Work Text:
Chapter One
Detroit, Michigan
January 1983
The sharp click of her pixie boots broke the silence of the classroom. Detention began five minutes earlier, but she had gotten lost in the maze of the school; she’d never been in detention before—not at this school anyway.
Tracey tasted her cherry lip gloss and clutched her textbooks to her chest as she slid into the middle row after spotting some undesirables in the back.
“Ugh,” she muttered under her breath. She had intended to go to the mall with Brie and Lauren until her curmudgeon English teacher dropped her a pink slip for “backtalk.” All she had done was say she didn’t read the assigned chapter of The Great Gatsby because it was boring and she had better things to do than read about rich people crying and playing tennis.
She propped her head on her hands instead of reading the biology notes she had skimmed off some nerdy guy for a piece of bubblegum.
“Tracey De Santa,” a dry voice announced. Peering over her shoulder, some old geezer with a clipboard scowled at her. “Nice of you to finally show up.”
“Whatever,” she grumbled. “I don’t haunt the halls of the dungeon.” The teacher glared at her, but he decided not to press the issue.
The room turned back to silence while Tracey inspected her manicure, thinking about what she would’ve bought at the mall instead of being in some dusty classroom full of degenerates.
Scanning the people around her, Tracey spotted a guy to her right staring at the board while twiddling his thumbs. Her first thoughts upon seeing him were, “What the fuck is that tattoo?” and, “He definitely spends a lot of time in here. Total stereotypical bad boy.” He fit the cliché: long brown hair, an old leather jacket, tattoos on his hands, although she couldn’t make out the designs from this distance, and she assumed his pocket held some weed.
Suddenly, his eyes landed on hers as if he felt the weight of her staring. She looked away and studied the wooden grain of her desk. The boy’s amber eyes and dark angular brows gave him a mean look even with a neutral expression.
The clock ticked, the ancient radiator hissed and clanked, a paper plane crashed into a globe, and the teacher snored.
She jerked and blinked out of her daydreaming as a wadded piece of paper flew at her head and hit her desk. “What the fuck?” she whispered, glancing over.
It was the guy she had been busted staring at. “You got a smoke?”
Tracey raised her brow. “Really?” But she automatically began opening her leather purse, digging out her pack of Virginia Slims she had “borrowed” from the gas station.
Across the room, the boy watched her fumble through her bag while his eyes raked down her body, taking in her obviously expensive pink nails, curled blonde hair, name-brand clothes, and a set of great legs under her skirt. “Too cold for that,” he thought, tsking mentally. “But nice to look at.”
Then she produced a long cigarette and met his gaze.
“Here,” she mouthed.
He looked at the sleeping teacher and slipped out of his desk, grabbing the cigarette before anyone could make a peep about it.
“Thanks,” he whispered, inspecting the cigarette. “Of course she’d smoke Slims. That’s no Winston.”
He’d pay her back later. He didn’t do unpaid debts.
—
A few days later, Tracey leaned back against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette and waiting for her mom to pick her up. Of course, Amanda ran late.
She toed the frosty ground. “Bet her ‘tennis lesson’ ran late.”
“Hey, cigarette girl,” a gravelly voice called.
She pushed herself off the wall and saw the guy from detention.
“You bumming another one?”
“Nah. That shit was too European for me,” he said, pulling his pack of Reds out. “Here ya go.”
“What is that?”
He smirked. “A cigarette.”
Tracey accepted the cigarette, placing it behind her ear, although they both knew it would end up in the trash as soon as he walked away.
He lit up a cigarette of his own and stood by her. “Your folks runnin’ late?”
“Yeah,” she said, rolling her blue eyes. “As usual.”
“No chauffeur?”
“Oh please. You take my cigarette and mock me?”
“Nah. Just teasing.”
“You got a name?”
“Sure.”
A beat of silence followed.
“Well?”
“I answered your question.”
“Fine. What is your name?”
He took a drag before replying. “Trevor.”
Before she could hold back the thought, she blurted out, “You look like a Trevor.”
“What the hell does that mean?” He tilted his head an inch, but before Tracey could scramble an answer, her mom’s Mercedes rolled to the curb. “Get in, sweetie. We are already late!”
Tracey rushed into the car, boots crunching in the snow. “I think you’re the late one, Mom!”
Trevor watched with a grin as the car disappeared. “Mouthy thing.”
Debt officially paid.