The tiled hallways of Trigeda High School filled once more with sleepy students for the 1988-1989 school year. As usual, the majority of teenagers spent their entire summer staying up late and sleeping in until noon, completely ignoring their parents' suggestions of adjusting their sleep cycle before the first day of school.
Clarke Griffin was one of those students. She couldn't be bothered to style her blonde hair today, instead opting to put it up in a bun and tie a bandana around her head as a headband to keep the stray locks in place. The dark circles beneath her eyes matched perfectly with the black leggings and oversized grey sweater she threw on just minutes before hopping in her car. Luckily, she hadn't been reassigned a new locker, at least that was one less tedious task for what would very likely be a long, long day.
7...26...14. Click!
The maroon door swung open with a push of the handle, revealing the decorations that went untouched for 4 months; that is, if a mirror and a small poster of a golden retriever puppy were considered "decorations."
"Damn it," she mumbled, catching a glimpse of her own face in the mirror. The dark skin beneath her blue eyes didn't jump out so much in her dimly-lit bathroom at home... dimly-lit indeed, as she also missed a streak of blue paint down the side of her left cheek.
"I know you've been wanting to make your eyes pop a bit more, but I don't think this is the look for you."
Clarke peered behind herself in the mirror to find her best friend, Octavia, standing right behind her. "O!" She whirled around and pulled the girl into a tight hug, purposefully rubbing her cheek on the brunette's out of spite.
"Hey, hey, hey! Blue isn't my color!" Octavia laughed and pushed Clarke off of her, picking the dried flakes of paint off her face while Clarke scratched the remainder off her own cheek.
"Damn, you look like Farrah Fawcett with that hair," Clarke laughed and dodged a playful nudge from the brunette. "Not a bad thing, by the way! Lincoln probably thinks it's choice style."
Octavia rolled her eyes and huffed. "Not even."
A glint of mischief flashed through blue eyes before the blonde lowered her voice to imitate Lincoln's. "What a bodacious babe, I bet she's wicked in the sheets!"
Octavia squealed and used her Lisa Frank trapper keeper to slap Clarke's arm. "Stop! You sound like such a val when you do that," she giggled. "Have you seen Raven?"
Clarke shrugged just as the bell rang, turned around one more time to check herself in the mirror, and slammed her locker shut. "This must be a new record, she usually waits until the second day to ditch."
"Oh eat my shorts, I'm here now!" Raven wheeled down the hallway to her two friends before heading to class. "I couldn't get my fucking hair done in time," she muttered and pulled her half-crimped black hair back into a ponytail with a bright blue scrunchie. "The one time I even care about my looks."
"You look nice anyway, though. Almost like you just rolled out of bed after a one night stand," Octavia teased. She grabbed Raven's elbow and towed her away to their shared first class.
"Good luck, Griff!" Raven called out over her shoulder.
Clarke readjusted her backpack on her shoulder and clutched a bare binder to her chest, already shaking with nerves on her stroll down the hallway to calculus. She switched between imagining embarrassing herself in class and glaring daggers at what felt like twenty different students as they bumped into her, heading the opposite direction.
"Stand along the walls, please" stretched in large writing across the chalkboard at the front of the classroom.
"Clarke!"
The blonde pivoted and scanned the back of the room for the familiar voice. "Michael, hey!" She crossed the gap between them in five large steps, concluding them with a hug around her slim friend. "How was your summer?"
"Ugh, horrible. My mom sent me off to some religious summer camp in the middle of assfuck nowhere, the mosquitoes ate me up."
Clarke quirked an eyebrow. "Assfuck nowhere?"
The taller boy chuckled and nodded, but was interrupted by the teacher when he opened his mouth to respond.
"Good morning, everybody, I'm Mr...Martinez..." the short man scribbled his name on the chalkboard, seemingly unaware of the awful squeaking noise the chalk made. "I've already calculated the seating arrangements."
The class groaned collectively with a simultaneous eye roll.
"I know, I'm sorry, I promise that's the only one...for today." Mr. Martinez beamed a cheesy grin, his eyes squinted behind thick glasses. He snatched a piece of paper from his desk and studied it for a moment before pointing at the first row of seats. "Up here, we have Lillian Kasper, Donna Ramsay, Alton South, and Tina Daniels."
Clarke and Michael waited patiently as Mr. Martinez announced the next row. The last thing they wanted was to be in the first or second row where they'd surely be caught passing notes or whispering to each other, as they often did.
"Third row: Clarke Griffin, Michael Richardson, Lincoln Terran, and Barbara Cahill."
Clarke leaned over to whisper to Michael as soon as they sat down. "Octavia has the biggest crush on the guy next to you, don't look now."
Michael raised both eyebrows, clearly amused by this new piece of information. He waited the mandatory ten seconds before glancing over to inspect the student to his right, then leaned back over toward Clarke to whisper, "I don't blame her, he's ripped."
