Chapter Text
Alfred awoke to his alarm blaring in his ears. His room was slowly coming into view as he scrambled to find his phone to make it quit with the wailing sound, which had been next to his right ear, so it would actually wake him up. While he fiddled with his phone with one hand, he reached onto the nightstand to find his glasses with the other, so he could actually see farther than 5 feet ahead of him. As his fingers found the glasses, he finally got the alarm to stop screaming at him. He slipped the glasses over the bridge of his nose, blinked, and stared at one of his posters that came into view. He was failing to remember why he'd even set that alarm. His gaze slid across the room, with a still-blanking mind. There was a backpack hanging from the doorknob of his bedroom door. But it was summer. Why was it there?
An integral piece of information floated back into Alfred's mind.
Oh, shit, school starts again today.
He looked at his phone again. The lock screen read 7:03 AM. School started at eight. He would be fine, he wasn't late.
I'll start this year better, hopefully. Just gotta introduce myself confidently and whatever else. He got out of his bed, almost tripped over some laundry he left on the floor, and made his way to the dresser. Thankfully, his self from a day ago had a premonition or something that let him know he was going to forget that it was the first day of school, and there was a black t-shirt with the NASA logo on it and a pair of blue basketball shorts laid sloppily over his drawers. Not too insane, but not formal at all.
Perfect.
He changed clothes, slung his backpack over his shoulder, hastily ran a brush through his auburn hair, and headed into the kitchen. His younger sister, Madeline, was already sitting at the table, dressed much nicer and eating a bowl of cereal.
"Mom already left for work," she called from behind him. Alfred was staring at the pantry, deciding between making himself lunch or just eating whatever the cafeteria would serve because he had enough time. He decided against making himself lunch, which was kind of pointless because you can do a lot in an hour. He just didn't feel like concerning himself with it.
"Oh, okay." He scanned the pantry a few more times and turned back to his sister. "Where's the cereal?"
"This is the last of it. Mom wants us to get some more on the way home from school." Alfred grumbled. He always got stuck with menial tasks. He hated menial tasks. He brushed off his annoyance now, but he knew he was going to want to rip his face off when he was in the checkout line.
"Quit pouting, we gotta go soon. Grab a granola bar or something." Oh, that was right. He would be walking to school. His mom had the car.
He grabbed one of the granola bars. It was better than nothing.
"We're here now." The GPS on Alfred's phone said they had arrived at the joint middle and high school.
He decided to make a mental note of his sister's appearance so he could find her easier when they were walking home. She wore a white button up shirt and a red, knee length skirt. As usual in the Jones family, she also wore glasses, and today she tied her wavy, strawberry-blonde hair into twin-tails. Hopefully he'd remember that.
"See you later, Maddie," he said, waving his sister off to her school. He followed that with a "Don't do anything I would do," which incited a giggle from her.
"Bye, Alfred. Don't die or forget the cereal." It was Madeline's turn to say goodbye.
"No promises," Alfred laughed.
He walked through the school's doors. He was going to some new high school built on the campus of his old middle school, a large sign he had seen earlier and his GPS told him it was called 'Goldenwood High School.' He just wanted to find his friends and get the day over with. He walked around to find the MPR so he could just waste the minutes before the bell talking to Ivan or Kiku.
When he did finally find it, there was still twenty minutes until the bell. He had accidentally misread the bell times on the schedule he got, school was going to start at 8:30 instead. More time to kill, Alfred supposed.
Kiku and Ivan waved him over too a table in the corner of the room.
"This our table?" Alfred pulled out a chair next to Kiku and set his black backpack down.
"If we dare give into the cliche," joked Kiku. Alfred noticed that he didn't mispronounce the L as much as he used to.
Five bucks on "I visited a speech therapist over the summer."
"So, what did you guys do over the summer?" He said, seeing if he would cash out on his mental bet.
"I visited some family in Russia for a while," recounted Ivan, who pulled out his phone to show some pictures. One from the plane ride, some selfies taken by cousins that momentarily stole his phone, and several photos of random sunflowers. "Aside from that, not much."
"I went to San Francisco and saw a play." Kiku too brought out his phone, to show photos from his trip. There were a few of the city and hotel room, and one of the playbill in his lap before the show started. "I also saw a speech therapist."
Bingo.
It was now Alfred's turn to share.
"I went camping a couple times, and visited some family for a reunion, but they're just in Los Angeles." To complete the cycle, he fished his phone out of his pocket and showed some pictures, most of which were from camping, but there was also a family photo he forgot to skip over. But it was too late, his phone already in Ivan's hand, being shown to a nodding Kiku.
Both of them were either too used to Alfred looking embarrassing or they hadn't seen him. It was likely the former. In the remaining time before the bell, they compared schedules and headed to class, leaving Alfred on his own to find Room 112 for Algebra 1 with a Mr. Oxenstierna.
