- Girls — Marina and the Diamonds -

There were many things that could screw up the many things that happened that morning, and because of any one of those possible screw ups, whether it be a single screw up or a combination of many, there were many more screw ups that could result. It just branched off of itself, didn't it, like some twisted tree of screw ups. Peridot knew that it probably wasn't healthy to think like that, analyzing every possible screw up and the baby screw ups that may result from it, but it wasn't like she could help it. It was sometimes helpful. It kept her from losing sight of her objective, whatever that might be at the time. It gave her time to preview. To gather as much possible anxiety and irrelevant fear before facing something in order to make herself as brittle and high-strung as actually healthy for a fifteen-year-old girl.

But regardless of any anxious foresight she claimed to have, Peridot could have never seen This Thing That Came until it did.

It was too obvious, for one, and I can hardly believe that she didn't think of it, but I am told that it may be because "obvious" only applied to people who had grown up on schoolgirl manga and awful fanfiction AUs where these tropes are common. I would be surprised if Peridot had even read a manga — I mean, there's no doubt that she'd seen one before, but read it? What a strange concept. Peridot's literary knowledge was broad but not genre-savvy; she'd read Homer and Shakespeare and Sun Tzu and the typical "greats", and admittedly she appreciated an Orson Scott Card novel once in a while (such worldbuilding! The complexity!) but romance was certainly not her thing. Also, she could be as thick as the trunk of a redwood.

It started on the first day of Peridot's sophomore year in high school, and by extension, on the first day of Peridot's attendance at the school itself. Last year she had attended a high school on the other side of the state; two years ago, a middle school three states away. In the past ten years of her life, Peridot could count six different foster homes in six different towns, each with varying stay lengths and degrees of pleasantness. She'd live her life with a family that always seemed too distant, droning through the minimalist routines that kept her alive, then something would happen (divorce once, abuse another time, financial issues another; it became a kind of game to predict what would break her foster family first) and she'd get shuffled into a drab car with a drab social worker and whisked to a whole new world. She'd been living with Family Six, the Yellowtails, for two months and considered them one of the best. The family itself got shaky at times, but matron of the home, Vidalia, had gone out of her way to make Peridot as comfortable as possible.

As she sat down in an empty seat and the school bus trundled away from the bus stop, Peridot found herself looking at her shoes, a spotless pair of black Converse. Definite upgrade from the battered flip-flops she'd come to Family Six in. A new backpack, full of binders, pens, and notebooks, leaned casually against her exposed arm — against the crisp loose sleeve of her green plaid shirt. She hadn't been completely on board with the entire new wardrobe, but since it was a public high school, the pleated skirts and Mary Jane shoes from Family Five's Catholic school had had to go. So out went the uniform and in came the dark-wash skinny jeans, the plaid tops, and a haircut that pulled her thick black hair into a short, vaguely triangular bob.

"Look at you, Dottie!" Vidalia had smiled that morning as Peridot came downstairs for breakfast. "Hold on! I gotta get a picture. Oh, I forgot to ask before...you don't mind if you're in the Christmas card this year, do you?"

Peridot had told her no, I don't mind, thank you ma'am, but the extensive transactions were really not necessary, and in response Vidalia just laughed.

"Extensive transactions? Girl, I'm just getting you some new threads. You haven't seen extensive until you see Onion's wishlist."

And Peridot had left, in addition to her backpack now holding a packed lunch in a brown paper bag. Instead of her name, Vidalia had sketched a surprising likeness of her face and it made Peridot smile. Which was good, because the new, round glasses frames were supposed to look substantially attractive when she smiled. Was attractiveness something she prized? She didn't think so. Gender expectations and teenage boys alike could go screw themselves. She put in her earbuds, turned on an obscure dubstep remix to drown out the world around her, and checked her school schedule for the seventh time.

Algebra II was her first hour class, taught by an older white man who put his hands on his hips too often and whose expressions ran only along the lines of someone who had just been told a very bad pun. He gave out a test on the first day, took one look at Peridot's score and pulled her aside to recommend she switch to the gifted mathematics program and to see the counselor after school about it. Then he gave out homework on the first day — Peridot decided she liked him.

