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Alana blinked furiously as her ditz of an uncle chattered on and on about how 'cool' and 'awesome' it was that she was going to be living with him for a year. She figured if she got her eyes to tear up, or at least appear to tear up she could use the good ole PMS excuse to get away from his cheeriness.

Not that she had a problem with cheeriness. She just didn't like it shoved in her face at 3 in the morning while the coffee maker was broken.

As the haze of sleepiness cleared she realised that was probably exactly why he was doing that. Her uncle was a little shit after all.

"Dude, shut up." He smirked at her annoyance, a reaction he was clearly gunning for and she respected him for that.

"I suggest you unpack now little Lanie, you have school in a few hours."

"You are the face of true evil."

He grinned, "You are too kind. Well, I'm off to sleep, I still have a while to go for my bartending shift." He sauntered back into his room whistling happily the whole way. She punched his arm but it had no effect on his good mood.

So, being the excellent, kind and forgiving person that she was, she began unpacking.

Everything she needed to prank the dick was in the same box as her books anyway.

Stefan was on edge. There was a new student in town. Caroline had overheard something about someone transferring and it had gotten everyone on edge. The new faces in town tended try to kill members of their little family.

His ears pricked up when he head footsteps leading into the history classroom, too light to be Alaric's while the rest of the students were already there. The door opened with a creak that hadn't been there before, sounding almost ominous and Bonnie and Elena both looked to him for confirmation before setting watch at the door.

It finally opened wide and they got a good look at the new student.

The new student was contorted mid-yawn and they couldn't see her face too well. Her short, black hair was pulled into a itty bitty ponytail, the too short strands barely held in place with a million colourful hairpins in dozens of colours. She wore a purple t-shirt and short overalls paired with doc martens, all smelling of age, like they'd been sourced from a thrift store. The only things on her that were new were the watch, a good expensive diving watch, and the giant backpack, also made for rugged use. There were red glasses hanging off the collar of her overalls and when the very long yawn finally ended, Stefan knew that she had grey eyes and also that she would need a dentist in five months because some of her cavity fillings weren't looking so good.

She looked at the class with a frown, the hollows under her eyes looking dark and almost bruised before shuffling in with a slow gait.

Caroline was the first of the troupe to engage her in conversation.

"Are you new here?"

The perky blonde was talking to her, asking her if she was new. What Alana wanted to say was 'Of course you idiot, if you've never seen me before I'm obviously new.'

But she didn't. There were better more fun ways to handle this. She dug deep into her nonexistent soul to bring fake tears to her eyes and sucked in her breath with a wet sound. "You d-don't remember me? I know you lost your memory after that fall but...they said you would remember now!"

The girl looked around at her friends who played along to the little trick, looking anywhere but at her in a stunning display of fake guilt. "Really?"

And Alana dropped the act. "No." With that she sat down at the closest empty seat, settling her head into the cradle of her arms and decided to take a brief nap.

She'd need some energy if she wanted to deal with all these idiots.

"Hey, Bonnie?" Caroline said, and Bonnie was so caught up in the weirdness that was going on that instead of flinching at the sight and sound of her once friend turned vampire, that she actually answered her normally.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think she might be a zombie?"

The answer came in a muffled tired voice emerging from the pile of hair, fabric, hands and head that was the new girl, "Don't worry Blondie, you've got nothing to fear from me, I like my brains to be actually working."

Elena, Bonnie and Caroline shared a look.

"Maybe you should work on your inside voice." Elena teased their blonde friend and for once in a long time Bonnie felt the slightest bit of normality descend upon their group. And then the pile of new girl spoke again.

"Yeah, Blondie's not the only one with the inside voice problem."

"I didn't know zombies had such good hearing." Bonnie snarked at the girl and almost as if in slow motion the pile of new girl rose from the depths to emerge as an almost functional human being.

"Braaaaains!"

Oh yes, this might be end up being a fun year after all.

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