a/n: I watched Clueless while I was sick and somehow fic was born. There will probably be about five parts and it should follow the movie plot fairly closely. Reviews are great, etc and so on. Do not own characters and such. For Cassie. Enjoy!
So you're probably thinking, what is this, a Nike commercial? But, really, this is normal life for a teenage guy. My uncle's a professional runner. That's the fastest kind, even my mom's moped can't outrun him. People pay him tons of money to wear his labels in races or to run with them for photos, but he runs with me cuz I'm his son.
As I try to encourage him to eat more junk food (he's a health nut due to the whole running thing), he drops a truth bomb that shocks me.
"Oh, and Artemis is in town. She's coming by for dinner," he mentions over a whole-wheat bagel. This is devastating news, a tragedy of grandiose proportions.
Artemis is my former-step-sister, who is part teenage girl and part she-devil harpy warrior princess. She puts Buffy of the vampire slaying profession to shame when it comes to putting fear in the hearts of poor teenage boys. As I drive to school, my mind's on this, hence taking out a mailbox (they really need to paint those brighter colors) as I stop at Dick's house. Dick is my best friend because we both like to prank people. I must give him props for his courageous use of sunglasses. Today they have lines running through them, completely defeating their purpose.
"Shopping with Kanye?" I comment as I pull a hard right past a stop sign. He ignores my comment.
"Dude, that was a stop sign!"
"I paused," I respond with an eyeroll. He snickers and pulls out his phone. I can only assume he's texting his girlfriend, Zatanna. Dick and his girlfriend are overly dramatic. The general consciously is that they've seen The Notebook too many times. As he groans at a text message, I comment the obligatory thing:
"Why do you put up with her? I heard that hot ginger down the street from you is interested."
He avoids comment as we pull up at the school and Zatanna leans in my window.
"Why aren't you answering my texts?" Her voice is moderately piercing, probably due to the fact that she actually likes spending time with Artemis. They must discuss tricks for using the female voice to its full harpy abilities.
"Dick, I'm out." I slide around Zatanna, who flaps her hand in either dismissal or greeting. They're arguing as I walk away and I'm left, once again, wondering why he dates high school girls. They're like chihuahuas, all yip and high maintenance.
It's report card day, which I think of as D-Day. My legs aren't the only fast thing, usually I can talk my way out of lower grades. But when I find my gym class grade to be a C, a dark cloud settles in my life.
This is a normal day in gym. I run two laps, then slow to a wandering waltz for the remaining period and observe the resident troublemaker, Jade Nguyen. After the report cards were passed out, she scaled the wall and threatened to hop out the window at the top until Mr. Tornado pulled her down.
"God, what is it about women and British pop music?" I groan as I shut the door behind me. Artemis's legs dangle over the end of the couch and a middle finger appears around the side of it at my comment.
"If the idiot isn't at the track, does the track still exist?" Artemis is taking a philosophy class at the community college in town. If she wasn't already a terrible example of humanity, I'd say it was ruining her. I push her legs aside and sit on the couch, but she flops them back across my lap.
"Wow, how do you walk with these suckers?" I grope at her toes and she pulls away.
"Wow, how do you talk with no brain?" She counters and dives for the remote as I change the channel. "I was watching that! It was a special on Greek history. I know it's cool to be a meathead at your school, but some consider it cool to care about the world outside of the snowglobe of public education."
"Wow, caring is cool? Thanks for the tip, harpy."
In the case of the horrid grade, I am appalled at Tornado's lack of caring. Honestly, it's like he's a robot.
"Dude, just get over it. He's a miserable, lonely, red-faced man who takes pleasure in making others miserable. Or did you miss the part where he was a gym teacher?" Dick explains this as we attempt to hack into his family's security system.
"That's it!"
"You hacked it?" He perks up and practically dives over to the computer he lent me. His face is borderline crestfallen when he sees that I haven't.
"I've just got to make Tornado un-miserable."
After ridiculous amounts of research and a minor hacking of the school system to check who has someone else listed on their insurance, Dick and I discover that there is only one probable match for Tornado. The overly strict choi teacher Dinah Lance. She's sort of hardcore, drives a motorcycle and has a tattoo of a canary on her shoulder. She's also distinctively of the hot strand of female.
"You don't think she's out of his league?" Dick asks as we survey her through a window from our hiding spot behind a bush. It's surveillance, therefore not creepy.
"Chicks go for personality after age 25. It's a known fact," I watch as Ms. Lance folds her leather jacket on her desk and swigs back coffee.
In gym, we're awaiting the bell at the end of the hour and Tornado is waxing on about tardies. When he gets to Jade Nguyen, he snorts.
"38 tardies, that's impressive. Class record, I believe."
Jade smirks and stretches her arms out in celebration. "Couldn't have done it without help from the coffee shop down the street and my parent's total lack of interest in my life. And last but not least, I thank you Mr. Tornado. If this class was even mildly more interesting, I might make an effort to be timely."
The class cheers at her speech because Jade knows how to talk and she's wearing shorts that don't leave much to the imagination. I'm applauding her ass more than her sass. Tornado merely raises an eyebrow before continuing down the list. The bell has rung by the time he gets to my name but I wait.
"West, you have four tardies." He examines me and then, with a sigh, adds: "Come in and run a few laps and we can call it good."
"Man, Mrs. Lance was right about you. Despite the tough exterior, you can be a good guy," I give him a thumb's up and grin at his mildly shocked expression.
tbc
