"I hate LA"
It's the first thing she blurts out to her brother upon entering the kitchen in the morning.
"And a good morning to you too sis, protein shake? He says while extending out his arm out to her while holding out a glass.
Katara gives him what some would call the stank eye.
"Great, you've already adapted one of Los Angeles' prime LA'isms, proud of yourself? We've literally have only been here two weeks!"
"Hey it's very warm here. Warm weather means more sleeveless shirts. More sleeveless shirts means more arm exposure. I can't walk around with flabby arms, so I need to quickly adapt to the LA ways."
"I think bony is a better adjective to use when describing your arms."
But Sokka carries on like he hasn't heard her, slurping away at his liquidated soy.
Katara lets out a huff and moves to walk to their cupboard to get out some breakfast cereal.
She hasn't taken kindly to LA since moving here two weeks ago. The culture shock has hit her by storm.
She's moved from a city that was primarily rainy, snowy, and cold with a population of 800; to a city that's dry, literally fiery, and warm. and has a population of a whopping four million.
Growing up and spending the first sixteen years of her life in Yakutat, Alaska hasn't readied for well… all of this.
Within two weeks she's had to buy a completely new wardrobe, a wardrobe that is better suited for the warm weather, rather than the frosty weather she grew up accustomed to,
She's used to knitting her own sweaters, mittens, and scarves, and now she figures she'll probably have to resort to knitting skimpy crop tops if she takes in consideration the weather and culture.
All in all, she hasn't settled in to her new life well. She envies Sokka, he's loving it here. Her brother is the type of person who turns lemons into lemonade. He makes the complete best of any situation he's put in to. He's quick to adapt in any situation he's thrown in to.
Katara is the polar opposite. She's always loved and valued where she's come from. Growing up in a small town, completely isolated from the world has never made her upset. Quite the opposite actually. She loved being from a small tight knit community, a community where families and neighbors grew up together in harmony, bonds that spread between families through generations.
Yakutat was a town where you earned your keep, whether it be by hunting, knitting, fishing, everyone made a team effort to ensure everyone lived comfortably.
This type of comradery completely nonexistent in LA from what she's observed in her two weeks of living here and in film and pop culture. Here, everything is a game, everyone here is in it for themselves, looking to climb the social hierarchy. She finds it reprehensible.
Granted, she hasn't properly met anyone here yet, but she can only imagine what her first day of high school has in store for her. Which is why she is in such a crabby mood.
She takes a look back at Sokka and sees him slurping up each last droplet of his protein shake, and the sight makes her slowly lose hope in humanity.
Sokka pulls the pick up truck into the school parking lot, a parking lot that's filled with ferraris and convertibles.
Katara refuses to feel shameful about it though. She reminds herself again that she's proud of her humble beginnings.
She steps out of the truck, processing her surroundings. She notices how many students there are, which reminds her how insignificant her presence must be here. In Yakutat everyone mattered, it was weird to not make eye contact with someone a give them a greeting.
She approaches the entrance of her school with Sokka, keeping her head up high and proud. She won't conform to the social norms, she will not walk around with her phone in her hand all the while not taking note of her surroundings.
She's gotta admit to herself that she's scared shitless, but at least she's not in this completely alone. She has her brother.
She turns her head to look at her brother for support and finds him missing. She panics. Did he get lost already? Is he in trouble. She's always been overprotective of her brother. She always feels like she has to compensate for the lack of maternal figure in the household.
She moves her head swiftly from left to right scanning the hall for her brother. She spots him and he's… flirting?
He's standing in front of some bulletin board, his arm raised and he's leaning against the board, standing before some girl with short light brown hair. She's giving him a smug smile in response to his flirting.
Katara lets out the biggest eyerolls of eyerolls. She is irate.
Just who is he to completely abandon me on our first day, for the first pretty girl he could get ahold of! I was so worried about him!
She inwardly muses.
Forget him, she thinks. She can take care of herself. Just a sixteen year old girl who's never been to a school that didn't include grades K-12. It's not like just because she's only ever encountered about a dozen other people in her age group doesn't mean she's gonna find it difficult making friends here. She's got this!
She holds her head high and saunters off into homeroom. She refuses to be intimidated by this city and its inhabitants.
I won't let them win.
The day is toppled off with her being completely mortified in front of her entire homeroom classroom.
The school's principal found it necessary to make a little visit to her homeroom and have her introduce herself to everybody.
He mentioned that Katara came from a very small town in Alaska, and she was of inuit descent. She's pretty sure three quarters of the class had no idea what that meant.
He also thought it would be a good icebreaker for Katara to share with the class about her culture, he broached the subject by saying "Tell us about your "people."
She tried to explain a bit about what it's like back home while also trying to get the point across that she wasn't some foreign oddity.
Katara made it known to the class and that stinkin principal that Alaska was in fact IN AMERICA, and yes; English is her first language.
She explained how she would go fishing back home and hike, as she spoke with the dullest tone, knowing that these teens couldn't give a flying hoot about her or where she's from, but also to spite this ignorant man they call principal!
He seemed unimpressed by the activities she listed, given that they're pretty much the same things people do here.
He dismissed himself, and implored the homeroom to make Katara feel welcome and help her adjust. He was met with silence.