Clarke chuckled and shook her head, eyes snapping up to the front of the room when the chalk resumed its squeaking.
Clarke spent the entirety of calculus forcing herself to stay awake, and was grateful for the light pinches Michael squeezed on her wrist when her head started to bob.
Luckily, her next class was art. Even though it was the first day and Mrs. Cleary spent the whole period asking students how their summers went, Clarke already felt at home perched on her stool at her table of four. The worn table was covered in stains from who-knows-what, with a few patches of dried clay clinging on random areas. Some past students clearly didn't appreciate the class and teacher, judging by the etchings in the wood, but Clarke warmed up to both in a matter of minutes.
She almost felt disappointed when the bell for break rang and forced her from the stool, but her grumbling stomach certainly seemed relieved.
"Have a good day, I'll see you tomorrow, bye bye," Mrs. Cleary smiled at the students filing out the door, positively radiant in her bright yellow dress and smiling far too joyously for many of the students to believe this early in the morning.
Clarke made a beeline for her locker to stuff the heavy, currently irrelevant books into it to alleviate her already aching shoulders. "I am not built for heavy lifting," she grumbled to herself. She dug through her backpack for her snack, tearing open the little package of DinaSour eggs and nearly inhaling them. A guilty chipmunk-cheeked smile graced her face when Michael, Raven, and Octavia walked up to her, all three visibly amused with the sight before them.
"I bet that's the best tasting thing you've had shoved in your mouth all summer," Raven smirked.
Clarke rolled her eyes, then nearly choked on the mouthful of candies when Michael interjected with a "me too."
Raven cackled and whipped her head around to check for eavesdroppers. "Dude you're not out yet, shouldn't you be more careful?"
Michael shrugged. "People already whisper behind my back about it, nothing bad has happened."
Yet, Clarke thought. Trigeda was a small town, a disgustingly homophobic town. The mere thought of growing up here and not knowing any better made her stomach flip. Why her parents decided to move here from San Francisco, she had no idea.
She'd been raised to treat everyone equally and with respect, regardless of any differences she may have had with them. Trigeda was worlds apart from her family and San Francisco, however. Michael had blubbered incoherently last summer when he came out to her, later revealing he was convinced she would hate him, but he couldn't hold it in any longer. Raven and Octavia created a rift between themselves and him, but eventually gravitated back during the school year when he and Clarke invited them to sit at their lunch table. Of course, many people at school speculated and whispered among themselves, but only the three girls knew of the confirmation.
At least, that's what they thought.
Clarke scolded herself for taking A.P. English. Just looking at the syllabus gave her a tension headache, let alone having to listen to Ms. Todd prattle on and on about her strict grading system. The only thing to relieve the ache budding behind her eyes was the fact that 1984 was on the list of required reading. Better yet, she wasn't in the senior class of 1984, the group of poor souls who had to write an additional report comparing the year's worldly situation to that of the book.
If she thought she hated herself for choosing A.P. English, she proved herself horribly wrong just minutes after walking into Econ. Mrs. Vincent was a short, yet ferocious woman. Her face curled into a permanent snarl, her permed hair added another couple inches to her diminutive stature, and her lungs rattled with a smoker's cough any time she tried to speak too loudly. Which was always.
"My god, what is that stench?!"
Clarke awoke from her mental degradation at Mrs. Vincent's sudden sharp tone.
"Is somebody carrying the devil's grass?!"
The students turned their heads to look at each other, bewilderment plastered across their faces. A brave boy in the back of the room stammered. "W-what do you mean, Mrs. Vincent?"
She fixated on the student, eyes narrowing. "I mean cannabis! Dope! Marijuana!"
The bell rang, and several students immediately stood and bolted out the door. Damn, that many people? Clarke smiled and chuckled silently, shaking her head. She made it a point not to leave the room hastily, trying desperately to get on Mrs. Vincent's good side, if there even was one.
Though her pace wasn't frantic, her stop just outside the door felt like a slam on the brakes. "Michael, how did you know I had this class before lunch?"
"I didn't!" Michael's hazel eyes popped open to match Clarke's. "I was waiting for my friend," he peered through the door and grinned when his brunette friend stepped out the door and nodded at him. "Clarke, this is Lexa. Lexa, Clarke."
The blonde's stomach somersaulted. The brunette - Lexa, Michael had said - absolutely stunned her. Those eyes were the greenest she'd ever seen, and they were perfectly framed by long eyelashes. Clarke unknowingly gaped, completely dumbfounded. She tried to convince herself that perfection didn't exist, but that was a difficult feat with the evidence just in front of her.
"Clarke?" Lexa blinked, her hand outstretched.
