There is nowhere on the planet like the Gold Saucer. People have always flocked there, even when it was just a plain chocobo track like those found at any school on the continent, with a concession stand and a few arcade games. It was their luck that chocobo racing took off like it did, with a few stars rising higher than before and lifting the dingy amusement park with them.
My father, Chip Renegade, was one of those stars, the biggest in his day. Eventually, though, he was eclipsed, by three young upstarts, who raced faster, flashier and more daringly than those before them, his own daughter numbered among them. Back then we were naïve, stupid, and I suppose we still are, because even as a huge death-bringing meteor hurtles toward the planet, the three of us are preoccupied with nothing more than the big, daft birds, intent, as it were, to die as we've lived.
I spent my childhood in comfort and luxury. We had a mansion in Midgar, perched above even the other houses perched above the plate, as well as a sprawling villa in Costa del Sol, a cosy guesthouse in Icicle Inn next door to eminent scholar Professor Gast, and a whole flock of rooms at the one and only Gold Saucer.
The Gold Saucer was my favourite place to stay. It was like a permanent holiday, and I never outgrew the excitement of taking my meals in the crowded dining hall, our table placed higher than all others, where the Director of the park himself dined when he left his offices. Estelle Renegade was well known throughout the park, and allowed unlimited turns on the games of Wonder Square (back then just dots blinking on a screen with hand-operated controls), free entry to all the plays (even the more adult ones, depending on who was watching the gate) and permitted to ride the rollercoaster until the maids had to tuck me into bed, my stomach heaving. Father left me under the eye of a team of generally indifferent nannies, who preferred to sprawl in my lavish rooms while I entertained myself.
Even as a young child, however, one section of the park quickly dominated my life: Chocobo Square. I spent hours crouched in the audience, watching the riders and their birds circle the track. Father almost always led the group, and I looked up to him with the hero worship every child has for their father, and in fact hundreds of young and old men and women also had for Chip Renegade. He tore around the track, the leather of his saddle creaking, his bird stomping at the ground with its powerful claws then leaping, almost flying, bright feathers floating in its wake and Father leaning forward over its head, looking more alive and joyous than I ever saw him.
As soon as I was old enough I asked Father if I could take riding lessons, and it was the first time he really seemed to notice that he had a daughter, numbered among the hired help who followed him from home to home along the Chocobo circuit. The very next day I had my first bird, a light brown female I called Speckle. Within a week my instructor judged me ready to ride her without assistance, and by the end of the month I could send her from a walk to a run to a dash to the energy-depleting sprint.
The years following the arrival of Speckle to my life flowed past in a number of milestones, races, games, medals, ribbons, junior championships and falls. Speckle was followed by my first 'real' bird, a delicate white boy who could run like the wind he was named for. Wind was followed by Sparkle Cowboy, the rare silver chocobo my father presented to me when I was 15 and had discovered irony, and given a name I regretted ever after.
Through it all there were a few other constants, such as the faceless mass of the hired help, the shifting from house to house, town to town, continent to continent. School was a pile of coursework I ignored as long as possible, a scheme that actually worked considerably well, as by the time the school demanded that I hand something in or fail, we were following the circuit to the next town, and the next school.
When I was 16 the single member of the help who had remained with us my entire life finally put a stop to it. Felice Kunsel, the thickset, no-nonsense nanny who had actually attempted to keep tabs on me whenever she was on duty, received word from one of my schools that I was failing, badly, and hadn't handed in a single assignment. Ever.
Felice spoke to my father and the next month, when he and most of the team moved on to the Gold Saucer, I remained at Midgar, clattering sullenly around our mansion with just Felice and handful of other maids and cooks for company. Company was a relative term, of course, because apart from screaming and crying at Felice the first day, I refused to speak to any of them ('punishing' them as the unit that, in my spoilt, childish head, they were), as I was forced to complete my workbooks and, for the first time in my life, actually attend school.
School was a harsh awakening for me. Suddenly I had to rise at a set time, trudge to a building filled with other kids who were not paid to be nice to me, do things I didn't want to do and sit still, without once touching a chocobo.
The first day I was late to class as I couldn't figure out my timetable and the four students I asked gave vague, unhelpful answers and hurried off. I didn't understand. Why wasn't I special here? When I finally scuttled in to maths the teacher just handed me a worksheet covered in weird symbols. The rest of the class was silently writing, and shooting me occasional curious glances. I looked back at the sheet, hoping it would have rearranged itself into something that made sense, but nope, still the same mess. The teacher looked at me, frowned. I picked up my pen and wrote my name, hesitated, and wrote it again and again, for the next thirty minutes, pressing harder and harder the more my stomach twisted, then handed it in and fled when the bell rang.
