep pressing about this issue.”

“Take a goddamn hint, Addison! I don’t want to talk to you about this! I don’t want to talk about this at all! All your fucking ‘pressing’ has gotten me more frustrated, if you couldn’t tell, and I want to talk to you even less, goddamnit.”

Regina flicks the lights off before she does her skincare, completely ignoring Addie, still leaning against the bathroom door jamb. She shoves past Addie to get back to her room, slamming the door in her face. She’s going to get in trouble but she can’t be blamed for her frustrations boiling over after Addie tickled the sleeping dragon. It’s immature of her to yell at Addie, storm away, and slam her door, but that doesn’t stop Regina from feeling distinctly shitty. She shoves her face in her pillow and cries only a little (by a little, she means a lot, and Maia doesn’t come into the room until long after her sobs have subsided). Crying over a girl is just as immature, but Regina doesn’t care anymore. 

==

“Hello, hello, my Alpha Rats. We’re halfway through the quarter and I’m halfway to wanting to drop out, like usual. I’m sure that this will be expedited next week after my freaking oral exam. Um für meine mündliche Prüfung zu üben, spiele ich meine Sammlung deutscher Lieder, die ich nicht mehr lernen kann, weil ich die Texte verstehe und mitsinge. Ich hoffe, es sind keine Deutschsprachigen im Publikum, vor denen ich mich blamieren könnte, aber es würde mir wirklich gefallen, wenn sich irgendwelche Deutschsprachige da draußen herablassen würden, mich zu korrigieren.”

Cady cringes at herself as she definitely mispronounces half of the words she’s saying. Languages aren’t her strong suit, even though she’s well on her way to becoming a polyglot. It’s not particularly hard, but she isn’t exactly good at the guttural sounds of the German language. It’s dark in the booth and she’s not really doing anything to prepare for her oral exam, instead doing her quantum homework, as per usual. There’s certain days where she seriously wonders why she chose to study physics because quantum mechanics is so not fun to study. 

Professor Suzuki announces the details of the final research presentation on Wednesday, and Cady already has an idea of what she wants to do, already drafting a proposal. After a night on deck and then a quiz in quantum, Cady’s only a little exhausted, which is par for the course when it comes to post-Quark days that are far too intellectually taxing–most days seeing as Cady is currently learning quantum mechanics. Regina, who actually sat next to Cady (aka kicked the kid who normally sits next to Cady out of the chair and then sat down, ignoring Cady as if she didn’t exist), pokes her in the shoulder when Suzuki is finished speaking. 

“So what are we researching?”

Knowing Regina, Cady doesn’t have a chance to choose her own group, though she wouldn’t choose anyone else because who can she rely on to let her make all the important decisions if not Regina George? 

“I’ll share my proposal draft with you. I want to look into the dynastic influence on Chinese painting. I assume that you don’t have a topic based on your question.”

“We’ll work on this on Tuesdays–aside from the ones I have to travel–in our normal room. See you in McCracken next week.” Regina, as always, steamrolls over Cady’s observations, and strolls out of the class. Baffled because class isn’t even over, Cady just goes back to working on her proposal. She’s going to end up doing all the work, she knows it already, but at least the presentation and paper will be up to her standards. 

Cady meets with Gio after her German class for lunch (she buys him lunch) to talk about the general manager position. The job is mostly coordination: selecting and scheduling DJs, making sure the staff works well together, and being the point of contact for DJs if they can’t make it to their shift and need someone to step in for them. It sounds like far too much work, but the general manager role would look quite nice on her resume. On the other hand, she’s been talking to Dr. Hsu about working in his lab as a research assistant, which would look significantly better on her resume. Optics isn’t her interest, but SBU doesn’t have any profs doing astrophysics research. Not to mention that the only quantum research at SBU is quantum computing and she’d really rather not, optics is a pretty good place to get research experience. Pointing this out to Gio, he understands that her priority is always going to be her academics, but he doesn’t have a better nominee for the general manager position. The other DJs are significantly less involved in the station, though Cady just knows all of the staff and spends a lot of her time in the station since her study spots are usually taken. 

Thursday finds Cady in her religious studies class where she’s assigned a second paper, this one on modern religious interpretations, a forgotten laptop charger that leads to her laptop dying at the end of her MatLab lecture, so she has to decide if she can run home to grab her charge or gamble on someone having the charger she needs for her lab, and she makes a mental note to complain about this during her show. Lucky for her, Cady’s lab partner, Jessie, has a USB-C charger that she can borrow. Cady genuinely dislikes coding, so it’s great that her lab partner for the quarter does, though it’s harder to do labs when Jessie’s gone half the time, even though there’s an attendance policy for labs. It’s easier to make up a Mech lab than a physics lab, though, because she doesn’t need the equipment, just the instructions.

Thursdays are always busy days with the lab (which Cady and Jessie usually take the entire time slot to get all their questions answered) and then having to run home so Cady can cook before AJ and Janis go to their 7 PM sculpting class. As always, Damian helps her clean up since he’s the only other one who needs to run off (Gabby has club frisbee practice at 8 PM, so she doesn’t run off immediately). She makes Japanese curry and the five of the Detectives (they decided that they need a name for their little group, so they settled on the Detectives, since that’s what Steve was) sit down like the little family they are. Damian is telling them about his next video that’s going to involve them, which is going to be a trivia show that he hosts, but knowing Damian, it isn’t just going to be a trivia show. Damian’s attempts for YouTube fame aren’t in vain, though, because of his variety of content and general personality. Cady won’t deny that he’s a funny guy, but she isn’t the biggest fan of being used as a cast member in his videos. 

After she and Damian clean up, she sits at the kitchen table and does her quantum problem set, listening to Damian prep for a video essay about Wicked, both the movie and musical. He’s always been a theatre kid. She has a playlist prepped, though her weekend is going to be spent working on enough playlists to last her through the end of the quarter–or at least until Thanksgiving break where she’ll have time to focus on the music. 

As she’s leaving for the station, Damian yells down the stairs at her to not get kidnapped, as if she has any say over someone’s decision to kidnap her. She takes the long way to campus, drafting her intro to her segment. Cady is no longer a freshman DJ and is no longer flying by the seat of her pants, but she’s probably overthinking everything. She drafts, scraps, and drafts a script in her mind, but all of it is forgotten by the time that she gets to Barney. 

"Guten Abend, Alpha-Ratten. Ich glaube nicht, dass ich die mündliche Prüfung nicht bestanden habe, aber ich scheitere daran, einen bezahlten Job zu finden. Ich scheitere auch daran, ein funktionierender Mensch zu sein, d. h. meine Vergesslichkeit scheint chronisch und gefährlich zu sein, wenn man bedenkt, dass ich meinen Laptop diese Woche zweimal habe sterben lassen, und zwar in den Vorlesungen, in denen es am wichtigsten ist, dass er funktioniert. Ich bin ein Versager und eine Enttäuschung, aber ich bin hier und mache meinen Job, also werden wir heute vielleicht deprimierende Musik hören, wenn Sie genau genug hinhören. And no, I’m not sure why I did my intro in German, but I’m not repeating it in English. It’s whatever: I’m Quark and I do what I want.”

