Hey there! Just wanted to say this is my first fan fiction ever, so please, constructive criticism would be nice (I have quite some experience with original fiction, as in works that are 100% owned by me, and while this is usually a positive thing, but I am really scared of writing other people's characters because I don't want to write them wrong. Also, English is not my first language and so please, if I make mistakes or use clumsy wording, tell me). The Idea for this simply plopped into my mind after I read the last book in the series. It just itched in my fingers to write it out. This should mean something as, I repeat, have never written fan fiction before!
This is a fan fic of Suzanne Collin's Underland Chronicles. It plays 4 years after the events of The Code of Claw and is told from the perspective of an unnamed, 16/7 year old Narrator of ambiguous gender. (I'll try my best to not use gendered pronouns for the Narrator; If I NEED to use pronouns, I'll use the officially accepted "them" as a gender-neutral pronoun btw. I want to keep their gender up to the reader :D)
Chapter 1 – A certain boy
I finally arrived in Virginia. It was a long flight. How long I don't know, but it was long enough for me to draw several pictures of what I saw when I looked out of the window. The following day was going to be the first day of the student exchange program. I came from a German Realschule. I always was pretty good at English so I thought I'd try this. After all, I've never been outside of Germany. I've always wanted to go to another country, too. I got up, adjusted my glasses, took my notebook and my backpack and got out of the plane. I met my host parents, got the rest of my stuff and we eventually drove to their home. It was a nice apartment, not too bad I guess. It even had a piano. They also had a room, ready for me to move in. But anyway, that's not really important. That day was pretty boring after that actually. Dinner was nice though.
The next day, I went to school, of course. I decided to wear my most favorite, yellow hoodie for this special day. When I arrived, I got an entire lesson to get known to the others. There were, of course, nice people, not-so-nice people, boring people, interesting people… However, I especially noticed one boy, sitting alone in the back left corner of the classroom. I immediately noticed that he was the odd one out of the bunch and probably didn't have many friends. He seemed to be daydreaming. I sighed. I have been just like that, when I was younger. People always teased me because I was different; because I liked art. I eventually became quiet and pretty shy. To this day, I still am to a certain degree. I felt kind of sorry for him.
After the introductory part of the period was over, I sat down next to him. At first, he didn't even notice I was there, but eventually, he looked over to me. Apparently he was a bit surprised to see that someone actually decided to sit next to him. However, when I smiled, he looked away again. I sighed internally.
Eventually, the lesson was over and we were allowed to go to the school cafeteria to eat breakfast. I waited until I was alone in the classroom with our teacher. I asked him who this boy was. I just couldn't get him out of my head. There just was something about his… Something about him made me curious. He told me that his name was Gregor and that he was one of the quietest students in the class. Apparently, he was not a bad student, but also not especially good. And he also didn't seem to have many friends. A few, yes, but not many. Mh.
After this I went to the cafeteria. There I saw him again, sitting all alone, eating his breakfast and, apparently, daydreaming again. I promptly decided to sit down next to him, again. This time, he noticed me immediately. I already expected him to look away, again, so I simply asked: "Hi, what's your name?" He sighed. He told me his name: Gregor. Just what our teacher said. I smiled and told him my name and that I was the exchange student. He simply nodded and looked away. It seemed like this was his way of saying "I tolerate your presence."
After I finished eating, I got my notebook out and started drawing something out of boredom: An angel, from a behind-below perspective, losing a few feathers, to be accurate. I took especial effort in trying to make the pose look as dynamic as possible while keeping the proportions natu- wait. That's not important, sorry. What IS important is that my drawing was slowly grabbing his attention. After a short while, I noticed him peeping over to my drawing. I couldn't help but to chuckle a little. This seemed to have startled him a bit and he apologized. I just told him that it's okay and smiled in a friendly way. He was quiet for a second… and smiled back.