A/n: I know what you're thinking. 'The fuck is this shit FitchSwitch?'. Well this has been eating at my brain so I figured maybe if I wrote it and put it up I'd finally get that chapter of NAIS up. And it IS going up. Soon. Anyway you can pretty much blame lizardwriter for all of this (including the summary, which she wrote. Gracias brain twin!). The chapters of this will be much shorter than my other ones.
Disclaimer: Nope.
Have you ever gotten the feeling that your life is about to drastically change? When you wake up in the morning and there is an excited knot in the pit of your stomach that has no explanation, a tingling in your fingertips, a lightness in your steps?
Emily Fitch had never gotten that feeling.
There were plenty of times in her life when she should have gotten it, for sure, but she didn't. Not the day their little brother was born, and not the days they started primary and middle school, and she definitely didn't feel it their first year of Roundview College, although Katie claimed that she did.
No, never in her seventeen years of life had she ever felt that small physical shift. That tiny psychological trigger that sparked a load of nerves that made you a bouncing ball of excitement all day.
Until the first day of her last year at Roundview.
She woke up as the first rays of dawn were just starting to creep across her ceiling. It was far too early for her to even consider waking up, especially with the amount of partying she and Katie and the usual gang did the night before to "celebrate" a new school year, air quotes necessary. But wake up she did. And then she stared at her ceiling for several incomprehensible minutes. Her fingers tapped out a beat against her duvet. Her eyes flickered and studied the cracks in the plaster. Her heart thumped a random beat against the inside of her chest. She didn't have a hangover.
Something big was going to happen today.
Nothing big happened all day.
They went through the same usual routine: Emily got up and made breakfast, then went upstairs to wake up Katie. Her father came down and grabbed a piece of fruit before heading off to open the gym, and Emily went upstairs to wake up Katie again. Her mother came down and kissed her cheek absently before running out the door, and Emily went upstairs to pull the covers off Katie so she'd be uncomfortable. Their little brother James came downstairs and had to be sent back upstairs because he'd forgotten something in his room, and Katie was finally in the shower. By the time everyone was ready to leave they had five minutes.
Effy and Panda met them at the bus stop two blocks over like they always did and James went to go sit with his loser friends in the front while they rode in their regular seats at the back. Cook, Freddie, and JJ got on two stops later, and Thomas on the stop after that. It took twenty minutes to ride from Thomas's stop to Roundview. Always.
They sat through their first form meeting where Harriet tried to instill some sort of responsibility in them for their last year at Roundview and Cook inevitably spent the whole time commenting on how if you leaned to the left at a certain angle you could see her tits through her dress. The gang, occasionally split up into smaller groups, trudged through the usual mind-numbing first day of classes where all the teachers went over what they expected to cover this year and all the students were bored out of their fucking minds and probably playing hangman with their neighbor. The only bright spot was Emily's new politics teacher, Kieran.
The way he introduced himself to the class went as follows: he sat behind his desk with his feet on top of it eating a muffin when they walked in. He waited until he had finished his breakfast before he even addressed them, and he did so by standing up, brushing the crumbs off his shirt, and saying in a heavily gruff Irish accent, "We're all going to stand up, say our names and an interesting fact or two about ourselves. Ah shit," he sighed and Emily had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing because she'd never (ever) heard a teacher swear in front of a class before, "you all can call me Kieran, I just moved to Bristol with my wife and step-daughter, and I fucking hate teaching. There you go."
And then Emily did laugh because she couldn't stop herself. Kieran's eyes cut to her immediately and he smiled a bit. "Kind of you to volunteer yourself to go first Red," he grunted.
Emily's laughter died immediately and she stood up, but she wasn't nervous. The entire rest of the group was in the class anyway and everyone else had already been together in the previous politics class last year. "Hello," she said with a little wave to the class, "you all know me already. I'm Emily, I have a twin sister and I'm gay."
"Congratu-fucking-lations," Kieran said. "Next? You with the bling."
Effy stood up with the same bored and put-upon expression that Effy wore to do just about everything and said, "I'm Effy and my parents are getting a divorce."
Emily's eyebrows shot up and she mouthed 'what was that?' as Effy sat back down. Her friend shrugged and started doodling in her notepad, but it was obvious (to people who knew how to read Effy) that she wasn't even bothered by what she had said. It's not that it wasn't true, because it was and everyone in the group knew it, but none of them had expected Effy to stand up and blurt out her familial problems in politics class.
But then Emily saw the surprised look on Kieran's face and it clicked. Shock value. Emily's proclamation hadn't really meant anything because, especially after the debacle with Mandy last year, she was already out. Effy had wanted to shock the shit out of their new teacher and she'd done so. She smirked and Effy noticed; the brunette raised an eyebrow and smirked back.
"Well," Kieran spluttered, "shit happens. You, the one who looks just like the wee gay lass."