The first song on the playlist is “Pumped Up Kicks,” which is probably the most obvious choice she could have made, but it’s a solid choice for her faux happiness playlist. Cady’s the only person in the office, as always, and she’s doing her quantum homework, as always. During a break (she’s finished a problem so she deserves her little break, even though she still has two problems to do), Cady takes a look at her seldom used Instagram. She mostly follows her friends from high school, but every time she checks the damn app it recommends profiles from around SBU. 

Damian’s stupid whoisquark account is recommended,  and Cady takes a look into the account. There’s a recent post anticipating her next segment, thinking that it’s going to be some sort of continuation of the weird Christianity vibe she’s got going on, but instead they get a pseudo happy music playlist. The fact that the image is a post of the schedule doesn’t help against her hypothesis that the account owner is Damian. 

Cady ends the show with “Leaves” by Joe P, and hurries out of Barney to get home, on the off chance someone is stalking Quark. She only has one last problem to work on, which is a tomorrow problem (thinking about the actual time, it actually is today, but after she sleeps it’ll be tomorrow, so it’s a tomorrow problem), so she takes the long route home. It takes her past frat row and what Gabby tells her is a bunch of the athletics houses. Cady idly wonders where Regina lives, not knowing where the soccer house is. She’s not a party person and the only reason she’d go to the soccer house is for a party, really, but she’s fundamentally against parties (Gabby’s mission is to get Cady to accompany to her to one party, just so she can see the difference between the high school and college social scene). 

Regina isn’t in class on Friday, but Cady doesn’t concern herself with the fact because Prof. Suzuki is still lecturing. The pace of the quarter system is really catching up to her because unfortunately, Cady’s only plan tonight is to finish all the homework due tonight (the rest of her housemates are going out: Janis and Damian are spending the night at SFMOMA, Gabby and frisbee are going to a men’s rugby party, and AJ is staying with her girlfriend). Her plans include sitting in the kitchen and doing her homework and then taking a long shower before bed. It’s a great plan, even though all of her housemates think she’s only a tad boring.

Along with finishing her physics, weekly art history report, and prelab, Cady finishes the first draft of the proposal and shares the document with Regina, assuming that she won’t even look at it. Surprisingly, it’s before midnight–somehow she managed to focus on her homework thanks to Awsten Knight and Portal Town. She’s in bed before 1 AM and she’s going to be so well rested tomorrow, when she’s going to teach Gabby how to carve, to help with her stop motion animation project. 

In the morning, after Cady’s made Gabby and herself breakfast, Cady prepares a set of carving knives and some dry wood to make puppets. The two of them sit in the backyard, the late October sun warming their backs as they sit on their chairs. Janis and Damian return home at midday, where Damian prepares to do a “storytime” in his bedroom and Janis makes some costumes for Gabby’s characters. It’s a very art heavy day in Blues Clues. 

The same thing happens on Sunday, with a little bit more scramble because Janis forgot about an assignment due in class on Monday. By the end of the weekend, they have a whole puppet, clothes included, and it’s cause for the biggest celebration in the house since the five of them moved in. Damian, ever the dramatist, breaks out the Martinelli’s apple cider and they celebrate in the kitchen, over ordered pizza, which was a bad choice because all five of them have differing preferences in toppings: Cady is lactose intolerant so she only eats pesto pizza, Janis likes anchovies and olives, Damian prefers the classic pepperoni, AJ, somewhat ironically, is a meatlovers fiend, and Gabby likes pineapple and ham. They sit in the backyard, around the fire pit, eating greasy pizza from Mountain Mike’s. 

Monday morning quantum lecture bleeds into her Monday morning art history lecture where Regina makes her appearance but bleeds into the background, becomes her droning German lecture where she does physics homework while listening to her prof talk about the perfect past tense. Regina doesn’t mention the proposal, so Cady turns it in for the pair of them, even though the lack of approval from Regina makes her squirm, just a little bit. It’s a group project and Regina seems intent on ignoring the group part of the project and leaving Cady to do all the work, and Cady knew this going into it, but she’s still disappointed by Regina’s lack of effort. 

Tuesday’s midmorning religion lecture stretches on but is also so short at the same time and she’s walked through a script to solve linear algebra problems during her midday applied programming lecture. The rest of the day is spent doing homework in the library; all Cady does seems to do is her homework and grade other people’s homework. Regina texts, cancelling their meeting, so Cady doesn’t even bother moving from her table, the third floor of the library quieter than McCracken ever could be. 

“Don’t fret, my Alpha Rats, I will not be speaking German today. The leaves are starting to finally change colour, so I can finally declare that it’s autumn with this lovely soundtrack to match the sound of crunchy leaves on the ground and the rustle of a slight breeze. Although the trees are taking on a lovely orange hue, it’s still warm enough that you’ll never forget that we live in California, so I’m going to delude you all with my autumn soundtrack. Here’s ‘A Part of Me’ by Neck Deep.”

Janis is once again in the booth, sketching Cady, but this time with the intent of painting it. It’s a study of light, Janis said, and Cady knows that she just likes to sit in the booth with her because she’s had ample opportunity to sketch in their bedroom, bathed in the warm glow of the fairy lights and Janis’s lamp that has a lampshade made of photo slides, casting a colourful glow across their walls. Cady’s working on a script to solve linear algebra problems, so the Christmas lights above the window, the lamp in the back corner, and the harsh glow of her laptop (even though her brightness is pretty low) illuminate her face. It’s a moment of reprieve from the unrelenting chaos and speed of week six, but the script is due on Thursday so it’s not really any sort of break from her hectic week. The assignment doesn’t actually take that much time, seeing as she essentially copied and pasted the script she was introduced to in class, so she spends the rest of her hour applying to on-campus jobs, on the very slim chance she doesn’t get the research assistant position in Dr. Hsu’s lab. 

The phone ringing jumpscares both Cady and Janis, but Janis laughs at her as if she didn’t also jump. 

“LSBU, how can I help you?”

“Hi Quark, I have a question for you. What makes these songs feel like autumn to you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the music, but I don’t get ‘fall’ from all of them.”

“Well, I lived in Chicago before this and, you know, it actually gets somewhat cold there, though it’s no New England autumn. Spending two autumns in Chicago, I developed an appreciation for a cozy sort of season. Of course, some of these are pop punk autumn classics: ‘A Part of Me,’ ‘Wake Me Up (When September Ends,’ ‘Clairvoyant,’ et cetera. Some indie songs, like ‘Fault Line,’ ‘Second Rate Town,’ ‘Halloween,’ and others just give off autumn vibes to me. Folk like anything by Harrison Boe or Rare Candy–especially ‘Queen of Autumn’–feel quite like autumn.”

“How do you decide to make a playlist like this? You always have some sort of theme.”

