--I do not own The Faculty; I do not own Casey Connor, Delilah Profitt, or any other character or aspect or anything like that from The Faculty. The character of Samantha Warren, although, does belong to me. Please do not use her without my permission. All reviews are welcome; but I must warn you; flames will strictly be used to roast the weenies of cheating boyfriends, WHO'S WITH ME! (Also, please bear in mind that the first chapter is always crap…)--
Do you have an opinion?
A mind of your own?
I thought you were special
I thought you should know
But I've run out of patience
I've run out of comments
I'm tired of the violence
I couldn't care less…
– from Special by Garbage
Monday – The forest green convertible pulled into a space in the school parking lot, and a new student sat in the passenger seat, starring out the window like a mindless doll. She had long, dirty blonde hair with both high-lights andlow-lights, and black underneath. Her eyes were a clear green in color. Her body was thin, maybe a little bit too thin, which was probably why she wasn't very tall…
"–Have a good first day at school!"… Conveniently being the last sentence; was all she heard of her mother's mindless ramblings.
"Thanks, Ma," she said, half-heartedly, opening the door and stepping outside. She looked down at her clothes to make sure she was presentable. A yellow plaid (w/ black detail) tank dress, with a small silver belly chain, a black sweat jacket (which hung rather limp for it barely had any elastic in the cuffs and bottom lining) and combat boots.
She turned back to say goodbye to her mother but the car was already backing out and leaving. Frowning, she shut her mouth… her mother left and she stood there for a long moment, just watching, until a black car with two red stripes down the center of it came speeding in, swinging around the curve, and grinding to a halt in a parking space.
She took a few steps back and watched a guy get out. He was your stereotypical cute bad boy. He walked around his car to his trunk, popped it open, dug through it quickly, and pulled out a whole bunch of pens filled with white stuff… She arched a brow, but decided it better to not ask, so she turned and walked away towards the school.
She stopped when she reached the foot of the steps up to the doors of the high school, upon hearing the strangest noise… she recognized it seconds after she heard it, it was like owls in the woods… "Whenever you hear hooting in a high school, it's jocks"… but why? She turned around slowly, as she heard someone pleading "Please, not the pole!"
She watched as a group of buff teenage guy – four of them; two definite jocks, two just your everyday rednecks – ram a smaller, meeker looking teenage guy into the flagpole… legs open. She winced as they did it again, and then dropped the boy like an old toy, laughing their empty little heads off.
She spotted the leader easily. He was warring a school jacket, white T-shirt, and blue jeans and he had slicked back blonde hair. She walked up to him, swaying her hips and arms seductively yet dangerously.
"What's your name?" she asked as she stopped right in front of him, their faces roughly two inches apart. She smiled darkly, setting her hands on her hips.
"Malloy," the jock smiled back and took on a flirting position. "Tyler Malloy… And what's yours?"
"Sam Warren," she cast her eyes from one side to the other, taking glances at the other five jocks. The boy who had been polled was lying on the ground on his side, wishing they'd all just go away, and watching the new girl with fearful eyes. "Now ya'll watch this, 'cause I don't want none of you forgettin' it."
They all began to chuckle and nudge at each other and whistled loudly when Samantha haled back and shoved Tye on his back to the ground. He looked up at her with wide, turned on eyes… that is, until she raised her foot and set the heavy soul down hard against his crotch.
They all stopped cheering, and Tye yelped in pain and began to paw at her leg. She leaned down over her knee, putting more weight on it, and looked him straight in the eyes.
"Now if you ever – ever – do that to him even one more time," her voice threatening there but it changed to a dark and sexy purr as she finished the sentence: "I will personally make sure you never have sex again." She removed her foot from crushing the jock's special parts and stood plainly again now, his legs still parted on the ground with the knees up, about five inches away from his crotch, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Now go."
