Before starting, I just want to clarify a few things.
one. This is a non-massacre, high school AU. I know, cliche right? But I had an idea and I didn't want to deal with writing angst from too many sources…. like the death of an entire family. Naruto's parents are alive, as well.
two. This is inspired by true events, so I have a pretty good idea of how it's going to end. Yet, I would still love suggestions because it's nice if people care enough to give input.
three. I will be aiming for regular updates. How regular? I don't know.
four. This is not my first time writing fanfiction. I made a new account so people wouldn't have expectations about how this would end up sounding.
five. Lastly, I'm only using Naruto characters because they're familiar and I sort of need a security blanket in writing this because it's personal to me. Therefore, don't expect people to be particularly in-character or out of character. Just enjoy and ignore any of your hang-ups, okay?
The following events are almost entirely true.
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I shouldn't have ever even met her. It's not like we ran in the same circles. It's not like we would've chosen each other as partners for a school project. It's not like I had any excuse to talk to her. She doesn't give a fuck about sports, so we couldn't meet at any cross-country events. Our lockers weren't even close.
We live on opposite sides of the city, opposite sides of income brackets, opposite sides of the mind.
Still.
It is the closest to being understood I've ever felt.
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The worst invention in the world? The ability to take a screenshot of your phone.
I used to develop hypothetical situations and ask Sakura how I should respond to them. Now, I don't even bother. I've become spoiled with her quick fixes. Sometimes, I don't even give a "hello" or "hey" if we aren't already talking, which is rare.
I just send her the screenshot.
Don't jump to conclusions. I'm not shy. I'm just…
She says I'm clueless. She says that she wants me to have someone to call my own "because she loves me". I still don't even know what that means.
"Sas," she writes, "tell her to go to the Gambino concert with you on Saturday."
She disregards that Karin's tastes in music are largely unknown to me, but I do what I'm told.
When Karin readily agrees and asks how I knew she loved CG, I stop doubting.
Sakura probably checked her Facebook page.
Mother finds it "lovely" when I tell her about my date on Saturday and that "it's so cute that I'm going out with Naruto's cousin". Father says she is a "suitable girl" and tells me to arrange for the driver to take us to Marble House Tavern for dinner before the concert.
Still, I can't help but think about when Sakura and I dissected all the lyrics in Camp in preparation for the concert.
I just do what I'm told.
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The Konoha School at International College was my last choice school. To be fair, when I took the Early College Exams, I only listed two of the eight early colleges available. The first was The Senju School. It was downtown, two blocks away from my family's top-floor triplex, and across the street from my favorite cafe. The school was historic. My entire immediate family had gone there. Naruto's family had gone there. Most of the modern branches of Konoha's established clans went there. It's existed for more than a century.
I didn't get in.
The Early College Board doesn't care about lineage, bribes, connections, or even previous grades.
It's all about the score.
To be fair on myself, The Konoha School at International College is ranked higher than SS on World Education Report. It has a fifth of the number of students at SS, the best facilities money can buy, and the teachers were top notch; former college professors that get sick of world-weary college students in too much debt make the best high school/early college teachers.
KSIC was the high school you went to if you wished to do great things.
But The Senju School was where you went if you were born into great things.
Father was disappointed as usual. His prominent frown lines seemed to be carved into his face or chiseled from stone after his assistant handed him my results. Shit like that used to really itch me in a place I couldn't reach.
I know. "Boohoo, little rich kid wants approval from his daddy."
Look, I know some of you have real problems, but give me a break. And my name is not "little rich kid" with a side of sneering.
It's Sasuke. Sasuke Uchiha.
Anyway, Itachi and mother insisted it was good news, that it meant I would amount to achieve the extraordinary. Itachi even joked that maybe I would be the one to find a solution for my gravity-defying hair. This was right before they each ruffled said hair and got into the car to the jet. Their trips to the Otokagure office of Uchiha Incorporated were starting to become more frequent at that time. I spend more time seeing them on FaceTime than across the dinner table now, but that's okay too, I guess.
Since Naruto and I got into different schools, he insisted we spend most afternoons and weekends together at his house or at SS parties.
Things were different once we started high school. Naruto got a girlfriend and it proved to be a long term thing.
I became more alone than ever and that proved to be a long term thing too.
