A royal blue mustang rolled into the Runeterra High parking lot. It didn't screech around the corner like it was first place in the Indy 500, the way most would expect from a flashy car, desperate to show off. If a car could saunter, then this one would be doing just that, purring self-assuredly underneath its white-striped hood as it pulled into an open space in the lot. The car went silent as the engine was cut, but the doors didn't open quite yet.
"You got everything ready for your first day, Lux?" The broad-shouldered boy in the driver's seat turned to look at his blonde-haired passenger as he slipped off his seatbelt. His brown eyes were filled with genuine concern as he looked from the girl's face to her slightly-see through plastic backpack. Even though Lux was only twenty-two months younger than him, and just one year below him in school, Garen had always taken the "protective older brother" thing very seriously.
"You sound like mom!" exclaimed Lux with a high-pitched giggle, as she rolled her eyes in faux-exasperation. "I'm not a freshman! This is my third year," she chided, hopping out of the car with a shake of her head, "but thanks, Garen." She grinned brightly at her brother over the hood of the car, then gripped the straps of her backpack on her shoulders with both hands, and started walking lightly toward the double-doored entrance of the school, merging with the growing crowd of students. "Hope you're ready for your first day!" she called over her shoulder, still smiling, while Garen smirked and slung his pack over one shoulder, taking his time, as always, to get going. Lux was already inside the building before he even made it to the sidewalk leading through the lawn.
With a bit of deft weaving, Lux made it to her locker. She pulled out the paper with her class schedule and locker combination printed on it and got to work on opening her locker. One try...two tries...Lux sighed and spun the lock ring around a few times, clearing her progress and preparing to try the combo again. She furrowed her brow and bit at the inside of her cheek. Had she really forgotten how lockers worked over the summer? She was sure she was putting it in right...After spinning in the combo for the fourth time, Lux was sure she had the code right and knew the door was just being stubborn. Being nice to the locker door wasn't doing it, so it was time to fight. Lux narrowed her eyes at the demon-door, curled her neatly-manicured fingers around the handle, and gave it two monstrous yanks.
With a loud BANG the door swung all the way open and slammed into the guy standing at his locker to the right. "What the hell?!" growled the kid, slamming Lux's locker door back closed and glaring at her from beneath a dark blue hood.
"Oh my gosh!" was the girl's mortified reply. "I am so sorry; I totally didn't expect it to fly open like that!" The boy just gave her one last glare, slammed his locker door, and faded around the corner without a single word. Heart still pounding from embarrassment, Lux unlocked her locker and opened it once more, this time with a much more controlled pull. As she placed her brown lunch bag and some extra notebooks in her locker, Lux was thinking about two things: how relieved she was that the locker didn't hit that guy in the face, and that it was against the rules to have a hood on inside.
"Hey, Lux." A tall, slender girl with long brown hair and sharp brown eyes fell in step with Lux, who was making her way to her first class - English.
"Quinn!" Lux was beaming like the sun, and she stopped right in the middle of the hall to wrap her friend in a quick hug. Quinn had been one of Lux's closest friends since the fourth grade, but they didn't really get to hang out a lot during the break. Quinn was extremely outdoorsy and was always at some kind of camp in the summer. Even in the winter, Quinn preferred to spend as much time outside as possible, but when she was confined to school, getting to hang out with Lux mitigated a lot of the misery.
With a little laugh, Quinn hugged Lux back. "So...schedules?" She jumped the to most important topic immediately, pulling out her schedule list from her pocket and eyeing the one Lux was holding loosely in her hand.
The girls quickly compared their schedules as they walked down the hall, Quinn smirking in satisfaction and Lux exclaiming in excitement when they discovered they were in the same English, history, and PE classes.
"Heeey, ladies. And now, the party can officially start." Lux lips quirked into an almost-grimace as an arm flung around her and Quinn's shoulders, a blonde boy swooping between the girls and grabbing them each in a one-armed hug. "I know you guys missed me," he joked, blue eyes twinkling impishly, yet a toss of his head to flip back his effortlessly-windswept hair-do gave away a little more self-importance than he intended.
Quinn gave a wry smile and looked up at the boy with a sidelong glance, "You need to spend a week away from mirrors." Lux glanced at Quinn and giggled, and the boy just flashed Quinn a lopsided grin in response, before tilting his head toward Lux.