And to top it all off, her homeroom teacher HAD to mention that she heard from her ancestry DNA test that she was 14.9% Native American, and asked the class if they too had some inuit ancestry.
The whole thing got derailed within minutes when some students found it necessary to strike up a debate about their confusion about why Native Americans can't be called Indians.
The rest of the day followed with Katara being as lonely as can be. There's not much socialization going on while in class. Katara was only approached once the whole day and that was because somebody asked her to borrow a pencil. They never gave the pencil back.
Gym class was hell, the girls locker room was beyond anything Hollywood movies could ever prepare her for. The fumes from all the different types of perfumes of lotions rang through the air, mixed with a bit of what she could assume was weed, and Katara couldn't go two seconds without choking on her breath. Bras and panties were thrown all over the place. Lewd conversations were rang through her ears, conversations about breast sizes and sexual organ sizes seemed to be the focal point of conversation amongst the girls in the locker room.
Katara couldn't believe her ears. Did these girls have no shame? To talk about this stuff so brazenly and openly boggled her mind.
It was safe to say that she didn't make any small talk with anyone in that locker room. She's never felt more alone.
Fortunately, she and Sokka shared the same lunch period. She was still immensely pissed at Sokka for ditching her first thing in the morning, but due to how lonely the day has been for her, she decided to let it slide just this once.
She ate lunch with Sokka and the girl he was flirting with this morning, whose name she learned is Suki.
Meeting Suki was the only highlight of her day, she was warm, welcoming, and seemed to see through her brothers B.S, but at the same time didn't mind it.
She was curious and asked them questions about their background without being woefully ignorant and offensive about it. She shared with them some tips about how to survive the modern high school experience, tips Katara took into consideration, while Sokka just gawked at her.
She beckoned Suki goodbye when the period rang, and Suki invited them to have lunch with her again tomorrow. She just hopes Sokka's shameless ogling doesn't get in the way of this potential friendship.
She ends the day on a positive note, with Marine Biology being her last class. She loves Marine Biology, she loves marine life, the water, everything about the ocean she's completely in love with. It's the closest she's felt to home the entire day.
The bell rings for dismissal and she's the first one out the door in her class. She can't stand to be in this school for another minute. She figures its too much exposure therapy for one day.
She scrummages through the halls making her way towards the exit, she's almost there…
All of a suddenly she is picked up off her feet, someone grabs her from her lapel and places her down gently in front of the lockers on the side of the hallway.
Initially she is too stunned to speak, but when the shock wears down she moves to open her mouth and lambast whoever did that when she's met with an index finger to her lips.
The rude finger to her lip isn't what stops her from sticking up for herself, it's the sheer empty silence she's met with. She also notices how the hallway is split apart, like everyone's making way for the grand entrance of some important person.
She's so thrown by the way everyone is reacting right now that her anger dissipates, and she finds herself tiptoeing to see over people's heads so she can get a clearer opening at the scene in the hall. She wonders if some type of moviestar is making their way through the hall. She's ashamed to admit that she can't withhold her own curiosity.
She's able to catch a glimpse of what's going on in the hall. She sees three girls strutting confidently down the hall. The one in the middle obviously leading the charge.
She has jet black hair tied up in a single topknot, with the two single tresses shaping the side of her face. Her eyes honeycoon gold, shiny, looking like they could pierce you and turn you to stone if you looked into them for too long. Her lips are full and glossed to perfection. She's smirking, her face is all knowing. She knows she's got this whole school groveling at her, with minimal effort on her part.
Katara takes note of the people staring at the sight before them. They seem to look more petrified than enamored by the sight of whoever this is. And weirdly, Katara can't blame them. This girl seems… untouchable.
Her other two cronies follow suit. One of them also has jet black hair, but her hair is neatly pinned into two buns at the sides of her head. Her face is anything but smug, quite the opposite, she looks placid. Like the attention everyone's giving her holds no significance. The other one is practically skipping down the hall. She's' the only one wearing a full smile, she has the longest braid Katara's ever seen. The braid bounces from side to side due to the jovial skipping.
What a weird mix of girls. Katara thinks to herself.
They've now made their way out the doors of the schools exit. It felt as though to Katara that they were sauntering down the hall in slow motion based off how many observations she was able to make about the three girls in a five second interval.
Everything has seemed to gone back to normal, the middle of the hallway is not cleared out anymore, and everyone seemed to snap out of whatever trance they fell under.
That was the weirdest, trippiest thing Katara has ever experienced in her sixteen years on this earth. She's never seen human beings grovel so openly about other human beings.
Katara overhears a few conversations when she makes her way out of the schools exit.
Did you hear that Azula is rumored to be cast in the new Steven Spielberg movie as a vampire? Gosh, that'd be the perfect role for her!
Did you hear Mai's father is going to run for mayor?
I heard Ty Lee slept with over a dozen guys this summer!
Apparently Zuko and Mai are off again!
That's the last sentence Katara listens to before snaps out of the weird fascination she all of the sudden got for the people in her school.
She considers it lapse of judgement and moves on to the exit and out to the parking lot to wait for Sokka to take her home before this place can further poison her mind.