“Hm. You really want to know my secrets. For this one specifically, this is something I regularly listen to. I started this playlist years ago, and it always enters my rotation around October. So when it comes to adding songs to this one, whenever I come across a song that feels sort of autumnal, I add it to the playlist. As for other playlists, I curate playlists depending on a mood. My roommates can testify–though you stalkers will never find who they are–that I sit down and listen to music, and build playlists in a specific playlist-making hour.” 

There’s something about the caller’s voice that Cady recognises, but she’s been in so many classes with so many different people, that it’s most likely that she recognises the voice from office hours. It bugs her, and it’s good that applying to on-campus jobs is a little brainless, so she can wrack her brain on whose voice this reminds her of. The problem is that she only knows so many people well enough to be able to recognise their voice. 

==

Ignorance is bliss, and Regina is a firm believer of this when it comes to group projects. She trusts Cady wholeheartedly, so she doesn’t even bother taking a gander at the document that was shared to her. That and she was busy with her game in LA against Loyola Marymount. She doesn’t feel the slightest bit bad for cancelling on Cady; she had no excuse other than she didn’t want to work on the project. Cady ignores her through the lecture, as per usual, but Regina’s a little more hurt than usual, which isn’t anyone’s fault but her own. Physically, Regina’s present for all of her classes on Wednesday. Mentally, Regina’s more absent than controversy in Sarah Michelle Gellar’s career. During practice, Regina finally manages to focus, and she’s on point. The only problem is that Hauser is also performing quite well. Post practice, Regina and Carly stay late so Regina can practice her shots and Hauser can do some extra keeper practice. Usually, she only does this when she’s frustrated, but she’s in a good mood and wants to capitalise on her good mood since her frustration just seems to mount with missed shots, but the good vibes on the pitch find her looser, casual, and with considerably better shots. Addie checks on the two of them, only to find Regina laughing when Hauser makes an easy save on a misplaced shot and does a forward dive. 

Regina really should contact Cady, but Thursday is busy. Yes, she only has one class, but she’s also cramming all of her homework into one day before her Friday is consumed by her team and her own routines. Surprisingly, Caution Tape is empty, so Regina doesn’t bother trying to find a study spot after her translation lecture, instead opting to go home and do her assignments. This also minimises the threat of running into Cady, because that’s one of the last things she wants to do (Cady will inevitably hold her responsible for her lack of input on the proposal), but she does want to see Cady again. SBU has the last three games at home, so she might just ask Cady to watch her games again. 

“Hello hello, Alpha Rats, and happy Halloween. Let me tell you a story: when I first moved to Chicago, in my junior year of high school, I hardly knew anything about American culture. I was invited to a party, and–not knowing about the implicit rule of be slutty or nothing at all–I dressed up as a corpse bride, fake blood and everything. Shockingly, my peers did not appreciate my incredibly high effort costume. Teenage girls don’t understand the spirit of Halloween and if I see any slutty bunnies or whatever on my way home, I’m going to crash out. Now, not to be cliché or anything, but I’m going to play ‘What’s New Scooby-Doo?’ by Simple Plan on repeat, because it’s the best Halloween song ever; change my mind.”

Regina didn’t need the reminder that she can’t participate in the Halloweekend festivities since she plays Saint Mary’s on Saturday. The team has a 24 hour dry rule before games, so she can’t go out on Friday, she’s inevitably going to be too tired after the 7 PM game on Saturday, and no one ever throws on Sundays. Unlike Quark, who apparently is a girl, Regina is well aware of the “be slutty or nothing” rule, as Quark called it, though the Halloween lift doesn’t give her the proper opportunity to dress as slutty as she wants. The most disappointing part of the whole day is that Karen and Gretchen are going out–probably still out, seeing as they’re both very social people–and they don’t exactly have frat parties to go to. 

There are a couple frats hosting on this Thursday night, and some of her teammates are returning from their nights out, disturbing Regina’s pleasant translation work. She’s got an episode of Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated on the sitting room TV when some of the freshmen come in through the side door.

“Why are you watching Scooby fucking doo, Regina?” Jasper giggles, clearly a little tipsy but not gone.

“Jinkies! Peut-être que dans ce cas-là, je suis pas le membre le plus intelligent dont il parle. Mais... ça peut pas être toi, n'est-ce pas ?”

“The actual fuck?”

“Did Regina stop speaking English?” A clearly drunk Maria asks.

“Hm…non, pas moi!”

“Fuck, I’m going to bed. I dunno what’s happening anymore.”

She’s probably going to have to redo her recording because her drunk teammates will definitely be audible in the background. 

Friday starts with early weights with the water polo team, for whatever reason because pregame weights are always alone and women’s water polo is still in preseason (water polo is a spring sport, why is she lifting with the water polo team?). Regina, as always, lifts with Addie, but one of Addie’s best friends is on water polo, so Regina’s routine is interrupted by Addie chatting. This lift isn’t explicitly part of her pregame routine, but Addie is always her spotter, and Regina’s only a little ticked off. 

Regina skips her art history lecture. She skips calculus (again, calculus is a generous term because she’s only learning about rates of change) because it’s a waste of her time. It’s her week to give her current event report in French business culture, so she can’t skip that class. It’s been a while since she skipped class, and that’s probably a personal win (she skipped far too many classes during her freshman year). As always, both the lectures she attends are boring and feel like a waste of her time, especially because she’s only taking art history as a requirement but it’s not for her major and she just doesn’t care about French business culture. 

Match Day minus 1 training is light, as always. Regina pushes herself further than she should, as always. Addie watches her run sprints and gently scolds her for overexerting herself, as always. Everything is so normal that Regina doesn’t even think twice about what she’s doing. Cady jumpscaring her as she exits the VCAA is not at all part of her normal day, and Regina doesn’t mean to scream, but she does, and Maia walks out of the building at the exact same time she shrieks, and doubles over laughing. 

“Hi Cady,” Regina sighs, knowing Maia’s walked back into the building to tell the girls about it. 

“Why have you been ghosting me?”

“I’ve been busy. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”

“Well, you seem to think that the world revolves around you! You keep cancelling on me as if I don’t have anything better to do than wait for you to meet with me over this project. If you want me to do all the work, I’ll tell Professor Suzuki that I want to do a solo project, or I’ll just rat you out and tell her that you’re freeloading.”

“Look, Cady, I have a game tomorrow. I don’t have time to think about this project.”

“So? I manage to make time for meetings when I have prior obligations. It’s your grade that you’re sacrificing.”

“Fuck you for this. I promise I’ll show up to the meeting on Tuesday,” Regina says, rolling her eyes. 

“You could at least pretend to care; it’s your final too.” Cady doesn’t exactly storm off, but it’s the same effect as if she had. 

Regina, feeling properly chastened, almost stomps back home. Thankfully, Maia has class, so she only gets slightly bullied. She hasn’t been ignoring Cady on purpose, is the thing. Yes, she hasn’t been attending the weekly meeting about their project and not talking to Cady during class, but it’s not like Cady was reaching out, aside from the Google Calendar invites. 