Not wanting to invoke the wrath of the "psychotic bitch", as they called her when they were far enough away, two of the jocks ran immediately, ignoring their injured friend, and one helped Tye up to his feet and they both ran away. She watched them go, and laughed at the way Tye hobbled, both hands holding inbetween his thighs.
When they were gone she turned around and knelt beside the boy who had been polled. He looked up at her with huge blue eyes, shinning glossily with fear, but there was an edge of curiosity behind them.
"Hey, you okay?" she asked him in a soft voice. He nodded, and she helped him sit up. "What's your name?"
"Casey," he said in a whisper, barely audible.
"Casey who?"
"Casey Connor," and just as he finished speaking a thin rivet of blood began to run down from his left nostril.
"You're bleeding," said she, and swung her backpack off her shoulder and, sitting on her legs, dug through it until she found some tissues. She pulled out a wod and handed it to him.
He looked at it, reached out very slowly and cautiously, took it, and pressing it to his nose, hesitantly. "Thank you," he said in that same barely-a-whisper voice.
"No biggy," she said, giving him the friendliest smile she could muster up. There was a queer, uncomfortable pause between them… before he said something that caught her totally and completely off guard.
"Why are you being nice to me?" he asked.
"What?" Sam chuckled out, sure that she hadn't heard right.
"Why are you being nice to me?" he repeated.
"You're serious?"
He nodded.
"Is there a reason I shouldn't be?"
He didn't answer that. Instead, he readjusted his grip on his nose and then asked: "You're new here, aren't you?"
"Yeah… I just moved from Jersey… the name's Samantha Warren… but everybody's always called me Sam."
"I know," Casey said, calmly, but still so very, very quiet.
"Oh yeah, that's right," she said as she handed him a new wod of tissue paper and said, "You kinda heard me talking to that dickwit jock."
"I have to go," moaned Casey, standing up and refusing any help she could offer. "Please, don't hang around me anymore."
"Why not?" she asked in shock, watching him pick up his bag.
"Just… don't hang around me, okay?" he shook his head and took a few steps away from her. "Please, don't try to help me; they'll hurt you… don't be my friend… you'll hurt you if you try to be nice to me… just leave me alone, okay?"
"But Casey!" she cried, jumping to her feet.
"Please, just please," he was visibly shaking and rambling.
"Casey!" she cried again, but it was too late. He turned and ran away, went inside the school, leaving her standing there, bewildered and more then slightly disturbed.
Casey sat, slouched in his chair, in his homeroom, trying to block out the sound of the other children bickering wildly before class began and studying the scratches in the wood of his desk idly. He heard the door open, heard the teacher's heavy steps walk up to the desk in the front, and didn't think of thing of the softer, clickier steps that seemed to follow the teacher's.
"Alright class, settle down, settle down," said the teacher, loud and clear above everybody else, and the sounds around Casey began to diminish instantly. "… We have a new student with us today," the teacher went on. Casey stiffened up. No, it couldn't be… it had to be another new kid, a different new kid, not her. He looked up to inspect, saw yellow plaid and jerked his head down again, but forced himself to look up once more. Black jacket, short skirt, blonde hair; it was her. "Why don't you tell the others a little bit about yourself, Samantha?"
"Sam," she groaned, as if she'd told him a million times and he never ever listened. "And like what?"
"Who you are, hobbies you enjoy, where you come from," offered the teacher. Sam took a deep sigh, obviously not pleased with these suggestions, but went one anyways:
"Alright, my name's Sam Warren and I don't go by 'Samantha' or 'Sammy' because they're both too bloody cute… Sam's more like a grunt; therefore not cute… I'm from New Jersey… New York's bastard cousin… I like to listen to music… loud. You'd think I'm a bloody doctor with all the complaints I get about headaches… I like to say 'bloody', which I'm sure none of you could ever have guess… and I like a lot of things I really shouldn't like; often resulting in punishment… can't imagine why…"
"Well I can see you're going to be quite the class clown," thought the teacher out loud, trying to look on the bright side and think maybe she was joking.