Second hour: world history, taught by a young Polynesian woman who had blue streaks in her fluffy brown hair, a framed picture on her desk of a screaming baby, and an alarming amount of motivational posters about fish. Peridot only knew about the baby picture because while taking attendance, when "Malachite Lazuli" came up, Mrs. Lapis Lazuli's freckled face split into a devilish grin and she added in a mockingly peppy voice, "That's my daughter. Hi sunshine, you're here, aren't you?"

In the back corner, a tall "goth"-looking girl with bleached hair slid further down her seat and groaned. "No. Oh my god."

"Present in body, not in spirit," Mrs. Lazuli replied, stuck out her tongue, and continued taking attendance. At one point while talking about the syllabus, she "accidentally" knocked over the baby picture and used the opportunity to talk about what a terror her daughter was in her younger years. Peridot almost felt sorry for Malachite, who looked ready to drown herself in Mrs. Lazuli's fish tank, but she was too busy feeling sorry for whatever person had married the languid, carefree history teacher.

She didn't have time to wonder too long, though, because third hour was gym — dominated by a monstrous woman who answered to the name "Jasper Dominguez-Lazuli", but demanded she be called either "sir" or "Coach Jasper" or "if you wanna get on my good side, Major Dominguez. I didn't spend ten years in military service to get whiny 'whatever's from thirty hormonal twigs; I got enough of that at home". Like her wife, she was sarcastic as all hell and made it very easy for herself to get made fun of, but unlike her wife, the fun-making slipped easily under her pierced nose and would make heads roll if she happened to catch it. She'd made the class run a mile on the first day, which a very asthmatic Peridot had only completed by lying about her lap count (8 instead of 10). She was 90% sure that Coach Jasper had seen right through it, but let her go because the hour was over.

Wheezing into her inhaler and still smelling like sweat, a significantly less-composed Peridot made her way to an unnecessarily steep flight of stairs to her fourth hour class, sophomore-level biology. The only reason it was sophomore level was because Family Five's Catholic school had been double block and the science courses ran opposite to the normal public school system, so she'd taken both physics and chemistry in her freshman year. Otherwise, she mused, I should be leagues ahead of my peers. Perhaps I'll be able to fill in their gapped knowledge with my previous education, nyehehehehe.

The thought of being the smart one of the class filled her with determination (Undertale reference. Too advanced for the likes of common non-gaming clods, nyehehe) and Peridot attempted to climb the steps by twos instead. "What's with short kids and always running up by two steps?" a kid muttered as she passed.

She responded, "We're compensating for something." Her legs ached when she got to the top, though, and opening the door took effort especially as one was busy holding her notebooks and pencil case. A lot to prove.

Her first impression of the classroom G10 was the smell, a potent blend of formaldehyde and antibacterial wipes that only accented the overbright lights. Instead of desks, there were three rows of tables with two seats at each, and a good deal of them were already filled. Peridot scanned the walls for the clock and found it right above the spotless whiteboard — ten seconds to spare. Ugh, she'd taken too long changing. She was only almost late.

The class bell, a reverbing peal of a low treble that could be well compared to an actual church bell, sounded just as Peridot pulled her breath in and looked around for a seat, but she had barely begun to contemplate the various troubles that might come from the sides, the front or the back respectively before she was cut off by a sharp clacking of high heels. From a door at the back, a very tall woman strode into the classroom with her shoulders set and hands clasped behind her back. Her slim build was accented by the fitted black suit and skirt she wore, her angular face framed by an immaculate bob of chardonnay-blond hair. In sharp contrast to the otherwise conservative attire, the woman's slender neck and the top of her chest served as a blank canvas for the single yellow diamond pendant that hung there, and her bony hands for several thick rings and various bracelets that glittered in the classroom's harsh light.

"All students, rise and move to the back of the classroom. Do you honestly think I would let you choose your own seats?" The woman's words snapped like gunshots, like her shoes as she moved behind the island at the front. Everything about her entrance had sent the immediate message of do NOT mess with me, and though it intimidated Peridot, it filled her with relief that she would not have to act independently. Clutching her books, she scurried to the back with the other students (many of them younger-looking, obviously freshmen. What had she been anxious about again? These children didn't know what they were doing in high school, and the teacher commanded respect. Peridot felt that she would enjoy this class).