She’s only in a funk for a bit, but it returns after the thought of “what if someone sees something gay in that interaction?” pops up, and then she properly freaks out after team dinner. She’s acting on autopilot, watching film, having a slight panic attack on the floor. Now, she knows that SBU is a very tolerant environment, but there’s so many Bible thumpers on the team that she’s not sure that it’s worth it. Coming out, as a vague thought, is absolutely terrifying. She’s not prepared to tell anyone, and her dad, her gym bros, or Gretchen and Karen should know first, at the very least. None of her teammates deserve to know, anyway, not even Addie. 

Acting normal is easy when she’s normally quiet and contemplative during film, though today she’s more lost in thought than mentally preparing for the game. She traipses upstairs to get ready for bed, still thinking about what she would even get from coming out. Sure, her teammates still think she’s dating Aaron, but she gains nothing, actually. Her dad doesn’t talk to her about boys, her girls don’t ask her about boys–though mostly because she doesn’t see either of them regularly anymore, and she hasn’t gone out with her gym bros, who would definitely take the opportunity to act as her wingman, given the opportunity (Shane would not be a very good wingman). 

Again, she considers inviting Cady to the game, but she can’t be seen being weird with Cady after Maia witnessed the shrieking mess of that interaction outside the VCAA and Cady’s probably mad at her. Other than that thought, her pregame routine doesn’t stray. Regina tunes into the game easily and she’s hungry for a goal. The Pacific back line is, on average, shorter than Regina, and they can’t mark her aerially, which makes it easy to score two headers on corners. She’s hunting for her third goal to complete the hat trick when Joey subs her out. She stews on the bench for the rest of the game, but she’s let go of her frustration with the coaching staff by the final whistle. 

Post game, everything is also normal. She does her sprints, stretches out, showers last to do her immediate, personal reflection, and finally eats dinner and reviews the team performance. Last time everything was so normal she got ambushed by Cady, and she’s half expecting Cady to knock on the front door to yell at her. She only jumps a little when the bell rings, but it’s just the pizza that Colby ordered. 

==

Week seven brings midterms, and Regina wants to jump off Langston–the tallest building on campus, a freshman dorm hall. She only has one in-class exam–calculus of course–and three projects to do: translate a French show to English, analyse international French businesses, and complete the first draft of the art history paper. It’s also the last week of the regular season, so the stress just compounds. 

The essay writing goes as well as it possibly can. Cady does all the analysis while Regina builds the actual essay. Their study room in McCracken Hall is a mess of cords, with Cady’s laptop that can hardly hold a charge and the three different Apple cords that Regina has. They argue about paragraph structure and how to string together Cady’s elements of analysis, but Regina wins in the end because she basically tells Cady to “shut the fuck up, you’re a stupid STEM major and know nothing about drafting even a decent essay.” Cady glares at her and aggressively types her argument out, the clicking of her laptop keyboard only a little annoying. 

As soon as their time is up, Cady packs her stuff and leaves, regardless of the fact that no one is pestering them to get out. She probably just doesn’t want to spend more time with Regina than she has to. Since the room isn’t in demand, Regina starts doing research on Hermès because of course she’s going to her paper on a French business on a fashion brand. Researching anything except trends in housing prices and details about the area a house is located in is such a drag and she’s still slogging through the history of Hermès when Quark’s show starts. 

“Evening, Alpha Rats. I think my brain is leaking out of my ears. I had a physics midterm on Monday, which was a little hellish. I had a bad meeting for a project which could have been a waste if my partner were less useful when it came to doing the things I’m bad at. Yeah, alert that stupid Instagram account, I’m bad at something, but I’m not telling you what I’m bad at. Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Quark sucks at something related to school but won’t reveal more! You all are so obsessed with finding out who I am and it’s kind of weird. I’m just a student here, I’m not some sort of on-campus celebrity. Seeing as I have an in-class essay–it’s hardly an essay but that’s what my prof is calling it–for German tomorrow, I’m in desperate need of some preparation so I’m putting on some Norwegian house music. I’ve preached about my belief in the efficacy of listening to music in a language I don’t speak already so I won’t repeat my spiel.”

Regina, to her credit, tries really hard to stay awake through Quark’s show, but she’s in bed, still doing research about Hermès (she believes that since she did so much work until she went home for dinner, she can sit in bed and do homework instead of at her desk tonight). Maia’s already asleep and the lights are off, the room illuminated only by Regina’s laptop which feels like it’s burning a hole through her duvet. Instead of her normal rain noise to sleep, Regina falls asleep to a thumping bass line and words she doesn’t know. 

Regina and her dead laptop do not make an appearance in art history on purpose (she’s still tired). It’s not like she’s going to glean any more pertinent information and this isn’t high school anymore; she and Cady aren’t going to get given time to work on the project in class. She goes to calc since she has an exam; who schedules a midterm on a Wednesday? As a treat, she skips French business. It’s Wednesday and she’s got the penultimate game of the regular season, and she takes the time that she skips to start mentally preparing for the game. The fact that she had a midterm is nothing but disruptive to her normal routine, but she sticks to it to her best ability. This includes her lack of coffee, only having a Celsius with her breakfast, her return home for lunch so that she can go on her pregame walk with Karen’s playlist in her ears. 

USF isn’t a particularly difficult opponent tactically speaking, but they’re an annoying opponent. They park the bus and have an aerial advantage with all the height in their defensive line specifically. The funniest part is that their offensive players are all miniscule, and it’s certainly not Regina’s fault when she only sort of tramples one of them. Or when she bodies one of them out of the air (the girl tried to jump into her, so it really isn’t Regina’s fault but the ref decided it is). Somehow, she comes out of the match with a yellow even though she didn’t actually commit any fouls, which Joey and her teammates think is so funny. Regina just does her sprints and cool down stretches while her teammates file into the locker room, still laughing about Regina’s yellow. 

As always, Regina dawdles until the locker room is empty to take a shower. The pitter-patter of the water on the tiles is the perfect soundtrack to Regina’s musing. Regina has a routine when it comes to a post game shower: shampoo twice, wash her face, condition the ends of her hair, clean off the sweat and grime from the game, and done. This is the time where Regina reflects on her performance as an individual and as a contributor to her team. She enjoys the quiet of the empty showers, the sound of the water hitting her body and the tiles, and her humming being the loudest noises, other than her critical inner monologue. She can tune out the ambient noise of her teammates packing up to either leave or get on the bus easily to focus on what she did well and what she could do better.

Regina’s been playing soccer since she was five years old. She played AYSO soccer for eight years before joining a club team. She was recruited to SBU in her sophomore year of high school. She was on varsity for four years at Harvard Westlake, a premier CIF Division 1 team. Regina’s good at soccer. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she actually watches soccer (better soccer than the stupid NWSL, at least). Regina, unlike most of her teammates, is obsessed with soccer. She doesn’t exactly have the time to watch too much soccer, but she watches highlights in her free time, holds a season ticket to Bay FC even though she’s fundamentally against the NWSL system and even goes to as many games as she can, and follows a solid chunk of the European women’s soccer teams on social media to follow their matches with live updates and clips. Regina George is a name for a star, and she knows it (Gabby George of England has proven that George looks good on the back of a jersey). If Regina didn’t have a defined future already she’d try to go pro in Europe, just to see George emblazoned on the back of a jersey. Instead of playing soccer, Regina’s going to sell real estate in California and get filthy rich while her contemporaries wither away in farmers leagues or simply quit soccer. 

