Fiona stepped out of the cab and onto the sidewalk of Degrassi, shielding her face from the bright morning sun as she took in the exterior of the school. Just like always, she sighed a little, not ready for the books-and-teacher's-dirty-looks aspect of school to start, but very much looking forward to seeing one hyperactive, bespectacled brunette again. Just the mere thought of her made her want to grin wildly and start doing something ridiculous, like recite poetry or offer to wear something from 2008's fall runway just to see Imogen smile. (Which, ew, because 2008 was so late, dead, and gone, despite that awful Black Eyed Peas song.) With a roll of her eyes and a smile playing on her lips, she maneuvered her way through the students, intent on finding Imogen as soon as she could.
Her first stop when she was through the doors was at her own locker, to drop off of her bag and get her books for her first two classes, and then she was off again, blue eyes scanning the throngs of people in an attempt to spot a familiar figure. There were a lot of new faces, which she should have expected, what with her staying an extra week in New York instead of coming back at the normal date like everyone else. There were a lot of guys dressed in similar jackets walking around, she noted, as she took a corner, and promptly walked straight into someone's chest.
She stepped back, apologizing, realized that the boy in front of her was wearing the same jacket that she had been seeing around her, and connected the dots. They must have been the new hockey team that had transferred to Degrassi; how could she have forgotten that? Probably somewhere in between helping Imogen practice for her audition for Mo's band over Skype and putting together her new outfits for school now that she was rid of those damned uniforms.
"Woah, sorry about that," the guy said to her, smirking. "I'm Dallas." He held out a hand, which she took.
"Fiona. Nice to meet you." Her gaze was already over his shoulder and down the hall, wondering if Imogen's locker had been moved to this end of the school this year. That would suck, since they would be on opposite ends entirely, and that wouldn't do if they ever wanted to see each other in between classes. They'd have to work out a locker buddy system or something -
"...you're really good looking, you know that?"
Fiona blinked, her attention drawn back to Dallas, who was smiling at her, "cocky asshole" written all over his face. "Um, thanks?" she managed, adjusting the lanyard that held her student ID around her neck. "You know, it was great talking to you, but I have to go."
Dallas's arm shot out and caught her as she tried to move past him. "Hey, don't go already. Why don't we talk some more? Get to know one another?" His proximity was way too close, and she just wanted to get away from him and focus on the task at hand (finding Imogen before the bell was going to be pretty hard if the bell rang before she found her).
"I'd really rather not, actually," she sniped back, ripping her arm out of his gasp. His eyebrows rose in surprise, and then his gaze went cold.
"Fiona!" A bright voice cut through whatever Dallas was going to reply with, and Imogen appeared by Fiona's side, hugging her tightly. "I missed you," she whispered in Fiona's ear, and Fiona felt herself melt.
"I missed you, too."
Dallas snorted from their right, and Fiona pulled away, shooting a look at him. "What? Is this your girlfriend?" he laughed, sticking his hands in his pockets and clearly enjoying the view in front of him.
Imogen pulled away from Fiona, too, and furrowed her brow. "What?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
Dallas looked between them, and nodded. "Awesome. I like dykes. You should let me watch sometime."
Fiona looked at him, her disgust completely evident. "You're vile." He just laughed and moved on, meeting up with a group of his hockey buddies down the hall. Fiona rolled her eyes and turned back to meet Imogen, who was staring her down. "What?"
Imogen shook her head. "Fiona, do you ever think before you speak?"
She really had no idea what she did wrong this time, so she carefully went over what she had done in the last few minutes before hitting on it. "Oh, what, that? Was I not supposed to say anything? I thought - I thought you didn't care," she muttered, lowering her voice.
"You can't just go around and call me your girlfriend! Don't you think that's something you should talk to me about first? I mean, what if I had a problem with it?" Imogen didn't even wait for Fiona to reply and just held up a hand before walking away, saying something about how she needed to get to class.