The other classes were no better. I was way behind the other kids my age, as I'd learned only things that I'd wanted to throughout the years, so while I could read and add perfectly well, I had no idea what algebra or calculus were, or what the Corel uprising was, and couldn't name a single plant. The teachers assumed I was at the usual level for my age without asking or showing any interest in me, so I pretended I was. I sat in class nodding, pretending to listen, scribbling nonsense lines and doodles on paper and wondering how long before they discovered me and sent me back down to colour in with crayons with the four-year-olds it was rapidly becoming apparent were probably my intellectual equals.
Even lunch was a nightmare. Every spot of the school seemed to be crammed with unfamiliar faces. I didn't recognise anyone from any of my classes, and no one made any effort to speak with me. I spent the first day wandering the school, eating the lunch Felice had packed me that morning and trying to look like I was on my way somewhere and not just a friendless loser. I went home, buried my face in Sparkle Cowboy's feathers, and cried. For the first time in my lonely, isolated life, I realised how alone I was.
Things didn't rush to get better. The first few weeks progressed essentially the same as the first day. Some lunches I summoned some courage, approached the nerdier looking groups and planted myself at their outskirts. They tolerated my presence but I had no idea what they were talking about, and their few attempts to include me in the conversation failed miserably. I got so nervous I had no idea what to say, and mumbled one or two words. After that they would give up, and even if I looked for them the next few days I generally didn't succeed.
I was failing every class. Miserably. After several mini-quizzes I was asked to stay back to talk to most of my teachers. Some meetings I avoided altogether, some I couldn't speak for fear of bursting into tears, and some I was surly and aggressive. When nothing came of them I thought maybe they'd somehow got the impression I was more competent than I was, and thought I would catch up. And then I was summoned to meet with the head of our year. Four times.
The first two, she seemed to add my attitude to my inability to pick up basic concepts and arrive at the conclusion that I didn't want to learn anything, and was mostly brusque and confrontational. The third time she looked at me pityingly a lot and told me it was ok so many times that I understood that it really wasn't, and had to fight burning tears of shame the whole ride home. The fourth meeting I arrived to find her sitting with a boy of my age, with a wide, open smile and terrible haircut. This loser was to be my first friend. And he was assigned by the deputy headmaster.
"This is William," she told me, "He's going to give you a hand with some of the things you're having a bit of trouble with."
I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't say anything, just looked from one to the other. He smiled unfailingly. Something similar flickered persistently at the corners of her mouth, but didn't seem able to follow through.
"You can call me Will," the boy offered helpfully, when the silence got too awkward.
"Ok," I finally replied. "Cool."
"Well I'm glad to see you two are getting along!" the head grinned, "William has kindly offered to stay back after school every now and then to go over some concepts. Did you have plans for this afternoon, Estelle?"
I did, in fact. They involved a giant bird and pretending that I never had to come back to this place. "Guess not," I told her instead. Will was still grinning at me for no reason. It was beginning to make me uncomfortable.
"Great! You two are welcome to use this classroom. I'll leave you to it!"
She bustled out of the room, and it was just me and William.
"It's nice to meet you, Estelle," he smiled, "I'm a big fan of your father!"
I nodded wordlessly. I really didn't care. "What are you meant to teach me?" I asked him.
"Oh." He looked at a piece of paper in front of him. His handwriting was horrendous. "Well I have a transcript of your grades, and it looks like you could use a hand in- well, sort of…"
"Yeah, everything," I told him glumly. "I don't know why they haven't just put me back in grade one."
"Oh-" he looked stricken, "It's not that bad! I mean… I'm sure we can get you up to scratch!"
I looked at him cynically. He looked pretty smart. He probably didn't know what it was like to sit in a class and have no idea what the teacher was talking about, to spend the whole period just trying to avoid their eyes so you didn't have to admit that you didn't even understand the words in the question.
"Yeah, ok. Good luck," I said. "Where do we start?"
He had lists and schedules and diagrams. I'd never seen anyone so organised, and had to wonder if he did anything else in his life. At least I hoped that if anyone could help get me caught up, it would be this kid. Our meetings "every now and then," it turned out, meant four days a week – and we only missed the fifth because he travelled home to his family's property on the outskirts of Kalm on Fridays.
