First Day High

Meredith Grey.

"Present," she responds, raising her right hand as her teacher called out her name. First week here… in this school, in this city… and the pressure was already there. Would she find anyone here who would help her feel more, should they say, comfortable? There she sat, back row, left corner, isolated. Freak, she scolded herself. She manages to sit through the whole period without another word. Ms. Lachet was explaining their French curriculum for the year. Meredith didn't take out her notebook and jot notes like she usually does, but rather just sat there, leaning back, doing nothing. This is inner torture.

The class begins to leave the room at the end of the period. Meredith stands up, but then she sees Ms. Lachet's towering figure looming over her.

"Congratulations," the perky woman said with a smile. "You just survived your first class. I'll see you in home room, Meredith." With that, the teacher leaves Meredith and allows her to stand up, carry her knapsack over her shoulder, and leave the room. A few steps down the hall and Meredith slips over a puddle beside the water fountain. Books splatter everywhere and glass lenses are shattered by an 8th grader sprinting by. Meredith silently bites her tongue in anger. She sees a blurred image of her books being lifted from the auburn-tiled floor. Her hands feel through the sloppy floor for her glasses until she touches what seemed like the chrome frames of her corrective glasses. She places them on, but the cracks give her a speckled image of a guy holding up the books for her.

"Are you okay?" the voice asks sincerely. "You wanna go to the clinic? I… I can take you there."

"Thanks," Meredith says with a smile as she stands up and takes her books from the young man's arms. "Sorry, it's my first day here…"

"Oh, that makes two of us," he says. "I'm Derek… Derek Shepherd."

"Hi Derek. I'm… Meredith. Meredith Grey… how do you know where the clinic is, if you're new?"

Derek laughs. "That was the first place I went to. I got cut on my way to school." He raised his jeans to expose a bandage that looked like the Japanese flag. Meredith bends down to take a look at it.

"Ouch, that must've hurt. Are you okay?" she asks, and Derek nods.

"You know, other girls might have jumped and squealed at me," Derek smiles. "So, I'll walk you?"

Meredith begins to tremble nervously. "A-are you sure? It's break… you should grab something to eat."

"No, it's fine. I'll take you there." Derek insists, and Meredith hesitantly agrees.

-

"Well, you're all right," said Dr. Simmons, the school physician. "However I do recommend that you get a new pair of eyeglasses. Do you have contacts?"

"No," Meredith replies uneasily. "I mean I do, but I left them at home. I didn't think I'd need them."

"Not to worry, we have some here." Doctor Simmons calls Nurse Matilda, who merrily hands Meredith a bottle of contact lens solution. "I'm assuming you know how to use this."

Meredith nods. She took off her eyeglasses and carefully places the contact lenses in her eyes. Derek watched near the door.

"That's better now, isn't it?" Dr. Simmons smiles at Meredith. "I also suggest that you watch your step next time. Have a great schoolyear."

Meredith stands up, thanks the physician and leaves the clinic, with Derek casually trailing behind her. Every step she took is filled with some sort of incomprehensible anxiety and at the same time, relief. Is it because of the ultra-gorgeous Derek Shepherd who was only a few steps behind her and was actually almost next to her? Noticing the latter, Meredith speeds forward unknowingly. As a matter of fact, she has no idea why her cheeks are beginning to redden just by walking, and no, she isn't exhausted because she's been walking for less than a minute. She slows down, so Derek doesn't get the impression that she's trying to avoid him. She stops and turns around to face him.

"Well, I have to go to class now. Sorry for ruining your break." Meredith apologises. "I'll see you around?"

"Just so you know, I insisted on bringing you to the clinic," Derek replies. "I also believe that you're in my biology class."

"Oh," Meredith mumbles, her cheeks blushing. "Okay. Well, I think we'd better go to class before we're late."

"I think we already are," Derek smirks, opening the door for both of them.

-

Unfortunately for Meredith, French and break wouldn't make up for the rest of the day. Sure, Meredith and Derek were assigned as lab partners, but that didn't change the fact that Mr. Bolton was a definite pain in the arse, because not only did he speak out of topic every five minutes during the introduction (seriously, though, it's not like anyone wanted to hear about the time when he fell off the Circle Line in New York because he was wondering if there were any fish in the Hudson) but for the last ten minutes he just made the class sit there, doing nothing. Talk about a bore. The next two periods were no different, because they turned out to be boring as well, and neither of them would be with Derek because he was a year above her and 10th and 11th graders didn't share the same Algebra and History classes.

