So hopefully you guys like this fic. It's only my second one and my first Clexa. If there are any errors or you just want to review, that would be great, thanks!
It's the first day of the new school year here at Ark High, a private boarding school several hours South of Chicago close to a small town by the name of TonDC. It's been around since the mid 1800's so all of the buildings are done in the Neo-Classical style, indicative and reminiscent of the Roman and Greek architecture with large columns, colonnades, domes, and arched doorways. The campus itself isn't bad. There are tons of trees everywhere, a large forest surrounds the whole campus and we have all of the modern amenities, an Olympic sized swimming pool, a state of the art track and field complex with a turf football field in the middle with two soccer fields off to the side, a softball field, a baseball field, a lacrosse field, two huge gyms where basketball, wrestling, and volleyball practice, along with a separate weight lifting and workout building. But as gifted as Ark High is in athletics, it is twice as gifted in academics. Every classroom is outfitted with the latest technology, we have the best text books and online programs money can buy and all of our teachers and professors are the best in their fields. We have a reputation of excellence when it comes to every aspect of Ark High. As students, we are required to fulfill this expectation at all times, so that means no alcohol, drugs, parties, basically anything fun. Though this doesn't stop us from trying. There's this huge black-market for anything banned and almost every Saturday an underground party is held deep in the woods so that we don't get caught.
As you can probably guess, this place isn't for people without boatloads of money or people with deep connections. I guess the only other way to get into Ark High is to be crazy smart or crazy good at multiple sports, but both of these things are very rare occurrences and the whole time I've been a student here, there have only been a handful of these kind of students.
I guess I should introduce myself right? My name is Clarke Griffin and I'm starting my third year at Ark High, so I'm a Junior this year. You could say I have it all, popular, top of my class, I have tons of friends, I always get invited to the underground parties, captain of the 2 time state champion cheerleading team, and about to be late to my first class of the school year, AP Political Science with Professor Kane.
"Clarke! What the hell? It's only the first day of class and you're already late." That beautiful speech was made by my best friend since birth, Octavia Blake. She's the captain of the girls' varsity soccer team, reigning state champions. Octavia is also on the varsity girls' basketball team and track team. Her older brother Bellamy Blake is a Senior and the one who always organizes all of the underground parties. He's on the varsity football team and boys' lacrosse team.
"Yeah Griffin, you're always in class early sucking up to the teacher." With that Octavia high fives Raven Reyes, my other best friend since childhood. Raven is wicked smart, has been since forever. She's always fooling with some robot or machine in her and Octavia's dorm room. Last year, after she launched her own satellite into orbit, she got a letter from MIT, telling her when she was ready to go to college, they had a full ride for her.
"Will you guys shut up," I hiss as Professor Kane starts introducing the class, "I was waiting for my roommate to show up, but she never did."
Octavia snorts next to me, "Who the hell is this chick anyways? Everyone I've asked said they've never heard of her."
"Lexa Woods, team captain of the Polis Raiders football team, All-American Quarterback as a sophomore. 3000 total passing yards, 45 touchdowns, and a 68% completion rate with only 7 interception in 2 years. She started as varsity quarterback as a freshman, started all of her games at Polis, and it says here that she is ranked 3rd in the nation for the heptathlon." Raven says looking up from her tablet.
"So she's a transfer then." Octavia quips, a slight air of disapproval in her voice.
"Hey," Raven says, "You wouldn't judge her so harshly is you saw her picture." And with that Octavia and I crowd around Raven's tablet.
"Hot damn." And I can't help but agree with Octavia on this one. Lexa is stunning, she stands at least 6 feet tall, her skin is heavily tanned making her look like she's always been under the sun, she has long wavy brunette locks that are pulled back into lots of tiny braids in the picture we're looking at. The next one Raven shows us is her in a track uniform, and if we weren't in class, Octavia would be wolf howling right now. Lexa is defiantly in shape, and saying that is doing her injustice. Lexa's muscles would put most of the guys in this school to shame. Her abs would defiantly put Superman's to shame for God's sake.
We end up spending the rest of class looking for pictures, news articles, videos, and stats about Lexa. The only thing we can't find is anything about why she is transferring schools. There are no interviews with her, her old coaches, any parents or friends. Nothing.
"According to some of my friends at Polis," Raven says after we thoroughly look through everything we can, "Lexa is nice enough if not a little closed off. According to my sources, she is a great leader and the guys in her team started to call her Commander after the fifth straight game of her freshman season. Rumor has it, she started this thing on the team where they wear their eye black like war paint instead of just under their eyes. Guess it worked."
"Have you heard anything about why she's transferring in the middle of her high school career?" Octavia asks.