William Choco was a laid-back country boy attending our fine upper-plate school on full scholarship. His clothes were outdated and looked like something a dad would wear (not mine, of course, Chip Renegade never wore anything but the most cutting-edge fashion, and back then the phrase "dad-fashion" would have conjured images of tight, glittering tops, cowboy hats and leather pants). But in the end I had to admit there were worse people to spend time with. Namely, and I was an expert based on my experience, absolutely nobody.
We didn't really talk a lot. He was shy and kind of awkward, and my small-talk skills left a lot to be desired. Plus, if I had to be away from Sparkle Cowboy an extra hour a day it had better be spent making me look less stupid in front of the other kids. So I spent the joyless hour hunched over books learning stupid useless facts like how to move numbers around (the rules were both pointless and endless), how the world was constructed (tiny little pieces, apparently, with equally stupid rules about charge and velocity) and how to use words (which I'd been doing for long enough that I had that down pat, thankyou very much, or at least as well as I needed to).
And I guess I wasn't really dumb, or maybe he was just really, really smart, because I did sort of start catching up to the others. Suddenly on the days when I sat with random people at lunch – there were just so many of them, I thought surely by now I'd run into the same ones occasionally – brought up schoolwork, I could sometimes comment, instead of just waiting for the subject to pass. One particularly shining moment in my memory was when Amber Bennet, a decently pretty girl who sat next to me in History, asked me a question in class about the Wutai-Midgar war, and I was able to answer her. That day she waved to me at lunch and hunched along the seat to make room for me with some other mid-range cool kids. I didn't see her again for three days and then was greeted with just a quick smile across the room, but it was something.
Aside from being really really smart, William was eternally patient and infinitely inventive. He put up with my complaining and late arrival and inability to get it, and kept me from getting bored by constantly changing his teaching – I learned Mako's advantages by mnemonic, could rap the dates of the Wutaian war's battles and eventually could consistently win at geography "snap." Apart from the amazing teaching, he was also the one person I consistently spoke to every day. And it was different to anyone I'd ever spoken to before. He poked fun at me (it took me a week to realise he was joking, since no one had ever teased me before) and just laughed when I inadvertently made obnoxious, patronising comments. It took me over a month to admit that I actually kind of liked the guy.
That's not to say there weren't days we hated each other. One afternoon he was teaching me about carboxylic acids and their derivatives, or, failing to teach me about them. After asking me the same question four times and at each one receiving the response "I don't know," even after telling me the answer, he put his pen down.
"Ester," he sighed loudly, almost visibly exhaling exasperation. His exhaustion pinched at my temper; he was here to teach me, how dare he get angry at my stupidity when it was obviously his fault for not doing a better job?
"It's Estelle," I told him shortly. "As in the great actress Estelle Highland of Nibelheim, not that you'd have heard of her?"
He slowly raised one tawny eyebrow. "No… it's ester. As in the water soluble functional group COOR."
"Oh," I replied, defeated.
"What's wrong with you today, Ester?" he asked in frustration. "You're not even trying!"
"Four days a week is a lot, you know!" I exploded semi-incoherently, "On top of all the other hours of school and homework and I've never even done any of this before! And I hate it all anyway and I just want to get to spend five minutes with my chocobo without all this stupid stuff in my brain!"
Sparkle Cowboy watched me every morning from the barn as the driver pulled the car out onto the road. Normally I'd ride him every morning and afternoon, but it was getting harder and harder to make time, with late nights finishing assignments or homework making early mornings a chore, and afternoons taken up with Will's tutoring.
"You have a chocobo?" he asked, sounding surprised.
I looked at him witheringly. "I'm Estelle Renegade," I said, "Of course I have a chocobo."
"Of course." My attempts to scorn him almost invariably failed. He just genuinely didn't seem to care what I thought – or what anyone did. "You used to race a bit, didn't you? I remember you took out first in the girls' at the Midgar juniors, right?"
"Every year since I was six," I told him flatly.
"Yeah. I won the boys' a few times." That surprised me. I didn't bother to pay much attention to my own competition, let alone the boys', but I wouldn't have picked this slow-talking, potato-farming yokel as a rider, let alone a good one. "You should join the school team," he said.
"There's a school team?" I frowned. I hadn't heard anyone talk about it, or seen posters or- anything.
"Yeah, we're pretty good. I could talk to the coach with you, if you want?"
I wondered how my father would feel, knowing I had to have someone else help me acquire a place on a chocobo team. But I didn't know who the coach was or where to look, so three days later Will was standing beside me when Coach Wirtzer inducted me onto the team based on my name alone.
