The day Delphine Cormier arrived at Alexander Manchester High School on the East side of San Francisco was a Tuesday. Her entrance was largely unnoticed due to the majority of the school's inhabitants having already made it to class, noted only by Paulie Traden, a freckle-faced boy who wasn't on great terms with puberty and served as leader of the school's IT committee. He'd been walking to class after oversleeping from marathonning Star Trek all night and described his experience with her to have contained "unhindered desire. It was like I was Frodo Baggins and she was the ring and she was using her mystical powers to call me to her. I think it was her hair, it glowed like one of those L'Oreal commercials my sister likes. I had to stop myself from stroking it right there on the spot." Nevertheless, he didn't talk to her aside from the utterance of a stammered hello before he blushed and ducked into the bathroom. Her eyebrows furrowed into a look of confusion and she glanced down at her timetable, narrowing her eyes at the sea of numbers and words. As a military brat, she'd been shipped from school to school in her twelve years of education. She'd lived everywhere, from a small town in Australia that prided itself on its exceptional meat pies to a cabin that balanced precariously on the edge of one of the Rügen Cliffs in Germany. So when it came to the toils of navigating a new school, she knew the drill. Her usual plan was to find a lowerclassman that was nice enough to show her the ropes of the campus before locating a comfy chair in the library to make her lunch spot, preferably close to the biology section. If that wasn't an option, she was also impartial to the photography aisle, as well as the cooking wing, enjoying the pursuit of particularly quirky recipes for trial in her spare time (according to her parents, she was an imaginative cook at best, although to be fair, her French chocolate brownies were to be commended). She didn't ask for much, wishing only to get through high school with the best grades possible and the "Delphine is a puppy" jokes to be kept to a minimum.
The first err in her plan, however, came into play when she failed to accommodate for the presence of Cosima Niehaus in her life. Not that our poor Delphine could be blamed, of course, because she wasn't to know that such as girl would grow to consume her time. Cosima Niehaus was a paradox, you see, she was the kind of girl whose eyes were magnetic and tenacious and whose charm could make a stone gargoyle blush. Delphine first happened upon this wonder as she entered the school's office (only taking 3.68 minutes to locate it, a new record for her) and pulled her nose out of her personal planner long enough to catch the back of Cosima as she talked to what appeared to be the headmaster. She was all hand motions and stray dreads and, as phrases of their conversation floated towards the newcomer, Delphine was spellbound. She averted her eyes so as not to look conspicuous (thankfully nobody was paying attention to her, because she was staring at a blank page and it was less than believable) and listened to Cosima reason with the tired man.
"Okay, I know I'm in trouble sir, but I mean, calling my parents, really? That's so not cool, man. Can't we just discuss this like adults?"
He sighed and looked down at her, a 110-pound Junior who only reached his chin but was still managing to address him as if she were his co-worker. Delphine bit her lip to keep a chuckle from escaping as he rolled his eyes and the girl kept going. "Okay, you're a businessman, right? Let's think about this on a big picture kinda level. Sure, I missed out on my homework for a couple of measly weeks, but those three non-existent essays would have taken up the space in paper of what, maybe eight hundred and forty square inches? Now, to put that into perspective, the earth is 12478143744000 square inches, meaning that the space of those essays is one 14828453647th of the earth, which seems pretty meagre, right? To take it even further, the earth is an infinitesimally small percentage of our milky way, which is one of roughly 500 billion according to the Hubble telescope. When we think about it in the scale of things, you've got to agree that those essays are pretty insignificant when it all comes down to it. I mean, sir, no disrespect, but can we please chill with the whole third degree thing?"
He was about to respond but was cut off as he noticed (somewhat belatedly) Delphine's arrival and rushed over to introduce himself, leaving Cosima to escape undetected as she shot a wink in the stranger's direction and ducked out the door with a smirk. Delphine's eyes widened as some of the brunette's perfume wafted past, a delightful mix of something sweet that she couldn't quite identify and a sandalwood green tea shampoo that made her head spin in the best kind of way. When she cleared her head enough to direct her attention back to the man in front of her, she was whisked away on a tour of the school and didn't have time to think amongst the flurry of room numbers and bits of trivia that were being fed into her brain.