Chapter Text
“Teagan! Come on, let’s go!”
Teagan groaned and tugged her duvet back over her head, attempting to muffle her father’s insistent calls. Sunlight hadn’t peaked through her turquoise curtains yet. No loud banging from outside the brownstone had signaled the beginning of the day yet. The alarm had to have gone off way too early. There was no chance it was 7:00 AM already.
Teagan glanced at her alarm clock sitting calmly on the bedside table, as if it hadn’t just made a total racket. Bright red numbers glared at her. 7:06 A.M.
Oh.
She wasn’t in New York anymore.
She forgot.
A squeak echoed through the room as the door swung open. “Teagan, I swear-” Mike, Teagan’s Da, started. He took one look at his daughter buried beneath the duvet and sighed. He crouched down, bringing himself eye-to-eye with the lump of blankets.
“Tea, come on, sweetheart, you got to get up.” Mike reached to pull the duvet off of her head, but Teagan yanked it out of his reach.
“No. I don’t want to get up.”
Coldness ran over Teagan’s entire body as Mike snatched the entire duvet off of the fourteen year old. “You have to go, Teagan. You loved school back in New York,” he tried.
Teagan sat up, giving up on the safety of the bed and her black subconscious. “School here will be notably nothing compared to my school.”
“Then your classes will be a breeze.” Mike ruffled her already frizzy curls. “Come on, you don’t want Devin to steal all of the bacon, right?” he taunted, already halfway out of the door.
Another groan proclaimed all of her annoyance to her father. Unfortunately for her, her older brother would inhale every last crumb of bacon if he could.
She dragged herself over to a box labeled with her Da’s messy scribble that she still hadn’t unpacked. She leaned over and rummaged around for her favorite purple striped shirt and ripped jeans. If she absolutely had to go today, she deserved to wear her favorite outfit.
Five minutes later, she shuffled down the stairs into a living room that still smelled of cardboard boxes and cleaning spray, even though her family had unpacked over a week ago.
“Morning, Sunshine. How’d ya sleep?” Teagan’s other father, Will, said. He leaned over the marble countertop, grasping onto his coffee mug for dear life.
Teagan glanced at her brother, whose eyes never glanced up from his Instagram feed. She snatched the last two bacon pieces before sitting as far as she could from Devin and shoved it into her mouth.
“Fine, I guess,” she mumbled through her bacon.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Devin flogged.
Teagan crumpled up a stray paper towel and launched it at her brother’s head. It landed short of her target, bouncing off of his shoulder.
Devin dropped his phone before yelling, “What the fuck was that for?”
“Devin! Language!” Will chastised. He sat his coffee mug down, the clink of the glass echoing through the room. “Teagan, don’t throw stuff at your brother. Please. You’re fourteen.” He pressed his hands into the kitchen island. “Look, the move has been hard. I get it. But please, behave.”
Teagan only half paid attention, deciding that the dead tree branches outside the kitchen window were more interesting than her dad’s lecture.
Although, her dad’s lecture was probably the most exciting thing in Hawkins, Indiana.
“Also, please don’t embarrass your Da. It’s his first day too. I know you think having a dad that’s a teacher at your school is a social death sentence, but it’s really not,” Will snapped Teagan back into reality.
She rolled her eyes. “He’ll embarrass himself before we even get the chance to,” she muttered.
Devin smirked across the table. “Do you want to repeat that for Dad, Tea?”
Luckily, Mike rushed down the stairs, stopping momentarily to check his watch. He turned towards the island, glancing over his family. “Devin, Teagan, in the car. We have to go.”
Devin groaned. “Da. It’s 7:20. We’ll make it on time. We won’t even have a chance to be late.”
Mike’s eyebrows shot up into his hair. “In the car, Devin. Now,” he ordered.
Devin one-shouldered his backpack and walked straight out the door. Teagan at least had the decency to say bye to her Dad before shoving her arms through her winter coat and grabbing her flute.
The cold slapped her in the face the instant she walked out the door. January in Indiana is seriously no joke.
Teagan slammed her locker shut, the metallic clang muffled by the numerous teenagers roughhousing and gossiping about their Christmas break. The loudness rose slowly as more teenagers filed into the high school.
Freshman boys hooted and hollered while senior girls sipped Starbucks. Juniors gripped their books as if losing one would end their careers. Sophomores faded into the background.
Similar to New York, but it wasn’t the same.
Teagan opened her forest green locker once more. The binders were in place, in schedule order. Textbooks she knew would sit in the bottom of her locker for the semester were in place. Her winter coat stayed stuffed behind her back.
It was definitely stupid that she had to carry her books around. The whole reason she begged her dads to get her the purple backpack was because she thought she would be lugging it around all year.
She only lugged it around for a semester.
Teagan shut the locker again. She needed to get out of the hallway before she cried in front of all of these kids.
Her Da’s English classroom wasn’t very far. She had memorized the floor plan already. A straight shot down the 200 hallway, four doors on the right. The classroom was filled with soft lighting and cushions and books galore. She helped her Da set it up over Christmas break. It would be a safe space: exactly how her Da designed it.
Readjusting the binders in her arms, Teagan turned down the 300 hallway, scanning the numbers until she arrived at her first period class. The door was locked, and the window inside only revealed an empty classroom with the lights shut off.
She slid down against the wall, setting her binders next to her. Her old Honors Geometry teacher was always early. She would unlock the classroom and Teagan and Maddie would just sit inside and chill until the warning bell rang and Maddie had to run to her Health class.
Her phone vibrated with a text. Maddie.
Have a good first day!!! Hope your school isn’t a total bore.
Teagan smiled and opened her messages to respond.
No signal. Of course.
A jingle of keys snapped her attention back to the hallway. A man—probably a little older than Teagan’s dads—fumbled with his keys before dropping them straight onto the floor. He sighed, shifting his tumbler to his other already full arm.
Teagan snatched the keys and held them out to the man. He smiled. “Thank you, young lady.” He fumbled with the keys some more before unlocking the classroom door. He paused, and turned to Teagan. “Wait, are you my new student? Teagan, right?”
“Yep. That’s me.” She grabbed her binders from the floor in one slightly awkward swoop.
“Oh! That’s awesome.” he stuck out his hand before realizing he still had his keys in his hand. Tossing the keys into the tote bag he was carrying, he stuck his hand out once again. “Mr. Truett, Honors Geometry and regular old Geometry.”
Teagan shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
Mr. Truett swung open the classroom door and gestured for Teagan to enter. He followed shortly after, throwing his stuff onto the wooden desk shoved into the corner.
“You’re the daughter of Mr. Byers-Wheeler, correct? The new junior English teacher? Oh also feel free to sit anywhere you’d like to. I’m not big on assigned seating. Kids are gonna talk no matter where you put them,” Mr. Truett said, turning on the SmartBoard on the whiteboard.
She set her stuff down on the desk in the corner of the second row, taking a seat before answering, “Yep, he’s kinda embarrassing. Sorry.”
Mr. Truett laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I bet my daughter felt the exact same way too.” He checked the time on the black clock sitting right above the door. “Why hasn’t the warning bell rang yet? Where are my students?”
The bell rang with a loud rattle. Students slowly trickled in, tossing their stuff on the desks before making their way over to their friends.
A sigh of relief escaped Teagan. Maybe her first class wouldn’t be so bad after all.
A shadow covered her desk.
“You’re in my seat.”