Fiona stayed rooted to the spot, torn between wanting to be angry with Imogen (she led me on, she totally led me on. If she didn't want to be my girlfriend then why did she act like she did for the past few weeks?) and wanting to cry (how did I manage to screw this up so quickly? I've only been back at school for half an hour and we only said three words to each other before that Dallas idiot got involved).
Some homecoming this was.
—
"Fiona! Hey, Fiona, wait up!" Fiona closed her eyes briefly as she heard Marisol Lewis's voice, her shoulders sagging. She really didn't have the fight in her to deal with this, not today. Imogen had been avoiding her since the whole girlfriend thing the morning before, even during their one class together. Eli was excited to see her, and so was Clare, even though the two of them had never really hung out that much, and she had lunch with the two of them both days. She had to admit, she liked their dynamic as a couple, and she liked how much happier her best friend seemed with Clare than he did without. Still, the Imogen incident was like a hanging raincloud over everything that happened that entire day.
She turned around to face Marisol, shaking her head. "Whatever it is, Marisol, I really don't want to deal with it right now. I don't have the time or the energy." Marisol stopped short next to Fiona and shook her head as well.
"It's not what you think it is, I swear. Look, I know you were still in New York or whatever, so I'll give you the lowdown: Drew broke up with Katie, so she got revenge by putting this video of his drunk ass into a film for the hockey team that was shown at a school-wide assembly." Fiona had to admit, she was impressed. She had known that Katie played dirty, but she knew how to get revenge, too.
She shrugged her shoulder, adjusting her hat with one hand and keeping hold on her books with the other. "And?"
Marisol rolled her eyes. "Try to keep up, Fiona. I know you got held back, but I thought that was because you went to rehab, not because you were stupid." Fiona let it slide only because she didn't want Imogen to see her punching someone today. But just barely. "Simpson had to take away Katie's position as president! So I'm president now!"
"That's great," Fiona said tonelessly, trying extremely hard to ignore the fact that Imogen was leaving her class a few rooms away and heading towards the two of them. "Can we walk and talk?"
Marisol fell in step with Fiona. "So, we need a VP. I know that we haven't gotten along in the past, but after you pulled through for us with the Frostival and all, Simpson thinks that you'd be a great additional to the student council. What do you think?" Fiona gave Marisol a confused look, wondering if she had fallen into an alternate universe where hockey players hit on her, Imogen didn't want to be her girlfriend, and Marisol wanted her to be her vice-president.
"Um. I guess?" It would give her something to do during the year now that shopping was out of the question as an extracurricular activity, plus it would look good on college applications, she supposed. "Yeah, alright," she sighed.
Marisol rolled her eyes. "Don't sound so excited."
"I am excited, just tired. Jetlag and all."
"Okay, so our first order of business is finding entertainment for this back to school party that's being held tonight. I know, short notice, but Simpson figured that we could just ask around and we'd find someone, you know?" Marisol pulled a piece of paper out of her binder and a pen to go along with it, and looked expectantly at Fiona.
Fiona just looked back. "You do know your boyfriend is in a band, right?"
Marisol waved her off. "That thing? That's not going anywhere. We need real entertainment."
The wheels in Fiona's head were turning now. Imogen had just been talking last night about how excited she was for the band to play their first real gig. If she could get WhisperHug to play at this party tonight, Imogen would have to talk to her at some point, right? "No, no, I've heard them. They're really good, I promise."
Marisol eyed her suspiciously. "Well, I guess you would know quality," she admitted grudgingly.
"Excellent! So, let's notify Simpson and you can tell Mo the good news!"
—
The party looked like it was going to be a typical high school dance, but from what she heard from Marisol all of the WhisperHug members were excited beyond belief for their debut performance. After Marisol told her to attend to her vice-presidential duties (they might have been working together now, but she was still sort of a bitch) Fiona found herself milling around on the dance floor and chatting with a few people, making small talk and getting a feel for how the night was going.
"Hey, Ellen," a voice said over her shoulder, and Fiona gritted her teeth, turning on her heel to face Dallas.