"As long as you don't expect me to ware a bloated red nose; we're cool," Sam looked back at the class and folded her arms behind her back. "Anything else you must know or else you'll die of a aneurysm?"
"Yeah, are you single?" cried a guy in the back, raising his hand above his head. Several students laughed and the guy smacked high fives with two guys sitting next to him.
"And what might you do with information like that, little boy?" Sam corked with a curt little smile. The guy stopped and looked at her with his mouth opened slightly, visibly not expecting such an answer, and some students moaned as if to express that those were fighting words.
"Alright, that's enough! Sam, sit down," ordered the teacher.
"About time!" Sam exclaimed, before waltzing her way into a random empty seat. The teacher looked at her with displeasure, obviously dreading her in his class now that he knew her better.
Casey kept his head hung the entire time, and silently thanked all the Gods in Heaven when the bell rang and students began pouring out of the room almost instantly. He gathered his things and moved through the halls to his next class. He made it there without having to face either Sam or anyone who felt like beating him up right then, but his anxiety came rushing back to him when he saw Sam waltz into his second period class, as well!
Again, he hid his head, and made it through the class; though he did have suspicions that she had noticed him, but had chosen not to bother … maybe she had noticed how hard he was trying to not be noticed. Either way, he went on with his day… and began to wonder why, oh why did this school system hate him so much when she came into his third and forth period classes… had they put them both in all the same classes? She was everywhere!
Though he breathed a sigh of relief as the bell rang after fourth period, signaling that it was lunchtime, and hurried (which was rather uncommon for him) out of the room and onto his locker to retrieve his lunch and then out into the courtyard, where he'd rather walk and look for something to photograph then sit and hang out with friends like all the other students did; mostly because he didn't have any other friends…
Sam sat, in the courtyard of the school, under the shade of a large mangled tree… alone. She popped a grape into her mouth, even though she wasn't really hungry, and chewed it slowly, looking to her left as a car or two occasionally passed by, on which occasion she would wave to the driver, irrelevant as to who they were.
"Clear complexion," said a voice from a body standing behind Sam and to her right. "Pouty lips, cute little body… What do you think? Cheerleader material?"
"I don't know," said another voice from a body standing beside the previous speaker. "Couldn't we do something about that hair?"
Sam looked over her shoulder, ignoring the strands of hair that blew in her face, at the possessors of the voices… two teenage girls… and pretty ones, too… very pretty…
"Excuse me," Sam roused. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Oh… Hi," said the dark-haired girl, giving her a smile that she clearly practices over a trillion times in the mirror every morning. "I'm Delilah Profitt."
Oh my God it's a walking Teresa doll, Sam thought.
"And I'm Tina Downhouser," said the other girl, who was about the same high as Delilah, with long blonde hair that curled delicately around her shoulders and almond shaped green eyes. She dressed in a tight, pink baby tee and blue denim skirt.
"And I'm Sam," grunted the smaller, less-attractive girl. "That really doesn't answer my question, now, does it?"
"Oh," Tina laughed. "We were just…"
"You see," Delilah picked up. "I'm head cheerleader, and Tina here is secondary. One of our girls had to leave the squad because she broke her ankle about a week ago… tragic, really," she said this quickly, which made it come off as that she really didn't care. "So, ever since then, we've been watching out for a new recruit… we think you might work, if you'd like to try out sometime?"
"–But you'd so have to lose those boots," said Tina, pointing a finger girlishly at Sam's feet. Delilah nodded in silent agreement and they both flashed pearly white teeth.
"Welp, I'm afraid we have a problem, then," said Sam, nodding solemnly. "You see, Berney and Barney aren't going nowhere…"
That dropped the smiles from both the cheerleader's faces. "You named your boots?" Tina asked in disbelief.