Katie was offended and stood up in a huff. "I'm Katie," she said pointedly, "obviously I have a twin sister named Emily, and I've never not had a boyfriend since I was seven."
"Everyone has to have a talent for something," Kieran said. Emily bit on the inside of her cheek to keep her grin in check. She quite liked Kieran.
The rest of the gang's introductions were pretty par for the course of their personalities. Emily could have told you what they would be or at least pretty close. Freddie said he'd once spent a whole night locked in a stranger's car, Cook said he'd once shagged ten girls in one week, JJ talked about how much higher his intellectual level was than anyone else in the room, Pandora said something incomprehensible involving the words "whacker" and "whizzer", and Thomas said he worked in a club and that he was originally from the Congo.
God, her life was predictable.
Where was that feeling of change now?
At the end of the day they all gravitated from their final classes to Effy's locker.
No one had any idea why they did this. It had started last year and continued on to this year and no one saw any reason to change it. No matter what part of the building they were in they almost always found themselves in a group around Effy's locker at the end of the day.
Katie had an armful of textbooks and a sour expression on her face. "What the actual fuck," she complained. "Who the fuck gives out books on the first day of classes? Like, who even carries their bag to the first day of classes?"
Emily hiked her bag higher up on her shoulder and rolled her eyes. Katie looked at her and her face brightened.
"Emsy," she started.
"No," Emily interrupted before her sister could get another word out. That sweet, cloying tone of voice meant that her sister wanted something and Emily had a pretty good idea what that was. No way in hell was she carrying around Katie's books as well as her own. "It's your own damn fault you didn't bring your bag with you."
"That's not very sisterly of you," Katie whined.
Everyone in the group tried their very hardest to not look amused by that, because since when had Katie done anything remotely sisterly today? Katie saw the looks on their faces and huffed again.
"Whatever," she said. "It's not like I can't handle it. They're just a few books that some of you boys aren't chivalrous enough to offer to carry for me."
Emily rolled her eyes because – really? Freddie the perpetually lazy and Cook, who never did anything unless there was a shag in it for him? Thomas would but he was already carrying Pandora's books, and JJ probably would have tripped over his feet to help Katie but he already had more books than any of them.
"Whatever," Katie said again. "I'll just put them in my locker. We're not even going to need them for anything. Wankers."
By this point Emily had almost forgotten about her life-changing event and how it hadn't happened yet. The soul-crushing normality of the morning and school had completely distracted her from that magical feeling that she had woken up with, the feeling that said this day was special and full of possibility and chances.
At any rate, she hadn't expected her life-changing event to happen to Katie.
It went in slow motion, almost. Katie spun on her heel dramatically to show the world how completely pissed off she was, took two steps forward across the hall towards her locker, and absolutely wrecked into a girl walking down the hall. Katie fell in one direction, the other girl stumbled back against the lockers, and both of their books went flying.
As much as she accused them of lacking chivalry Cook was one of the first people over to help, but Katie waved him off. Katie was on the warpath now and god help anyone who stood in her way. Emily almost felt sorry for the girl who was kneeling down and reaching to grab one of her books.
Katie surged to her feet with all the force and subtlety of a freight train, because Katie was Katie and she never did anything quietly. She kicked the book the girl had been grabbing for so hard that it skittered halfway down the hall and she crossed her arms as she towered over her.
"What the fuck do you think you're playing at?" Katie demanded. "Did you not see me walking right in front of you? Are you fucking –"
Two very important things happened at nearly the same time.
Thing number one was: the girl looked up to answer Katie and Emily got a good look at her face.
The air in the room evaporated. Emily didn't know where it went but it obviously wasn't there anymore. It felt like someone kicked her in the chest. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. The only thing she could tell you about her body was that her heart was still beating, and she knew that because it was pounding so hard against her ribs it was liable to break through.
She was literally the most gorgeous girl Emily had ever seen in her entire life. Her hair was platinum blonde and fell to just around her shoulders and looked so fucking soft Emily had the sudden and almost uncontrollable urge to run her hands through it. Her face was almost uncomfortably beautiful in its perfection and when she bit her lip as she listened to Katie rant all Emily could think about was how much she wanted to bite on that lip instead. She decided to take advantage of the girl being distracted by her sister and her eyes travelled further downward, over a pale slender neck, the fitness of her torso and how good she looked in that green polo with the top two buttons undone, the gorgeously long legs in jeans that should be illegal she looked so mouthwatering in them.
Thing number two was: the girl opened her mouth and finished Katie's sentence for her.
For half a second Emily didn't even hear the words, just the shiver-inducing voice they were said in, but then she did and her heart skipped a beat.
"Blind?" the girl finished. She reached up to push her dark sunglasses more firmly against her face and Emily found her eyes riveted as she tried to take in as much of the girl's features as possible. "Yes, actually."
A/n: Bet you didn't see that coming (ZING!). I mean, what? Oh God that was so tasteless. That is the worst joke I've ever made in my existence. Review?
See you on the flip side. ~FS