"Where is he?"
The shouting, demanding voice is what she wakes to. All of her senses are blurred, and she just wants to fall back asleep; the struggle to alertness is familiar from a few undergraduate forays into heavy drinking. She ignores the shrieking harpy for a minute and tries to get a grasp on her bearings. Had she been drugged? Where was she? Were… were her hands and feet bound?
They were. Fear replaces the drowsiness in an instant.
"Where is he?" the voice demanded, grabbing her collar roughly and dragging her into a sitting position.
She is completely terrified and utterly nonplussed. The man's face in front of her fades in and out of focus. "Who?" she asks, managing to keep her voice from trembling, but it's a close thing. Even in her stupor, she knows that he's a threat, he's angry, and he wants something from her, but beyond that, she knows nothing.
"Him!" And a picture is shoved into her face. Despite her swimming vision, she recognizes him instantly. Her heart skips several beats. What do they want with him? What do they want with her? This is absolutely ludicrous; she hasn't seen him in years! Her head clears, but she still can't make any sense out of the situation. She's not even sure how she got here. Then, it comes to her: she must be dreaming. Having reached that reassuring conclusion, she waits to wake up in the comfort of her own bed, but several long moments pass, and she's still here. However, knowing that she's dreaming, that this surely can't be real, calms her, emboldens her.
"I have no idea who that is," she says coolly.
"Then why did we find this," the burly man says, shoving another piece of paper in her face, "on his desk! You know him! You know where he is!"
The letter is dated a few days ago. She recognizes the handwriting, and she sees the signature.
All she can do is breathe, "Oh my god…"
The first thing anyone notices about the high school is that it's on the top of a hill. Every morning, the students trudge up it from the parking lots at its base, like worshippers flocking to the Parthenon, except that no worshipper ever looked so desolate for having to visit the Parthenon. It's the first day of the semester, the beginning of a new year, and the enthusiasm level is slightly higher than normal. Still, while some are mustering up some admirable energy to greet old friends for the first time in months, few are genuinely excited to start what will inevitably be a long, hard slog.
A pair of sisters slams a car door shut and follows the herd up the hill. One would not know they were sisters without close inspection. They walked far apart, the petite, brunette, bescarved one taking the lead, the taller, pretty blonde being content to fall behind. No words were uttered between them. They were just two students on very different trajectories in life. They weren't friends. They weren't even amiable acquaintances. They just happened to live in the same house.
"Hey. Hey!" a voice calls out, but both ignore it. They don't recognize it, and there are plenty of similar greetings ringing out in the parking lot. Then, the older sister sees a somebody, a very close somebody, out of the corner of her eye. She looks up and catches sight of a perfect stranger. "Hey! Arthur," the stranger introduces himself, falling comfortably into step alongside her and stretching his hand in front of her.
"Ariadne," she answers after a moment, taking his hand and shaking it.
"New kid. Junior. You?" he says, perfectly friendly, perfectly at ease.
"Junior as well. Established kid," she says, mimicking his choppy, concise sentences and smiling a little bit. She doesn't know who he is, but it's hard not to like him. Plus, she should be kind to him. It can't be easy moving to a new school with only two years until graduation. "Where are you from?" she asks, a simple question, an ice breaker.
"Connecticut," he says smoothly without missing a beat. He doesn't expand on that answer until she prompts him, and they make small talk about schools and hometowns until they reach the school's front doors. He seems like a nice guy, and she invites him to the cozy corner where she and her friends await the summons of the first bell. He declines, saying he needs to get his schedule, locker, and all that fun stuff. She offers to help, and he declines again, saying something about preferring to find his own way. She is faintly disappointed as he walks away, but she hopes she sees more of him.
When she reaches her friends, they are in a spirited discussion of the new paramour of one of their own. She joins in the collective teasing, but the friend shuts them all up with a smirk and a dig at their own lackluster love lives. She protests that there's no one worth dating at their school, and a few other of her friends agree fervently. Despite her claims, she can't help but think of the stranger from a few minutes' earlier.
She sees him next in third period calculus. She's pleasantly surprised; it's one of the most advanced courses the school has to offer, and she always likes a smart guy. The teacher has nothing to teach on day one; the review assignment is put on the board without a word from her, and they start to work. They had her last year and they know better than to be intimidated; she'll warm up to them in time, scary and cold as she seems now. He asks to borrow her pencil sharpener, and she willingly hands it over. He fumbles at it, and their hands brush in the process. He maintains the contact for a split second too long before breaking it off, or perhaps that was her that did so. All she knows is that his hands are warm and hers are tingling and he probably didn't mean anything by it but maybe he did, and her mind is rushing a million miles a minute and couldn't possibly focus on the math that normally comes so easily to her.
She's so flustered that she doesn't even notice his pencils are all mechanical.
Author's Note: This is my first fanfiction! :D How am I doin' so far?