"Oh! Yeah, sorry, nice to meet you," Clarke forced a nervous smile and shook the other girl's hand, begging her own mind desperately not to over-analyze how smooth and silky Lexa's hand was.
The muscles of her face jerked into a scowl when Michael's signature eyebrow-raise taunted her, though his expression relaxed into a casual one when Lexa turned her attention to him. "You don't look so good Clarke, maybe you should go to the nurse."
Clarke battled the urge to roll her eyes and shove her best friend. "Really? I feel fine."
"Huh, must be my eyes. Lexa, does Clarke look good?"
Again, Clarke fought her own eyes, only allowing them to narrow slightly in an attempt to scold her friend discreetly.
Lexa swallowed visibly, but clearly concealed her emotions more effectively than the blonde. "You do look good, Clarke."
Clarke's eyes couldn't escape Lexa's intense stare.
"Alrighty then, we'll see you later Clarke," Michael sing-songed and pulled Lexa along with him to head out to the parking lot.
"Damn Griff, you look like you just got hit by a truck," Raven uttered as she finally sat with her friends at their lunch table, tray in hand.
"Shut up, Raven," Clarke snapped, poking at her spaghetti with a plastic fork. "I just need to eat."
"Really? Because you've been playing with the same five noodles for five minutes," Octavia stated matter-of-factly as she shoved more mashed potatoes into her mouth. "It's just not like you," she added around her mouthful of potatoes.
Clarke sighed and dropped her head into her hands. She mumbled.
"What?" Octavia asked and swallowed.
Clarke murmured again, not even attempting to speak more clearly.
Raven slammed her hand on the table just in front of the blonde. "CLARKE."
Everyone at the nearby tables turned their heads to stare at the outburst and were met with Raven's sharp glare. "May I help you?"
The students returned to their conversations, careful not to crane their heads around to be caught by Raven.
"Did you embarrass yourself in front of a cute guy?"
Clarke groaned into her hands and raked at her scalp with her nails. A dizziness set in, similar to what threatened to overtake her senses in Lexa's midst.
"Who?" Octavia leaned in closer, just in case Clarke couldn't speak up again.
The dizziness in Clarke's head progressed, unlike her earlier reaction to Michael's brunette friend. Just as well, her stomach flipped and flopped, albeit rather uncomfortably this time around. "I honestly don't know if I'm anxious or sick," Clarke grumbled into her hands. As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted even vocalizing her thoughts as a gag loomed in the muscles of her throat. "Definitely sick," Clarke remarked before shooting up and making a break for the nearest restroom, which was, luckily, just outside the cafeteria doors.
Her hands, slick with sweat, struggled for what felt like minutes to pull the handle of the heavy wooden door, and she couldn't stop to apologize to - let alone recognize - the girl she bounced off of in her race to an open stall.
Clarke was too focused on the burning in her throat and her oxygen-starved lungs to notice the gentle hands that steadied her and rubbed her back through the onslaught of nausea. Though she wanted to turn her head to at least see her aide, her spinning head and dry-heaving stomach convinced her otherwise.
The hands left her body, and if her throat hadn't been so raw and seared, she would have whined at the loss of comforting contact. However, only seconds later, the person returned with two cool, wet towels. The girl rested one on the back of Clarke's neck, and used the other to dab at her clammy face.
"Thank you," Clarke wheezed, her head resting on her arm against the toilet seat, eyes sealed shut.
"Are the towels helping, Clarke?"
Her churning stomach froze in her gut at the soft voice in her ear. As if she wasn't already embarrassed enough, the fact that this was Lexa taking care of her while she was knelt before a school toilet made her want to curl up and hide under a rock. Yet she swallowed roughly, provoking the burn in her throat. "Yes, thank you."
"You're welcome," Lexa whispered, careful not to upset the blonde's fragile equilibrium.
They sat on the tile floor for several minutes, Lexa all the while rubbing soothing circles into Clarke's back and shoulders.
Clarke wished she wasn't so sick, maybe she could have enjoyed the back rub even more than in this moment. She became uneasy at the realization that Lexa's hands were the only barrier between herself and another wave of biliousness.
"I'll be right back, I'm going to get Michael so he can take you home, okay?"
Clarke nodded weakly against her arm, fighting the dizziness that followed the movement. She heard footsteps, then the restroom door opened and closed.
Thank god I wore my hair up today, Clarke thought. The sweat-drenched bandana tied around her head only slightly disgusted her, as it paled in comparison to the heavy, wet material of her shirt around her shoulders and collar.
Slowly, she sat back against the side of the stall, removed the towel from the back of her neck, and wiped at her face and mouth. The dizziness had finally subsided, but her stomach felt hot and restless in its cocoon of overworked muscles. Clarke focused on breathing steadily, and before she realized it, succumbed to a light sleep, dreaming faintly of brunette hair and green eyes.