At long last, he found the classroom, with three seconds to spare before the late bell. He scrambled to find a seat, and ended up sitting next to some girl with shoulder-length light brown hair named Emma.
His mind was wandering for the first part of attendance.
"Emma Janssens?"
The girl next to him raised her hand.
"Amelia Jones?"
Crap.
Whatever. He'd deal with that later. He raised his hand to get it over with. The teacher stared at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Sir, there is no room for pranks in an algebra classroom. Please only raise your hand when your name is called," Mr. Oxenstierna said, turning from him to call other names for attendance. Someone giggled from the back of the class.
Alfred didn't fight it, just let others think it was a joke or mistake. He wasn't going to be picked on for being trans this year.
The rest of the class was just introductions and rules, but Alfred stayed back after class to tell the teacher to just call him Alfred. He had a hard time explaining to the older man that yes, Amelia Jones was his legal name, but he didn't like it and preferred Alfred. Without saying he was transgender. He didn't know what people were like at this school yet.
The next class was almost the same. Room 135, World History, with Mrs. Héderváry. Although she seemed much more lighthearted, the same attendance disaster happened and he had to explain again.
The same thing happened in every class actually, in Mr. Kirkland's English class, Mr. Zwingli's P.E. class, Mr. Bonnefoy's French class, Mr. Adnan's Biology class, and Mr. Edelstein's Band class. He had to awkwardly explain the same thing to every teacher. Some understood more than others, but making his way through the day left him with a lingering sense of embarrassment.
And he still had to get the cereal.
As soon as the clock hit 3:30, Alfred grabbed his stuff and beelined to the exit.
I need to buy that cereal, he repeated to himself endlessly on his way to the grocery store. Something important was gnawing at the back of his head again, but his attempts at remembering it proved to be futile.
He was halfway to testing that thing he saw online about not being able to bite your own finger off because your brain just doesn’t let you when he finally found the one brand of cereal he and his sister could agree on.
That gnaw returned. He still could not remember, but brushed it off. He’d had a stressful day and passed it off as that.
The checkout line was making him consider biting his thumb off again. His brain would probably let him. Some middle aged guy was holding up the line by chatting nonstop with the cashier, who looked near Alfred’s own age. As their conversation progressed, his grip on the cereal box tightened, making his knuckles go white. Eventually, the man bid a slow farewell to the cashier, and Alfred got to the front of the line. As he was mindlessly setting the cereal box on the conveyer belt, a spark of recognition glimmered in the cashier’s eyes.
“Amelia?”
Alfred stared at him in mild shock. He read the cashier’s name tag. Mathias. From his seventh period band class. He should have remembered his face. If his memory served him correctly, he actually sat next to him. He was definitely going to be known as his deadname now.
“Dude, that was so funny! Mr. Edelstein looked so pissed off, man, anyway, what’s your actual name?”
Oh. He stammered for a moment.
“It’s Alfred, but you can just call me ‘The Hero.’” He gave an awkward thumbs-up as part of his failing plan to play it cool. Mathias laughed anyway.
“How’d you even pull that off?”
“I, uh, got my mom in on it.”
“That must have been hard to pull off.”
“Yeah, I guess, but my mom is pretty cool.”
Alfred rounded the corner towards his front door and lost the rock he was kicking down the sidewalk. It was a lovely 104 degrees in the late summer afternoon, and all he wanted to do was retreat to his air-conditioned room. Tucking the cereal under one arm, he reached for the keys in his backpack’s side pocket. At the back of his mind, he felt vaguely watched. He was still grasping for the keys, and turned to get a better look at his pocket. There was a figure staring at him, obscured by the shade of a tree.
He almost screamed.
The figure sighed.
“At least you got the cereal.”
“Maddie?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you under the tree? You almost gave your dear older brother a heart attack,” he dramatized, a hand to his forehead to seal the deal.
“It’s cooler in the shade.” Madeline stepped out of the shade, fully revealing she was in fact, herself, and probably not going to kill him.
“Why didn’t you just go inside?”
“I don’t have the keys. Mom isn’t home yet either.”
“Why didn’t you text me?”
“Mom, uh, took my phone.”
“Oh. Why weren’t you with me on the way home?”
“You forgot me.”
Oh. Alfred’s throat nearly closed with embarrassment. He tried to speak, but only a weird squeak came from his throat, which made Madeline laugh, giving him no other choice but to sharply elbow her in the shoulder, before unlocking the door.
“Dude, I could probably kiss whoever invented air conditioning right now.” He lazily set the cereal down on the counter and trudged his way to his room. It was in the exact same condition he left it in. Again, carefully avoiding rogue laundry on his floor, he threw his shoes off and flopped onto the bed. He mulled over the day and cringed. He wasn’t going to survive high school at this rate. He felt like that one law. He couldn't remember who coined it, but it was something like "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."