"Oh, Heaven's no! That would be crazy," Sam shook her head. "They came with names, and told me them as soon as I opened the box… I think their mother, this lovely little machine somewhere in Pennsylvania, named them that…"
Tina's mouth fell opened and she blinked her eyes repeatedly. "… You're joking, right?" Delilah nudged her… hard… and then smiled again at Sam.
"Well… alright!" Delilah quipped. "Just, uh… think about it, and… come to us if you ever want to try out sometime."
Delilah looked over at Tina, who was scratching her nails and muttering something about how the "stupid" brand of polish "always rubs off", when Delilah gave her another sharp jab and her head snapped up and she yelped: "Yes!" then she chuckled a little nervously. "We'll, uh, be waiting."
They smiled at her again, and then walked off with sweet little waves. Sam gave them an overly sweet little wave back, and then turned back to her lunch, smirking awfully, pleased with herself and her little crack.
Casey stumbled along, not really thinking about where he was going. It didn't matter; his mind was all set on that girl… Sam.
Would he see her in his next period? Would he see her in every period? He couldn't see her in his last; that was gym and they had separate gym classes for boys and girls… but still… and why did she bother him so much? It wasn't like she was the first one to ever be nice to him… there had been several before her that tried to help him, that tried to be good to him… no; it was where they always ended up.
But maybe… maybe she could be different! Maybe she could be the one to overcome the shit heads and their work… the things they did to him and to anyone who associated with him… maybe she could be for real… but was it worth the gamble?
He winced as he remembered the pain he'd been through of others he had trusted, of others who they had turned. There'd been so many different outcomes to those who wanted to help… usually they didn't even last out the week… though there hadn't really been that many; maybe half a dozen.
Was it really worth the gamble? Was the possibility of friendship, something he'd never really known in honesty, worth the possibility of another betrayal? But did these thoughts alone mean he had grown cold? Had they really beaten the very will to try out of him? Had he really let them?
He winced again as he thought this. No! He didn't want to be cold, to be broken… but he didn't want to be hurt again… he was so afraid of being hurt again… like he had been so many, many times… but they had beaten the will or even idea to fight back out of him; why not the will to be saved?
He remembered her this morning, when she'd fought for him… when she'd walked up she'd looked small and innocent, kind of like him… and she'd seemed like Satan himself when she'd started flirting with Tye… until she hurt Tye, like Tye had hurt him… until she'd made threats to those other guys… until she laughed at Tye's pain like they'd laughed at his… until she knelt down and helped him… until these moments. After these moments she'd seemed so human, something he'd never seen at this school before… like they were equal, and she really was just trying to help.
Perhaps she was for real… perhaps she was human… perhaps he should give it another chance, just one more spin!
All right, he decided; I'll trust her. I'll trust this girl, Sam. I'll make a friend…a friend.
He picked up the pace a little and head back towards the courtyard, with the intent of finding Sam… he didn't know what he'd do or say (which meant he'd probably clam up and stutter out an apology), but whatever it was he was going to say and do it. He turned the corner of the school and looked around… and saw, sitting at a table just under the tree a crossed from and closer to the road then Stokely's. He hurried over, but stopped dead in his tracks 3/4 of the courtyard away.
There was Delilah and Tina; he hadn't seen them before due to the bustling students, and they were talking to Sam… Delilah said something, and then Tina said something, and then they began to walk off, weaving and smiling cheerfully… and Sam waved and smiled, back.
Casey felt his heart fall in his chest and the world inside him slowed to a stop. She had already tricked him, hadn't she? She was friends with Delilah and Tina… Delilah had probably set this all up, another cruel joke against him, she loved to torment him… maybe she knew he liked her, maybe she knew he'd liked her since junior high, maybe that was why… he didn't know, and he didn't care.
He heard the bell behind him ring, signaling that lunch was over, and hung his head and trudged back to the prison-like building, feeling betrayal set in cold and thick in his veins, even though he'd barely known the stranger he called Sam…