And just like that, school became bearable. Three times a week Will and I headed from tutoring to training, and Sparkle Cowboy came to stay at the school stables – tended by my own stablehand, of course – admired openly by the other riders, who accepted me immediately.
In retrospect I had always sort of been aware of the chocobo team, I just hadn't realised that that was what they were. They were the uber cool kids, the ones who briefly stopped conversations by entering a room or walking by a group at lunch. Yan Roberts and Jonah Mills' names were scribbled on locker doors and over the inside covers of books school-wide, inside or surrounded by love hearts. The girls walked through the hallways flipping their hair, their outfits and accessories memorised and mimicked by the other students.
Just having a table to sit at was an incredible change for me, it being the cool table was an added bonus. It was most often just the other girls on the team at our table: the boys like to throw balls around and wrestle each other or sit in sprawled, masculine groups elsewhere. They were all super nice once I'd been accepted as well, interested in my thoughts and my life. And they rarely talked about school which, considering I hadn't yet quite caught up, was welcome.
One day I was sitting alone at "our" table, waiting for the other girls – whatever class they were in had run late – when Jonah Mills himself strode over and sat across from me. Immediately old, shy, nervous Estelle returned, the one who never knew what to say. Jonah wasn't just incredibly attractive, he oozed confidence and charm by the bucketload. Everything about him was sharp; he was lean, coiled muscle and a constantly-cocked eyebrow. He wore his clothes stylishly, leather jackets and tight white shirts showing off every muscle. Heads all around us turned, conversations slowed, eyes shone with jealousy.
"You're pretty good," he announced without introduction, though he'd never spoken a word to me before. He attacked a pile of rubbery noodles with a plastic fork practically before he was sitting.
I laughed. "Thanks. So are you," I told him, and it was true. Jonah and William were easily the best two on the team, set extra miles to run, extra push-ups, and extra time goals.
"First billed," he declared proudly. I knew that too, as the coach had us line up in our billing before even the practice races, and Sparkle Cowboy and I stood behind him, in the same position of the girls' side of the team. The school districts kept the gender division despite the fact that it was becoming recognised that girls could race quite as well as the boys, and I was fairly sure that had they not separated us, I would have had his position as well. "You applying for the opens?" he asked, watching me curiously through incredibly blue eyes.
The Open Trials were the standard conversation piece among aspiring riders everywhere. They drew jockeys from every sector of Midgar, as well as Kalm, Fort Condor and Junon. Scouts for every racing team would be there, and failing at the Opens basically ruined a rider's chance of making it, for that year at least. The only condition for entry was having completed formal schooling, which we would have in three more months.
"Of course," I told him, "And obviously you are."
He laughed. "Damn straight. I'm going to wow them."
"Who are you aiming for?" I asked him.
"GS," he replied immediately. No one with a brain cell wanted anything else than the Gold Saucer. They paid the best, brought the most fame and offered a secure future. Jonah leaned over the table toward me conspiringly, locking his eyes on mine. "I'm going to be world famous," he confided with a tiny, mocking smile. I hoped the twisting in my stomach wasn't visible on my face.
I smiled back at him calmly, somehow. "I'll bet," I told him.
"Well why do you ride?" he asked me, "It can't be for fame because you already have that, Estelle Renegade."
"I ride… because I have to, I guess. It's pretty much all I like doing and I can't imagine having to spend my life doing something else."
He watched me, his expression unreadable, then grinned. "Well, you're deep," he laughed, "The reporters will be all over you. Now me, I just want to be famous. I reckon most of us do."
"What about William?" I asked. William sat across the room, eating with a bookish group, who usually disappeared to the library soon after eating. I couldn't imagine that studious, down-to-earth William rode to seek fame.
Jonah scowled. "Who cares what that loser wants. Friends, you'd think, a haircut and a life."
I laughed, "What?"
He stared at me suddenly, suspicious. "Are you and him friends or something?"
"No," I replied without hesitation or much guilt, "The school makes me get tutored by him, but you know, I'd rather not." Ok so maybe there was some guilt in an awful place in the back of my head. But it could stay there. I didn't need to get in between some weird rivalry between Will and Jonah.
Jonah smiled again, all sunshine and joy, stabbing his fork back into the pasta. "Good. He's not worth spending time with, boring git. I'd feel sorry for him if he didn't bring it on himself."