The point is that she knows soccer. It’s not necessarily in her bones or whatever but Regina’s honed her knowledge and understanding of the sport through years of playing and watching soccer. She knows her ability, strengths, and weaknesses well enough at this point that she analyses her own game quite well, even hitting the same points that Joey goes over when they review their film. Regina, though she doesn’t intend to pursue soccer after college, is still in the desperate pursuit of improvement. She’s always hungry to do better, though not always in school. 

Thursday is kind of an emotional mess. She attends the one class she does have and then Karen picks her up from campus for their monthly manicure/pedicure appointment. While Regina doubts Karen’s legal ability to drive, she sits in the passenger seat of Gretchen’s Volvo and hopes her indifferent mask is in place enough for Karen to not see her panic. As per usual, Regina gets squoval (a horrible name that she doesn’t like to say aloud) French tips (classy, neutral, not going to accidentally gouge the SMU defender’s eyes out and earn her another card) and Karen gets absurdly long nails with some floral design (Regina refuses to think about Karen and Gretchen’s sex life and the implication of Karen’s nails). They sit in the massage chairs and gossip, a long held tradition between the two of them that Gretchen would love to be part of, but it’s a two person activity. 

Karen tells her about the people in Gretchen’s culinary school courses, who she does and doesn’t like even though she’s barely met any of them, she’s just relaying Gretchen’s stories. Regina can’t always follow Karen’s stories, but she nods as if she does. Karen really likes the sound of her own voice and won’t stop talking, but it prevents Regina from having a very uncomfortable conversation at a nail salon where the nail techs are definitely listening. As always, the two of them hit the Starbucks drive-thru and sit in the parking lot to have a serious conversation.

“Hypothetically, if there were an interesting person who I am doing a final project with, would it be weird if I ended up getting involved with them?”

“What does ‘hypothetically’ mean?” Karen asks, slurping at her Refresher.

“Okay. Imagine if, in a completely different universe, I was working on a group project with a very interesting person whom I could be interested in, would it be weird if I, maybe, asked them out?”

“Well, not necessarily, I guess. In this imaginary universe you’d be getting to know them, right? And that’s how any good relationship starts.”

“Ah, um, what if the problem is that said partner and I do not get along? Like, you know how studying isn’t my priority, but they are very focused on their grades?”

“Hypothetically, they could get over it, right? Did I use that right? Also, why is this conversation happening? You always just take what you want.”

“I don’t think she’d like it if I just acted, Kaz. Hypothetically, of course.” Regina speaks before she thinks and desperately hopes that Karen doesn’t clock the pronoun.

“You must really care about this hypothetical person if you’re actually thinking this through.”

“I actually have to think about the consequences of my actions because who knows: if they complain I might get put on academic probation and removed from the team,” Regina confesses, her worst fears laid out on the centre console. And then she belatedly adds “Hypothetically.”

“You know, just take the risk. Unless you’re gonna harass this poor girl, you’re not going to get removed from the team.”

“This is all hypothetical, Karen.”

“Of course, of course. Hypothetically, you’d only get in trouble if you harass this girl. Asking someone out isn’t going to get you killed.”

“Ugh, you’re useless. Take me back to school.”

“Is this because I don’t understand what ‘hypothetically’ means?”

Regina knows that her best friend is a little slow, so she just rolls her eyes and replies with the affirmative. Karen drops her off at the VCAA right before practice, where the team pesters her about who she was just with (they all know that Regina has horrible control issues and seldom rides in the passenger seat). They probably won’t get that Karen drives the almost two hours from St. Helena to San Jose once a month to get her nails done and gossip with her oldest friend. 

Training goes well, leaving Regina really quite prepared for the final game of the season. Pepperdine’s already won the league, so they’re in the running for the second NCAA seat with UDub. They’re tied on points, though they’re currently behind in the tie breaker (goal differential), so a win for them and tie or loss for UDub, or a tie for them and a loss for UDub would see the Seals through to the tournament, while a loss or tie for them and a win for UDub would see the Seals sitting the postseason out. The fact that her team’s fate isn’t completely in her hands is stressful and Regina hates this aspect of sports the most. Contrary to what she says, Regina has crippling control issues. 

==

Not knowing what possessed her, Cady goes to the last soccer game of the season. There’s no reason for her to be at the game; Regina didn’t ask her to attend and Gabby, who goes to as many athletic events as she can,  is at a frisbee tournament. She sits at the very top of the stands, two Dutch plaits tucked under a ball cap that has an embroidered dinosaur on it, hopefully casually disguising her from Regina’s critical eye. It’s still unseasonably warm in mid-November, so she’s in a yellow, floral print button up tucked into a pair of high waisted light wash ripped jeans and her Mystery Machine high tops that AJ made her. Although she primarily reads in the pleasantly warm November sun, she looks up from time to time, carefully tracking Regina around the field. She claps when Regina scores, the well loved paperback version of Madame Bovary in her lap. 

She doesn’t stay for the end of the game, escaping before Regina notices that she’s attending the game. She really should be catching up on grading; Dr. Hawkins’s students are almost three weeks behind on homework grades. Although she definitely should be grading, Cady goes for a walk around the neighbourhood, enjoying the weather. She’s got a playlist running, doing some fine tuning before her Thanksgiving break shows. After sitting in on the staff meeting, Cady knows that not many DJs will be around over Thanksgiving break, so Gio is going to do a little rescheduling so he minimises the use of the bot. The downside to this increase in airtime is that she has to do more daytime hosting, but it’s okay because she has nothing better to do.

Before she can truly mentally prepare for Thanksgiving break, Cady has to make it through two more weeks of school. Week eight brings class registration for winter quarter. Cady’s only a little worried about her schedule, but she has enough units that she has a relatively early registration appointment (Tuesday, 8:30 AM) and she’s taking mostly upper division courses and some graduation requirements now. With the well timed registration appointment, Cady spends the rest of her Sunday making saved schedules in Workday, trying to avoid physics lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thankfully, most physics profs want to lecture for 100 minutes about as much as students want to listen to a physics lecture for 100 minutes. 

Much like a presidential candidate, Cady has two sets prepared for Tuesday night. It’s one of the stupider jokes she could make, but if she doesn’t get the schedule she wants, she can and will play her depressing ‘my schedule next quarter is atrocious’ mix. On the other hand, if she does manage to stack her schedule in the exact way she plans to, Cady will gloat and play the ‘no one will ever have as perfect of a schedule as I do’ mix. 