"Shut your mouth and walk away," she warned, breezing past him and heading to the refreshments table.
Dallas just followed her, arms held out from his sides in a fake shrug. "C'mon, what are you sad about? Where's your little girlfriend?"
Fiona turned from the table and poked him in the chest, pushing him away from her a couple of feet so she felt like she had room to breathe. "Don't you know when to leave well enough alone, you ass?" He looked confused, like he wasn't expecting her to react like that, and after a minute or two of debate, did eventually just leave.
She watched him go and took a deep breath before exiting the stifling room, spilling out into the cool hallway and fumbling for her phone in her pocket. She really just wanted to talk to Imogen and see if they could talk about what had happened. It really wasn't the time or place, but she just needed it.
Luckily, Imogen replied this time.
—
Fiona pushed open the door, worrying her lip between her teeth, and stepped in hesitantly. Imogen was fixing Adam's untied bowtie, but once she saw Fiona over his shoulder she stopped. Adam turned to see what had caught her attention, and flashed her a smile, feeling the obvious tension in the room. "I'm just going to go and get my bass and practice a little before we go on. Bye, Fiona." He let himself out, and Imogen crossed her arms over her chest, one eyebrow lifted in Fiona's direction as she stepped closer to her.
Fiona felt like a child being reprimanded, and she didn't like it. It made her stomach twist around uncomfortably, and she clasped her hands in front of her so that she had something to do with them. She hadn't even spoken yet and she could feel her cheeks heating up. "Hey," she said softly. Imogen didn't say anything, just shrugged her shoulders as if to say, Why aren't you getting on with it?
"Okay, look, I shouldn't have said that, I wasn't thinking, and I should have talked it over with you first. I don't know why I did it. I'm really sorry, Imogen. I hate not talking to you; can we please just try and, I don't know, fix this and at least be talking again? Because it's sucked a lot not talking to you."
Imogen pursed her lips, then uncrossed her arms. "How can I stay mad at you when you're such a sad sack?" Fiona grinned at her reuse of the line from their very first fight. "But I know what you mean. It sucked for me, too. Look, it's not that I don't want to be your girlfriend, it's just - let's just worry about that later?"
She'd take it. It was better than nothing right now, because she really did miss Imogen and she didn't want to keep fighting with her. Besides, it was Imogen's night to be onstage and playing the glasses or the tambourine or singing (please don't let her be singing lead, Fiona begged. She loved Imogen dearly, but those 'woos' were not that impressive), and she wasn't going to press the issue and ruin it. "Of course," she assured her.
Then Imogen took one step more and leaned up, pressing her lips against Fiona's, "for good luck," she claimed, when Mo walked in on them twenty minutes later, right before WhisperHug was supposed to go on stage.
—
"And now, we present to you for the first time on any stage ever, Degrassi's very own WhisperHug!" Fiona said into the microphone, sending the crowd into cheers and applause. She and Marisol stepped off the stage and Imogen, Adam, Maya, Zig, and Mo took their spots, starting up their first song a minute or so later.
The rest of Degrassi seemed to be having a good time, Fiona noted, looking around at the groups of friends and couples that were there, but the band was having the best time of all. Mo was definitely playing his heart out for Marisol, who was standing over by the refreshment table with Katie (who was still allowed to come to school functions, Fiona was surprised to learn); Zig and Maya just seemed to be having a good time jamming out; Adam's eyes kept straying to a very pretty blonde girl near the front of the stage, Fiona saw, and she made a mental note to ask him about it later; but the person she was most interested in was Imogen.
Imogen wasn't making a lot of eye contact with Fiona, but she didn't mind. She had her hands full with switching off between the glasses and the tambourine while singing, not to mention she was dancing all over the place, but on the rare occasion that their eyes did meet Imogen would wink and Fiona would lean forward, hands braced on the stage (vice-presidents did get front row seats, after all), wondering if her heart was thundering just as loud as the beat from the music. There was definitely no comparison.
Her heart was louder than the music, every single time.