Without any other explanation, the woman glanced at a folder on the podium and pointed at the front, far left table. "Zhang, Jade," she read, and in silent obedience a small brown-haired girl stepped to the place. A broad-shouldered Indian boy followed at "Talwar, Obsidian," and out of habit Peridot composed herself as the teacher pointed to the center table and read off "Sun, Peridot Chen."

She preferred front row seats after all — oh, her awful eyes were just getting worse every year. Careful in monitoring her neutral expression, Peridot nodded to the teacher and took her place in the left chair. Give me a GOOD partner, please, she thought as the teacher glanced back down at the attendance sheet and opened her mouth, and just then, the handle of the classroom door clicked.

All nervous eyes swung to the door except the teacher's, who glared out at the class. "If someone doesn't open it, she may just have to stand there all day. Peridot, go get that."

Peridot was startled at the sudden call of her name, but the task was simple and nothing could go wrong from it. "Y…yes ma'am. Sorry ma'am." She became terribly aware of how quiet the room was, how loudly her new shoes squeaked on the white tile floor, how a few whispers arose when she couldn't figure out how to unlock the door at first. And when she opened it, the whispers rippled again, chorusing right behind her own thoughts at the newcomer.

She'd pushed easily past Peridot and lingered there at the front of the room, shifting her weight once into a fighter's stance, and with the radiant raw strength that coursed through her stout body, Peridot was quite surprised to see that the girl wasn't much taller than her. Torn jeans and combat boots, a purple top with a loose sleeve that very obviously showed the lacy strap of a black bra. She had one single-subject notebook and a cracked iPhone in her back pocket, from which a horrendously tangled pair of earbuds dangled and bounced against the girl's nicely shaped bottom.

Wait, what?

"Uh," the girl said, but she was looking at the teacher. "Sorry, Miss Diamond. My locker got stuck."

"Welcome back, Amethyst," Miss (?) Diamond said flatly. Somehow, it sounded too soft to call her Miss Diamond; Professor Diamond had a much nicer ring to it. "Take your seat."

In hindsight, Peridot probably should have sat down as soon as she'd opened the door, because when Miss Diamond gave that command, Amethyst very deliberately pulled out Peridot's assigned chair and sat in that assigned seat where Peridot's materials had been sitting on the assigned table. "Ahem," Peridot cleared her throat just as Miss Diamond cleared hers, and from behind a tuft of thick lavender hair, Amethyst glanced up.

"The other seat."

The girl shrugged and slid over to the chair on the right. "Whatever."

Whatever? Peridot looked to Miss Diamond helplessly, praying to all the deities she knew that Amethyst would be reprimanded again and assigned a new seat, but Miss Diamond simply turned back to the attendance list and continued calling names. Slowly, Peridot moved back to her chair and gave a sidelong glance to Amethyst. She'd taken out her phone and as her thumb scrolled down the cracked screen, Peridot noted her chipped glitter nail polish. Her lavender hair was voluminous as well as unreasonably long, a mane if anything, and quite similar actually to Coach Jasper's. It spilled over her shoulders, across her left eye, over the back of her chair and in the close proximity of their bodies, a lock even brushed obscenely against Peridot's thigh. So much for a good lab partner.

As "Rosales, Citrine" made her way to her seat and Miss Diamond began calling more names, Peridot dared open her mouth to the girl who slouched right next to her. "Excuse me," she whispered, or at least tried because she knew she could not whisper, "your artificially colored hair is invading my personal space. Would you mind removing it?"

Amethyst turned her head and the hair retreated from the simple laws of what happened when you moved the source of the hair, but Peridot found herself in a completely new level of uncomfortable as the girl's one exposed eye locked on hers. She had the darkest eyes Peridot had ever seen — black as onyx, almost blue. It seemed as if Amethyst had attempted winged eyeliner, but it smudged at the end and just blended into her purple eye shadow and tan skin. The eye flicked from Peridot's face down to her clothes, to her hands which she had folded on the table in front of her, and then back up to her face.

"No gods, no masters," she muttered. "It's got a mind of its own, homegirl. Chill."

It took Peridot a full five seconds to decipher what the other girl had meant by that, and by then, unknowingly to her in her blind anger, their conversation had already attracted the full attention of Miss Diamond.