After Naruto started dating Hinata in freshmen year and we stopped hanging out so much, I stopped hanging out so much with my other friends from school too.
Even now, I don't really know why.
But that phase ended last year and so did "Hina-chan", along with my long hours in music room 5 next to art room 1 on the second floor of the AMD building. Naruto couldn't stop cheating and I didn't have to keep practicing on worn guitars to fill the overwhelming empty space.
There was less empty space after I met Sakura.
And then I started seeing Naruto, again.
There isn't any empty space anymore.
Or maybe there's so little, I don't notice it's there.
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On Saturday mornings, we meet on The Great Leaf Lawn. It's a really big stretch of grass—seriously it's huge—in the middle of Village Park.
(We used to invite Naruto—during that awkward stretch of time that Naruto and Sakura didn't really know each other yet and he didn't know if he liked her—but now we don't even bother. He doesn't wake up before 1 PM and is fine with Sakura.)
Sakura takes two trains to meet me at the West Entrance at 10:30 AM every Saturday when the season is suited for it. When I offered to pick her up so she won't have to take the train, she ignored me.
She lives uptown, closer to KSIC than I do, which is the most uptown I've ever traveled. Her mom is a city worker, an underpaid teacher who works with deaf children. Her father is "irrelevant", which is all I know about him. She went to The Academy for elementary and middle school, a public school with textbooks a decade behind and teachers who had higher pensions than expectations for students.
There are others like her in KSIC from what I've heard. There can't be many, though. I recognized almost everyone's last name on the Freshmen Contact List we got on the first day.
Sakura says my "classist snobbery" pisses her off, so I don't offer to pick her up anymore or laugh along when Kiba picks at the kids taking the bus towards street names we don't know. I tell her that the concert tickets I get are random and free from a connection my dad has and not bought with her in mind.
Sakura likes to take off her shoes and wiggle her toes in the grass like it's sand. And if it's raining, she lays on her back and breathes in and out deeply like the water is going straight through her and taking all of the bad feelings away. I sit with my legs crossed and watch her pink hair darken.
Today, it is raining.
She is breathing and her hair is darkening and when she pats the ground beside her, I uncross my legs and lay on the wet grass her. My right ear touches hers and I wish I had laid the other way so our arms would touch.
Sakura has carefully collected information about me since we've met. She knows that I only eat pizza with extra sauce and sun dried tomatoes. She knows that if I don't sleep enough, my eyes get abnormally bloodshot. She knows I am too proud to ask anyone else for help.
But when I see her do something new, or say something I did not know before, I wonder,
What else do I not know?
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Karin's kisses are harsh.
I feel like she's living out some Gossip Girl hookup set to music by "The Virgins" every time she kisses me. She bites my lips, strikes my tongue…
It's rough and wet and my mouth is left with the taste of saliva that isn't my own.
She likes to straddle me, her knees cushioned by the plush carpet, while I lean my back against the wall of windows. She grinds against me with vigor, her hands push against the glass and I wonder what part of the city she's covering while my fingers go up and down the curve of her hip and over her shapely ass. My hands grab her there. We experiment with pressures, seeing what works best.
She gets frustrated sometimes.
When she pulls away, she looks down and wonders why I don't want her as much as she wants me, why I don't ever initiate…
She never says anything aloud and it's so out of her character that I wonder if she is as discontent as I am. We do not hate each other and we don't stay together out of pride. This is a family thing—our parents... they're so happy, so proud. So we find it in ourselves to laugh when we can and she hangs out with my friends and find things we both like and text each other an appropriate amount.
When we are in public, like now, she does not show her disappointment. Karin sits on my right, keeping a hand at the nape of my neck while Sakura sits on my left and struggles with Trigonometry. Karin is homeschooled, so she comes to my lunch hour and sits with me and the others.
Kiba thinks she's nice to look at and makes conversation with her.
Shikamaru helps Sakura with math.
Sai likes to sit in his chair backwards so he can sketch his view of the wide windows in the cafeteria.
I don't speak or react unless I need to.
The feeling of Sakura's foot tapping against mine draws my eyes to her and she points to the simple smiley face she's drawn in the corner of her paper, filled with scrap work riddled with errors.
She gives me a quiet smile—the one she reserves for me—and I feel a shot go off in my stomach that alarms my heart.
Her green eyes remind me of the grass in Village Park and I count the hours to Saturday morning.