Title: Distractions
Summary: Blue Sargent does not really hate school, at least not more than she hates anything else.
...
Blue Sargent did not really hate school, except for the fact that it kept her away from her friends.
Friends was really such a careless word for them, but there was no word that could be used more accurately.
Currently, however, she was grateful to be in school. To be distracted.
Distracted from Artemus, from Persephone, from Gansey.
Gansey, who the word friend fit even less than the others. Gansey, who was going to die.
Yes, she was glad to be distracted.
...
Lunch is the worst time of the day, because, having no one to talk to, she is left alone with her thoughts.
Left alone, to think about-
"Is it alright if I sit here?"
Blue looks up, stunned, at a girl standing over her table. "Uh, yeah."
"It's Blue, right?" The girl asks.
"Yeah."
"I'm Lily. I was new at the beginning of the year." The girl sits down.
The universe seems to want to play a cruel joke on her.
"Lily?"
"Yeah." She nods.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue.
Blue tries not to think about anything.
Artemus, in her house.
Don't think about it.
Persephone, dead.
Stop it, Blue.
Gansey.
No.
Gansey, dying.
"I like your name." Lily says, like she thinks she has to say something.
"Thank you." Blue says.
"People here don't seem to like you much."
Why couldn't this girl stop talking?
Blue just shrugs.
"Don't you care?"
"Not really."
She stops talking.
Blue Sargent really hated lunch.
...
Her math class is nearly worse than lunch. No one outright teases her, but the boys that she knows make jokes behind her back, sit directly behind her.
It's been a while since she's heard them whisper, but today, of all the terrible days, they choose to.
As if she doesn't feel awful enough.
Nothing these boys say really matters, and she knows it.
It still makes her angry.
She hears only snippets, things like "Crazy" and "Weirdo."
"Didn't she have something to do with that dead lady?" One of them says.
And she is back to thinking about things other than math.
Persephone.
She does not finish her work.
...
In history, her teacher mentions Wales. It is not even the focus of the lesson, just part of a passing phrase.
It still distracts her.
Glendower.
Gansey.
She does not want to be in love with him, but she is inching ever closer.
She does not want Gansey to die.
"Miss Sargent?" Her teacher asks. "What have I just been talking about?"
She mutters an apology.
She does not want Gansey to die.
...
When Blue Sargent finally gets back to 300 Fox Way, Gansey and Noah are waiting in the Pig.
"Adam had work." Gansey says, as way of a greeting. "And Ronan's at the Barns."
She sits in the back, next to Noah.
"Are you okay?" Noah asks.
"Bad day at school." She shrugs.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Gansey asks.
She shakes her head. "Just drive."
Gansey drives.
She does not want him to die.
...
Blue Sargent does not want to go to school, but she does not particularly want to go anywhere anymore.
300 Fox Way is painful.
Monmouth Manufacturing is painful.
Cabeswater is painful.
So, she goes to school.