Her schedule ends up looking a little more full on Tuesdays and Thursdays than she’d like, with her three humanities classes stacked on the long days and her one physics lecture on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Technically, she’s enrolled in a second upper division physics class, but it’s undergrad research, so not really a class, just a job that’s going to take up all of her time. At least it’s lab work and what she actually wants to do. She has quantum II at 9:15, which is a good balance between her two back to back lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though the imbalance between the days of the week is going to be unpleasant. At least she has a break between her long humanities lectures. 

Since her schedule isn’t the depressing one, Cady brags about it. 

“Alpha Rats, I think that you all should know that I had my registration appointment today; this morning at 8:30. It’s not the greatest time, but it was good enough. You see, my Alpha Rats, I thought that I’d be doing mostly major classes, but three of my four classes are Cores. What I got for Religion 2 isn’t my first choice, but the course description actually sounds interesting. I feel as though I should be more interested in my Ethics class, but I don’t think I’ll like it all that much. And I’m taking my third Core in French because I’m only a little insane; I haven’t properly used my French in a while and I don’t want to lose the skill. That’s all the information you stalkers will be getting because God knows that you weirdos will try to find out my exact schedule and stake out at my classrooms. So here’s ‘gloat,’ aka my victory speech.”

==

Regina, with her D1 athlete status, registers for classes on Tuesday. She’s only doing one French class: the one required French Lit course for the French degree, econ two, business calc II, and two core classes. She’s at 21 units, with one more class than fall quarter, but it's not quite an overload. At least she’s not in season, so she can handle it. Based on calc I,  calc II shouldn’t be too much of a pain, but Regina’s made that assumption before and it’s bitten her in the ass (see stats I and II, but she didn’t ask Cady for help during winter quarter of freshman year because she wasn’t going to be in debt to some nobody nerd). Although her dad says that she can take all the time she needs to graduate, especially with a double major in two different colleges, she's not going to be some loser who takes more than the normal four years to finish university. 

Quark may be able to gloat, but Regina has the better schedule. She’s taking one more class than Quark, but she only has two back to back classes, on Mondays and Wednesdays, so it’s considerably better than any of her previous schedules. Plus, being in soccer’s off season means that she doesn’t have to stack her classes in the morning. 

The NCAA tournament means that she only has one game a week until they’re knocked out, though SBU is travelling for their first round since they’re not even seeded. A Friday game means that her homework schedule is changing. Her math assignments are always due on the Friday of the week that they’re assigned, so travelling on Wednesday and playing on Friday means that the only time she has to do it is on Thursdays, though away trips are always packed. Theoretically, she could just ask for an extension, but emailing her prof sounds exactly like the headache she doesn’t want to deal with. 

Travel for away games, specifically for NCAA tournaments, is two days before the game and not first thing in the morning, so Regina can get away with staying up late on Tuesday listening to Quark’s victory playlist instead of worrying that she’s going to sleep through the travel plans. Of course, Regina takes full advantage of the fact that she is travelling for her game and skips art history (sleeps through her alarm and the class, only to be woken up by Addie half an hour before they have to be on the bus to the airport). 

Without question, Addie is Regina’s favourite teammate. Addie, who is graduating at the end of fall quarter, is going to abandon Regina with her idiot teammates who don’t hug as well as she does, who don’t listen to Regina refuse to talk about her problems but still provide the necessary comfort, who don’t let her be angry and stew in that anger until it’s actually a problem. She’s going to have a new captain, someone who she isn’t as familiar and close with, who she doesn’t want to not talk about her problems with, who isn’t going to check that she isn’t overworking herself but allowing her to push herself. Regina is someone who is incredibly resistant to change, unless she initiates it. She’s only played two seasons with Addie, and while whoever the next captain is, she’ll have played three seasons with, she’s not ready to have someone else deal with her problems. This really isn’t something that she should be worried about right now, especially since she’s got at least one more game with Addie and she’ll “always be one text away” (Addie’s words, not Regina’s). Regina, who normally sits on her own during travel days, sits next to Addie on the flight to North Carolina and falls asleep on her shoulder somewhere over Colorado. 

Exhausted after travelling and training, Regina doesn’t even attempt to listen to Quark on Thursday. She passes out as soon as she’s showered and in bed after team dinner, opting to lay on her stomach and develop a crick in her neck while her teammates hang out. Addie checks in with her on Friday morning on the pregame walk, but Regina doesn’t have the words to say that she’s worried about Addie graduating, about this being their last game together, about expectations and realities and being better than before but Addie’s graduating, so how will Regina be better than before when Addie’s going to be gone? It’s all quite pathetic, honestly. 

The fact that this could be Addie’s last game looms large over Regina and the pressure forces her to perform. It’s not as though she wasn’t going to perform without the pressure, but it’s imperative that Addie’s season stretches on (the other seniors don’t matter as much to Regina just because she’s not as close to them). Wake Forest is a good team. They’re the second seed, going against unseeded South Bay. No one thinks that the Seals are going to win. Regina needs to win so Addie can keep playing with her. For at least one more game. 

Regina’s hungry for a goal. It’s evident in the way that she’s a little more scrappy, a little quicker to shoot, a little bit more aggressive on the press. She’s going to win this game if it kills her. She scores early in the second half on a shot from just outside the box, the keeper just barely getting a finger on it, but not enough to keep it out. It breaks the deadlock, but Regina doesn’t have the time to celebrate. 1-0 is a flimsy lead and Wake Forest can even the score in a matter of minutes; Regina needs a second goal. Three minutes later, on a Wake Forest corner, Aria scores an own goal. Regina tamps down her homicidal urges, lining up for the restart. On the breakaway with about a minute left on the clock, Regina smokes a defender with a simple body fake and cut, and suddenly it’s just her and the goalkeeper. Regina hasn’t practiced going one on one against a keeper in a long time, but she has to put this in the net. Now isn’t the time for showmanship, so she doesn’t go for the chip or any sort of flick, she swivels her hips to sell a cut and once the keeper has committed to her right, Regina cuts left and immediately takes a touch forward to get out of the keeper’s reach and taps the ball into the net. It’s so fundamentally not Regina George–who typically will take any opportunity to show off and make her opponent cry in embarrassment from how bad Regina made her look–that all of her teammates check in when she celebrates at the bench (since the likelihood of Wake Forest scoring with 27 seconds left on the clock, Regina allows herself to celebrate). Desperate, frustrated, and embarrassed, Wake Forest tries for a long shot buzzer beater but the ball bounces into Maya’s hands and the Seals waste the remaining time. Relieved that Addie has at least one more game, Regina jumps into her captain’s arms, absolutely beaming. 

As much as Regina loves soccer, she’s rarely satisfied with her performance, but today is a different story. It’s not as though she’s not always hungry for a goal, not always pushing to be the best player on the team, playing without a purpose, because she is. She writes who and why she plays on her wrist every game as a reminder as to why she’s pushing herself so hard, and “ADDIE BECKETT” stares up at her from the dirty tape on her left wrist. Today feels like more than just a win, and not solely because they’re moving on to the next round. 