"I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think it has something to do with some accident that happened on New Years of her Sophomore year. My source says that after they got back from Christmas break, Lexa wasn't the same. She was cut off from everyone, wouldn't talk, always had this cold neutral expression. Apparently before then she was lively and would joke around with everyone, apparently the life of the party, but after… No one quite knows what happened, but if I had to put money on it, I would defiantly have to say what ever happened over break is why she transferred this year."
The bell finally rings Octavia, Raven and I head out to our next class that we luckily have together, P.E. And really I don't understand why we need 4 years of the class. Even though everyone at Ark High is here for the 'education' most everyone participates in at least one sport or extracurricular activity that would keep you in shape.
Octavia, Raven and I were the last ones in the locker room, Octavia and I were waiting for Raven to finish readjusting her brace. Raven got in a pretty bad car crash the summer of sophomore years and since then has had to wear a full leg brace to help her walk.
When we finally make it out of the locker room, Indra, our P.E. teacher and assistant football coach yells at us to start running.
"Blake! Griffin! Let's go! We're doing the mile run test today to set a base line! So that's 4 laps around the track, for time!" She then turns to Raven, "Reyes grab a stop watch and start timing your slacking friends, I'm timing everyone else since they were on time!" The last part was aimed at Octavia and I's backs.
7 minutes and 23 grueling seconds later, Octavia and I cross the finish line. We both collapse next to Raven who pats us on the shoulders.
"Not bad guys, but next time lets aim for under 7 minutes shall we?"
"Right and next time you're going to join us right?" Octavia asks still trying to catch her breath.
"Please if I wanted to get all sweaty and out of breathe there are far more pleasurable things to do than run 4 laps around a track." At her words Octavia's checks flush, but Raven doesn't seem to take notice.
"All right ladies, we're not done yet," a loud groan echoes from the crowd of now huddled girls, "If you complain, you can run an extra mile!" Indra yells. "Now as I was saying, we will also be doing a pushup, sit up, pull up, and weight lifting tests. The weight lifting part will be for tomorrow, but today you need to find a partner and get ready to do pushups and sit ups. After that we will do the pull up test. Now hurry up!"
I turn to Octavia and we move over to an empty spot not too far away from Indra but far enough so that we won't be doing pushups near anyone else's butt.
"You have 1 minute to do as many pushups as possible. Ready. GO!" And somehow I end up going first so I quickly start bobbing up and down, bending my elbow until it is 90 degrees and then straitening it back up, again and again and again until Indra calls time and I collapse on my face. I hear Octavia mutter something about 36 so I guess that's how many I ended up doing. Octavia goes next getting 41 pushups. We then move to sit ups. I get 55 and Octavia gets 50. The last thing we have to do today is the pull up test.
We follow Indra over to the pull up bar that stands close to the bleachers. "All right, this is going to be hard for most of you so we're going to have a demonstration to show you how these are supposed to look." With that Indra points to someone in the crowd of girls that surround her.
I can see a tall girl with long brunette hair done in lots of little braids move to the front of the crowd. I can see her say something to Indra who nods back then the girl moves to the pull up bar. There she finally turns around, and when she does I can feel Octavia suck in a breath next to me because there stands my new roommate, Lexa Woods. And we all watch as she jumps up to grab the bar and then proceeds to do 32 unbroken pull ups.
When Lexa finally finishes her pull ups and drops back to the ground, someone elbows me in the ribs. I turn to see that it's Raven.
"Clarke please shut your mouth, your gay is showing." And with that I clamp my mouth shut.
But it's not long until my eyes begin to wander the crowd of girls looking for Lexa. And it really isn't that hard to find her, she stands at least a head above everyone else. At some point Indra calls me up to do my pull ups. I take a nervous gulp as Octavia pushes me forward getting 10 on her turn. I try not to look at Lexa as I stand under the pull up bar. I take a couple deep breathes then jump, grabbing onto the cool metal. I take a few seconds so that my body stops swinging then finally start pulling my chin up to the bar lower myself down and repeating the process until I can no longer do so. At that point I let go of the bar and drop back down to Earth.
"Good job Griffin, 13 pull ups on the first try, not too bad." Indra says with a pat on the back as I pass by to go rejoin Raven and Octavia. When the last girl finishes and Indra writes down all of our numbers, she dismisses us to go get changed for the rest of our classes.
We manage to get changed before the bell rings and say goodbye to each other. We don't have classes together again until after lunch. Raven has AP Calculus then French, Octavia has French then History of Ancient Warfare, and I have Advanced drawing and AP American Literature.
The next chapter will be out tomorrow.