During lunch Meredith has no choice but to sit alone because all the other tables are full. Actually, not really. It just so happened that every single person in every single table seemed to be glaring at her in a certain way which made her feel uncomfortable. Everyone looked smug, smug and pretentious, which is a synonym for smug. Derek was nowhere in sight at first, but when Meredith tried to look again she found him surrounded by about 5 girls who dressed the same, talked the same (not that they all had the same voice, but they all had that airy, dumb blonde voice that is a stereotype among cheerleaders and to no surprise, they were cheerleaders) and pretty much looked the same because: 1. They all had their hair in the same high-set ponytail with the same red-and-gold ribbon. 2. They were all wearing uniformed red and gold varsity jackets and gold mini skirts with their identical white trainers. And then there's the fact that 3. All five girls carried that same smug-slash-smug-slash-smug-slash-pretentious-which-is-a-synonym-for-smug face when Meredith crossed their gaze. And what was possibly the most frightening part of that whole thing was that 4. They all looked at Meredith at the exact same time.

It is during lunch that Meredith realises that she may not have a place in the school at all, and that maybe Derek would just be nice at first and end up falling into that jock-and-cheerleader clique that is very prevalent in high schools at the time. For Meredith, what seemed to be the greatest difference between Seattle Grace High School and her old school in Portland (and probably every other high school in the entire United States or even the world) was that the rest of the world's high schools had room for every single type of person. It wouldn't just be jock-and-cheerleader, then the punks, then the geeks – those kinds of cliques would only exist in a vague way, and usually, everyone can just interact. In Seattle Grace, it seems to Meredith that the whole school is a jock-and-cheerleader-stereotype-run school, which means that it's a school of the utterly stupid, which means that Meredith seriously does not belong here because she is NOT a ditzy cheerleader. She just wants to finish high school so she can get into a good college, and then finish that and get a GPA over 3.5 and then go back to Seattle and be a surgeon, which means that Meredith has no time at all to fraternise with the rich, the blonde (figuratively) and the arrogant. Only one word, a one-word question at that, rang in Meredith Grey's head.

WHY?!?!?!

And so, sickened by the rest of the population in that ginormous hall that surrounded her, Meredith carries her tray to the nearest unoccupied table, sits down, and eats the salad. After that, she chugs down 500ml of Dasani in one breath, drops the tray onto the tray rack, and rushes to her locker. All in five minutes. Meredith wondered if she could do it faster during the schoolyear, because as far as she knows, it would be the same way for the rest of her high school career, unfortunately. Just by the way the first four to five hours of her first school day during her first week in Seattle had passed by, a whole film of the rest of her high school life just played in her mind. There would be tons of house parties, and Meredith would be the only one uninvited because she is the outcast and no one knows she exists. She left her old school with prospects that at Seattle Grace, she would actually meet her first boyfriend. However, all the guys in the school were the same person (even Derek, she thinks), which is a person that Meredith despises. She wouldn't be able to go to prom because she wouldn't have a date. And during graduation, her name would be skipped because the advisor reading out the class lists would think, "I don't think we have a Meredith Grey in this school." Wow. Could everything be any worse?

When her locker door swings open, Meredith hears a grunt, like someone just got hit by the door. Slowly pulling it back, Meredith sees Derek, his hand rubbing his nose.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Meredith says, panting. "Are you okay? I didn't see…"

"No, I'm fine," Derek reassures her. "I was just wondering why you were sitting alone at lunch today. I mean, you could have eaten with me."

Meredith freezes for a second, and then she quickly takes her books from her locker, shuts the door, and turns back to Derek. "Wow, aren't you contented with all those girls surrounding you already? You want a sixth party now, is that what you mean? Sorry, but I'm not like that. At least your first day at Seattle Grace is doing great. Mine is a load of crap."

With that, Meredith storms off and into her English classroom.

Derek, his nose throbbing, says softly, "I didn't mean that."

And he walks away.