Addie either doesn’t see her own name on Regina’s wrist or elects not to ask. Regina peels it off and ticks the trash into her sock before she’s dragged away to do media. 

== 

“Alpha Rats, you’re almost done. Thanksgiving break is right around the corner and the one perk of going to a private school is that we get the whole week off. Personally, I don’t understand why people celebrate Thanksgiving because if you think about it, you’re celebrating colonialism. Of course, blah blah, separate the art from the artist and it’s transformed into a day of being grateful and appreciative of the people and circumstances of your life, but I still don’t get why there’s a whole day dedicated to it. Oh well, maybe this is my ‘foreign’ sentiment emerging from the woodwork. Regardless of the upcoming break, I have work to do. Here’s Wander. And remember folks, I’m Quark and I do what I want.”

The mute button clicks loudly in the otherwise silent room, the headphones not even on yet. Cady revels in the silence for a moment, a reprieve from the constant chaos of Blue’s Clues. She slips the headphones on and pulls out her notebook, quantum homework not even started yet. Cady doesn't plan on talking for the rest of her shift, even planning to stay longer than usual in the event that she doesn’t get as much done as she intends to. 

Of course, Cady doesn’t finish nearly as much as she wants to, but bikes home regardless of her progress an hour and a half after her shift ends, desperate for at least a little sleep before her next quantum lecture. Laying in bed unable to fall asleep, thoughts of Regina flit through her mind, as if Regina doesn't already take up space in Cady’s brain. Cady needs to get a grip on her subconscious because there’s no reason that she should be thinking about Regina, with whom Cady is still unsure of their relationship. 

Surprisingly, Regina shows for art history. Not that it matters because they’re working on the project outside of class, but it just means that Cady can take notes under Regina’s heavy gaze, which has become the norm for this class. As always, Cady is diligent in her notes, though she’s not particularly worried about this class: Cady practically micromanages the project and Regina is actually quite a good writer when it comes to academic writing and certainly has the charisma to carry their presentation. 

When it comes to her finals, Cady’s not exactly worried, only about quantum I. Art history is the presentation and essay, which Cady and Regina are going to ace, without a doubt. German is a paper and oral exam, but German is similar enough to English that the only problem is remembering words’ genders. Religion is a paper, which is easy enough, though she might struggle on the structure (essays have never been her strong suit). While she doesn’t enjoy coding, the instructions that she already has for her advanced MatLab don’t look bad. And when in doubt, she can ask Jessie who is considerably better at coding. Quantum will have a very generous curve, of course, but she’s going to set the curve, so she’s been studying. 

Janis sits in the studio with Cady on Thursday, but Cady legitimately doesn’t have time to host, so she just puts on one of her playlists and does practice problems while Janis draws. She should probably properly do her job, but Cady is quite occupied with getting a good enough grade. Like always, Cady talks herself through her homework, talking through her thought process as she solves her homework problems. Her focus is disturbed when the phone rings. 

“‘Ello, how can I help you?”

“Hi Quark. I’m pretty sure you’re unaware that your mic is unmuted, unless you intend to make us suffer by listening to you talk about absolute nonsense.”

It takes Cady a second to answer, registering the voice as Regina George. Not only is it the voice, it’s also Regina’s trademark bitchiness. “Oh! So sorry, I’m really out of it trying to study. I’ll make sure to hit the mute button, thanks.” 

As soon as Cady hangs up, she spins in the chair, startling Janis on the couch. 

“That was Regina George. As in your former roommate Regina George. As in my project partner Regina George. As in the Regina George who I think had a crush on me last year but I genuinely don’t know.”

“Caddy. There’s no way that Regina George would listen to the dorky ass campus radio at,” Janis pulls her phone out to check the time, pausing as she breaks eye contact. “1:42 in the morning when she almost always went to sleep at 10.”

“I talk to her, in person, at least once a week. I’m pretty sure I know what her voice sounds like.”

“The phone can make voices sound different, especially land lines like that one.”

“Nothing you’re going to say is going to convince me that Regina George didn’t just call the LSBU office, just to tell me, Quark, that my mic was unmuted. And if it wasn’t Regina, someone with a similar voice and the same unrepentant rudeness that only rich white girls can pull off just called me. Wait, oh my freaking God, Janis. She called earlier this quarter, asking about how I make my playlists. Regina George is an Alpha Rat, oh my God.”

“There’s absolutely no way Regina George is a regular listener of your radio show. I mean this with love, Caddy, but listening to the campus radio at 1 AM twice a week is dork behaviour that Regina would never engage with.”

“I’d prove it to you if I didn’t think Regina would hit me with a bus.”

After double checking her mic twice, Cady goes back to her homework. It’s hard to refocus on her homework when the fact that Regina’s listening to the show is now a whole thing, but she’s working hard. She doesn’t finish the assignment with Regina taking up too much space in her brain.

Friday afternoon marks the beginning of the Thanksgiving break, with Gabby taking the train home to Sacramento right after lunch and Janis flying home to Hawai’i that afternoon. Damian has a flight to Seattle on Saturday morning to visit family and AJ and her girlfriend drive down to San Diego on Sunday morning. The house is silent, far too empty with only one person living there. Blue’s Clues might be quiet but Cady’s life is anything but: she’s filling out paperwork to finalise her employment in Dr. Hsu’s lab, catching up on the assignments she has to grade, apply to that position at housing, and put together her material for the week of daytime DJing. 

Out of sheer curiosity, Cady checks the SBU soccer Instagram (she definitely wasn’t checking whoisquark to see if they saw the schedule change for the break, she’s not that concerned with who knows her) and finds that the Seals are playing on Wednesday for the NCAA tournament. Regina, as weird as she’s been, is going to be playing against UNC in Chapel Hill, and Cady is already seriously considering watching, even though Regina will never know. Not that she needs to know at all nor will she ever know. 

Working on playlists isn’t a particularly gruelling activity, but it is something that takes a lot of effort. Since she doesn’t have anything prepared, Cady spends her Monday shift chatting into the void, talking about the quality of the professors in the Math department. 

“You can’t tell me that Dr. Laurent, who looks like a gust of wind will knock him over, is senile enough to be teaching differential equations. He fell asleep during my final in the spring last year and I swear on my dad’s not yet occupied grave that everyone in that class thought he might be dead. Not only that there was one class in the middle of the quarter where he just, like, glitched in the middle of class and went dead silent and didn’t move for probably a solid 20 seconds and I thought he was having a stroke. I was texting my friend in the class who had gone to a conference like, ‘what do I do? Should I help the man?’ I think that if a prof looks like they could die in the middle of the quarter, they shouldn’t be teaching, regardless of how competent they are. They could be healthy as a horse but you’re stressing the students out, my guy.”