"Couldn't you at least pull it back? It's a hazard in a lab setting, you know. You don't know — "

"Peridot, are you willing to share your conversation with the class?"

The cold voice, calling her name for the third time, shattered on the ground and sent a rush like icy water up Peridot's spine. She had never been called on for talking in class before, never like this, and following the rush of fear was a gradual burning in her olive cheeks. The matter did seem rather petty now that she thought of it. She looked up at Miss Diamond, who was frowning, and swallowed the lump in her throat. "No, ma'am."

To her annoyance, nothing was said about Amethyst talking and the girl just went back to Snapchatting or whatever it was she was doing, and though Miss Diamond called "Device away, Amethyst," the petty revenge of having the other girl called out did not satisfy Peridot's burning shame. First day and already a reputation of a talker, just great. And it was because of some — some sloppy, failing delinquent who seemed to have been in this class before and yet had no concept of laboratory safety. On second glance, Peridot realized that Amethyst didn't even have a writing utensil with her and noted the student ID shoved into her front pocket — black for the eleventh grade. A junior was in sophomore biology and hadn't even thought to bring a pen?

Once the last student had sat down in her assigned seat, Miss Diamond passed out syllabi with the class expectations and began reading them off in the voice that testified to have been doing it for years, but still with no intentions to let this class be any worse than its predecessors. The syllabus was five pages thick in 11-point font, single spaced. Peridot flipped open her notebook and began jotting down notes if they weren't in the syllabus, occasionally finding that they really were and she'd only skimmed over them, and to make sure the teacher knew she was paying attention, she looked up and tried meeting her eyes. Miss Diamond didn't even look at her. Neither did Amethyst — in fact, the older girl seemed determined to look anywhere except towards the teacher or Peridot.

Well — serves her right! If she's going to cause trouble then that's her fault. She only asked to be here.

The thought carried her still-embarrassed conscience on a leisurely wave to the end of class, even past the cringeworthy rule of "you may not select your own lab partners, nor work alone; you and the person in the seat next to you shall work together for the rest of the semester unless special arrangements are made with me". When the bell's peals sounded at five past twelve, Peridot gathered her things and stood up confidently.

"So apparently," she gave a sideways glare to Amethyst, and made a point of pushing her glasses up her small nose, "it seems as if you're a trouble kid."

Miss Allnatt Diamond had since then left, as with most of the other kids, and Peridot and Amethyst were alone in the classroom. The older girl lazily pushed her chair in and pulled out her phone. "I'm a lotta things. What's it to you?"

A disgusting, yet tantalizing anger began bubbling in Peridot's stomach and she clenched her fists. "I'm not going to let some disgusting punk like you ruin my this year. I've worked so hard to keep my grades the way they are and if you think you can ruin it for me, then how about you just try?"

The words flew out in acidic chunks, peppered with intakes of breath and the occasional cracking of Peridot's high voice. But they'd seemed to have some sort of effect, because Amethyst just turned her head further away from Peridot's surely scathing glare and pushed past her to the exit. It was so satisfying to have this sort of control — all her life, she was nearly powerless to determine what people around her did to her. Her schoolwork had been her one trait of value and she would no longer bow to anyone who threatened it. How delicious it was to reverse roles. Peridot laughed in her head and strode after the older girl.

"Yeah...that's right!" she called after Amethyst. Her shoulder knocked on the door handle as she went by and she paused to rub it and swear under her breath a little, but sprang back up to continue her speech just as quickly as she'd gone down. "Just you wait — I won't let anything get screwed up by the likes of you!"

And Peridot felt so good in firing the last shot regardless of how badly it had been worded, until at the very last possible moment, she heard Amethyst mutter something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like "yeah, wait to screw you". Appalled, she whirled around.

"What was that?"

"Oh, nothing," Amethyst responded vaguely, but she was smirking.

Her hips swayed as she walked, her hair in perfect sync. The little earbuds still dangled sloppily from her back pocket and bounced against her bottom, inviting a thought that Peridot could not name nor place. Disgusting was all she could come up with. "Disgusting," she even dared say to herself, and repeated it again in her head. Absolutely disgusting.

For reasons unknown, her cheeks were still warm.