"C'mon, Lux, you gonna let her talk to me like that?" he asked, now raising his brows in an attempt to look both pleading and seducing.
"You're a big boy, Ezreal, I would've thought you could fight your own battles by now," responded Lux, tilting her head up a bit more than Quinn had to in order to make eye contact. She pursed her lips slightly, trying to hold back a smile. Ezreal, exasperating as he could be sometimes, definitely added a lot of entertainment to their little party when he was around, and Lux couldn't help the fact that their banter was fun...the only problem was that she was pretty sure Ezreal didn't hang around with her just to play around. It was something she knew might have to be addressed sometime, and it was not something she was looking forward to.
Ezreal flinched exaggeratedly and mourned in a husky, wounded voice, "Wow, Lux, I thought we were friends." Quinn just rolled her eyes and shook her head while Lux couldn't help but smirk in amusement. She had to give it to him - that boy had a certain flair. "So anyway," said Ezreal, dropping his arms to break the one-man group hug and moving to the left side of Lux, so Lux could continue walking by Quinn, "where are you guys headed for first period?"
"English," replied Lux.
Ezreal's brow quirked and he looked over at the two girls with a spark of expectation. "With Professor Ryze?"
Quinn groaned and rolled her head back to look at the ceiling, but she didn't really try to hide her smile.
"Haha, you too?" asked Lux, a little bounce entering her gait for just a beat. Starting out the day in a class full of friends was a going to be awesome.
The tall blond just nodded, weaving in a quick flip of his boy-band hair. "I'm glad I actually have a class with you, Lux; I thought you were taking all these higher level classes and abandoning us, you know, because you're a genius and all." He tossed a light-hearted grin her way to emphasize the playful nature of his comment, but he definitely had asked a sincere question in there, too.
Lux shrugged and smoothed the sides of her little blue skirt as they walked, unconsciously feeling for pockets or something to do with her hands. "I am taking calculus and a physics class this year, instead of next year, but that's it; everything else is totally normal." She glanced over at Quinn and smiled a little brighter. "Quinn and I have history and PE together!"
The three continued to discuss schedules as they finished their walk to English class, Ezreal pleased to find out he and Lux shared their final period French class together and also finding out he and Quinn had the same trigonometry class. In their English class, the three chose seats together in the third row, and Ezreal waved his friends Jayce, a handsome guy who always reminded Lux a little of her brother, and Vi, a tough girl with pink hair and no qualms about punching your lights out, over to fill spots by them. Neither Lux nor Quinn had ever become really close friends with either Jayce or Vi, but they all were good enough friends and enjoyed hanging out. This was an excellent start to the day!
After English, Quinn, Lux, and Vi, split off from the others to head to their shared history class, settling in seats more toward the back of the class this time, because Vi was the one who lead them in. In the last row, in the very corner on the opposite side of the room by the outside window sat a skinny girl slumped forward in her seat, her elbow on her desk, resting her chin in her hand, while her other hand twirled one of her long blue braided pigtails. Vi and her locked eyes and glared at each other for a moment while Quinn and Lux settled in their seats, then the blue-haired girl blew a big pink bubble from her mouth and popped it loudly before grinning wildly and turning her attention to scratch something small into the top right corner of her desk. Lux regarded the gum-chewing girl briefly. Jinx was her name, and she was someone Lux knew from experience would not be in class very much.
History was going to be a very boring class this semester. Every once in awhile during the class, which simply outlined the topics they'd be covering during the next few months, the fidgeting and sighs of Jinx on the far side of the class caught Lux's attention in her peripheral view. Yeah, Jinx isn't going to be here much, thought Lux, trying hard to focus back on what the teacher was saying. I know I don't want to be. Quinn, Vi, and Lux shared numerous desperate, bored, or just plain dead looks with each other and basically every distraught and zombified neighbor of theirs during the class. This was such a bad sign.
The whole class audibly sighed in relief when the bell rang, and Jinx literally bolted for the door. Everyone else filed out at a much more restrained pace, but most wanted to run out too.
Lux, Quinn, and Vi just waved to each other once they entered the hall and went their own ways. Lux would see Quinn during their PE period and lunch after, and Vi was real big on doing her own thing, so none of them needed to say much. And really, everyone was still kind of catatonic after the most boring 50 minutes in history, so all just stumbled off to their next classes, dreading how bad the rest of their classes could get.