Unsure of her audience, Cady just keeps talking about the professors she’s had, not always naming the classes. Technically, today is her break. She’s not doing any work aside from speaking at ghosts about her bad professors, but she can only really talk about the profs she’s had for so long in the three hour shift. As much as she doesn’t want to do work, Cady has work to do. With an unknown amount of workers, Cady just says “It’s time for me to do some work, and by ‘work,’ I mean building some playlists for the rest of the week and the next two very busy weeks. I got a call a bit ago concerning my process for how I choose the vibe for each show, so I’m going to literally do it right now, on air. I really hope that none of my Alpha Rats are listening right now because that takes away the mystery. And if I see this on that stupid Instagram account, I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do, but I will do something. 

“So, I’m kind of going for a ‘refresh’ type of vibe for the next week, so I’m looking for songs that feel like a breath of fresh air. Remember: I’m Quark, and I do what I want, so all the playlists I make are just the vibes that I think a song gives off. I have a foundation, composed of the first handful of songs that came to mind when I thought of this inspiration, so the next big fo time is going to be me listening to songs incredibly intensely, so I hope that none of the current listeners–which I hope is a low number–listen to my normal shift next week. 

“I don’t exactly have a plan for the rest of the week, and I would prefer it if we didn’t play the bot, so I’m probably going to play some of the music I just typically enjoy, sans theme. It’s not my greatest work, but I don’t exactly have the time to make playlists for the next seven or so days. Anyway, I’ve been obsessed with this song and it’s the first one of this set I’m making, so this is ‘Alice’ by Your Neighbors. I’ll be queuing songs while this runs and give some commentary on the song playing. I hope this works; we aren’t supposed to talk over songs.”

Cady doesn’t really have a reason as to why ‘Alice’ is currently her favourite song, but she finds herself humming along to the sweet melody. She’s obsessed, it’s been on repeat for a week, and it isn’t likely that the song will leave her rotation. Talking through her songs isn’t something she’s likely to do again, but she doesn’t exactly hate talking about her songs. It’s almost all too intimate, but keeping the lights dim and the curtains drawn gives her some sort of sense of safety. Only a little scared this is going to be what gives herself away, Cady’s careful in what she says. Certain songs are vivid reminders of the in-between era of her and Regina, where she laid out in the gardens with her discman (it died over the summer but Cady will never not be a fan of physical media but she doesn’t care for vinyl records) while ignoring her differential equations homework, Janis crocheting away and talking to Damian, convincing him that college is not the place for him. In a life where the universe is thumbing through the pages of Cady’s life at a breakneck pace, she hardly has the time to slow it down and just enjoy or reflect anymore–all she had before moving to America was time. 

==

Quark speaks on stars on Tuesday. Regina’s in North Carolina and grateful that Quark is hosting in the middle of the day: the time difference would have killed her, probably, with the brutal training regime that Joey rules with an iron fist. She’d missed the show on Monday, which she’s incredibly jealous of all the listeners because apparently Quark was making playlists for their regular shift and detailing the process. Quark details living outside America, in what seems like a pretty rural area, and being able to see the stars from her backyard. The awe in their voice is palpable, supplying Regina with the urge to look up at the stars and try to identify constellations. 

Regina doesn’t listen to Quark on Wednesday, her pregame routine keeping her occupied.

Quark doesn’t speak on Thursday. It feels like a blow, much like the first round loss. Regina can’t put her emotional well being on this DJ who has no clue that she exists. Her family (her dad, sister, and gym bros) had all flown out to Chapel Hill to watch her play, and she’s disappointed all of them. She flies home to Burbank with her family for Thanksgiving, though she knows she’s being a downer.

Regina doesn’t listen on Friday, occupied with her sister and actually spending time with the boys that are like her annoying little brothers. They know better than to ask about soccer, but she spends time in the backyard, playing one touch passes against the low wall in the garden. 

Regina doesn’t listen on Saturday, in the gym with Shane and Aaron during Quark’s shift. She says “gym” very generously because it’s a squat rack, a whole ton of plates and barbells, and a treadmill. Aaron’s playlist blares from Shane’s giant speaker in the corner of the garage, not giving Regina the opportunity to disguise her listening with her AirPods. 

Regina flies back to San Jose on Sunday, listening to one of her Spotify playlists rather than the radio. She only has a week and then finals (of which she only has to attend one of them because the other three are papers) before she can go back home for winter break. Since the season is officially over, they only have weights twice a week and actual practices are shorter and few and far between (only twice a week). She’s expected to train over the break, and she will, but she has got to get better. 

Week Ten is a whirlwind of activity. Regina goes to all of her classes, meets with Cady on Tuesday to finalise their essay (see Regina fixes her structure while Cady’s analysis is tweaked to look like they edited it) and practice their presentation (which Regina makes only slightly aesthetic and Cady actually makes it effective with what she calls bang boxes), listens to Quark in the Caution Tape kitchen as she works on the translation of Gabriel García Márques short story “Death Constant Beyond Love” for her translation final, lifts with Addie on Wednesday and Friday, goes to training on Tuesday and Thursday, and studies rates of change every afternoon. Thursday finds her exhausted, sleeping through Quark’s shift, though it might be for the better because there’s no way that the final review for calc would be any help to her on no sleep. 

Thankfully, Regina’s math final is Monday morning, so she waltzes into the room, only kind of wishing that she’d gotten Cady’s help to review rather than her professor’s because Cady is by far the better teacher. It takes her the whole three hours to complete the exam, but the feeling that she failed doesn’t sit in her gut like the weight of the UNC loss as she exits the room. 

Flying to Burbank out of SJC is probably Regina’s favourite flight ever, and that’s saying something because her dad has a pilot's license, owns a Cessna, and Regina goes flying with him pretty regularly. That being said, there’s something about sitting on a Southwest flight, being served water and those really well seasoned pretzels over central California, seeing the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles come into view through the prime window seat she always gets. Shane picks her up at Burbank and they go through the In-n-Out drive thru while Shane talks about nothing of substance. 

According to the LSBU schedule on their website, Quark is slated to host at their regular time, so Regina plans to be awake for the shift. It shouldn’t matter anymore: Regina George doesn’t develop crushes on anonymous campus DJs, and she definitely doesn’t think about them during her breaks. Regardless of the fact, Regina is in bed, watching Squid Game on her TV and listening to Quark on her phone.

“Last shift of the quarter, Alpha Rats. I hope you’re not feeling too bad about your exams–God knows I am–but it’s the last show of the quarter, and of the year because I’m not doing any front-facing work for LSBU over the break. If you don’t know, the deadline for grade submissions is December 18th, so you have less than a whole week to wait to learn if you need to take circuits again.”

Regina hardly pays attention to either her show or the music, listening out for Quark’s voice more than anything. She really doesn’t have to be awake, and she probably shouldn’t be (she’s doing work for her dad concerning business management over break so her sleep schedule really can’t be too fucked up), but her thing about Quark has planted its roots in her brain, in her chest, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to relinquish its grasp on her. 

“With this hour coming to a close, I shall be signing off now. Yes, I know it’s earlier than normal, but I have an early flight to Chicago tomorrow. To my Alpha Rats who are still on campus, I wish you safe travels and happy holidays. I’m Quark and I always will be.”