A second later two other boys and some girls from the team appeared, clapping Jonah on the back and launching into stories that started "Gods, Estelle, you would not believe-" The atmosphere changed, and by the end of lunch Jonah was kicking an apple core around with some other guys. I tried not to watch too closely, but a few times I looked up and Jonah looked right back at me, flashing me that tiny, wolfish smile.
The group introduced me to a whole new side of the school. Most weekends someone on the team or someone they knew would throw a party. The wild bashes took me aback the first few times, but everyone was so relaxed and wild – I suddenly knew what I'd been missing out on with no other kids my age my whole life. Jonah was always there, on the periphery. I always had a feeling for where he was, when he entered a room, and when I was talking to other boys I often felt his eyes on me. When he joined me one night sitting out on someone's parents' verandah and his arm was around and then his lips were on mine it just seemed like a natural step.
The rivalry between Will and Jonah was the only major sour point in my life. I didn't really need the explanation when one of the girls on the team informed me that the two of them didn't get along at all. They were constantly competing to be first billed and had gotten into fights more than a couple of times. William had been a part of the group I now hung around, but he and Jonah had butted heads so many times that William had gotten sick of it and left. Honestly I couldn't imagine quiet, serious Will fitting in with these people at all, but I still wished I could talk openly about one to the other.
I skipped a few tutoring sessions, spending the time instead training and hanging out with Jonah, and went to a few parties held on weeknights, and before I knew it my grades were dropping again. Will didn't really mention it at all, simply continued to study with me before and after training and occasionally before school. He was reimbursed for the time he spent by my father through the school in some convoluted way, but I appreciated him doing it all the same, especially since the Opens were coming up and he could have used the time to train instead. He brushed off my thanks, telling me it would be worth it, that his greatest accomplishment in life would be if he actually managed to get a thickhead like me through school.
He still teasingly called me Ester and I called him Chocoboy, due to his unfortunate last name. His hair was still too long and he still wore weird clothes, like Wutaian print shirts and ill-fitting cargo pants, but it worried me less. He'd proven that he was a worthwhile person and for probably the first time in my life, I made the deep realisation that that mattered more than the other things. Yeah, yeah, I was shocked at my own sudden depth, as well.
I never told Joe that I was spending time with William, and let on to William that I spent a lot less time with Joe than I really did, and back then I actually managed to juggle being friends with both of them at the same time with some measure of success, or at least a lot less devastation than I would encounter later in life.
In actual fact I did spend less time with Jonah as exams arrived, and the few months worth of information that I'd cultivated had to be dredged up at once. William really came through for me, making sure I was caught up and stayed caught up. We spent hours in the library, drinking expensive imported coffee I had my maids bring, and reading until my eyes watered. I had to deal with stress suddenly, ripping out handfuls of hair and calling William's house bawling, convinced I was too stupid to ever finish school and what had I been thinking.
In the week between exams and results I went camping with Jonah and few other kids from the team, and enjoyed it a lot for a girl who had never lived without a staff to keep everything clean and folded and pristine. We sunbathed and swam and slept a lot, and Joe and I went for a lot of private walks up the beach, to sunbathe and swim and make out.
We returned to discover we'd all passed, but were allowed no more rest, as the following weeks were spent in constant training for the Opens. Jonah, who grew up in Junon and lived on campus rather than commute all the way, arranged for me to stay in one of the rooms left vacant by a student who'd returned home, and we had most of the school to ourselves. Sparkle Cowboy was the fittest he'd ever been, and seemed to enjoy friendship as much as I did, warking madly to the other birds whenever we entered.
William was around but I didn't see him much; I was usually with Jonah and didn't want to make a big deal out of it, so short of a brief wave and a nod on the training field, we had little contact. His rivalry with Joe was stronger than ever, as now the two were competing for something tangible – a contract with a real team. I was confident about my own chances, not just because of my name, but because most days I could outrun all but occasionally Joe and William, and I'd raced enough tournaments to know better than to be affected by nerves.
Joe and I faked nerves the night before the Opens anyway, claiming that we had to keep each other company that night. We were innocent enough – or at least, I was – that we did nothing but get a good night's rest for the following day, but all the same the rest of the team giggled and teased us all through breakfast. William, who had arrived early from Kalm and was eating with the rest, refused to meet my eyes. I didn't care much, because Joe wrapped an arm around me as we ate and I was sure that the two of us would be picked up later that day for a life of luxury and fame. Of course, I had no idea how life worked in those days, and clearly no suspicion of how mine would turn out, but back then I could snatch happiness where it came so probably I was better off.