"And it was all alright

Cause you

We're there!"

Adri's chest heaved, and she let her mic drop to her side while she caught her breathe and the crowd went wild.

"Thank you so much for coming out tonight guys!" They roared in response.

"You've made the last concert of this tour so memorable; and although I know it's gonna be so relieving to be off the road finally, I'm gonna miss performing to such amazing crowds every night." Another wave of sound rolled towards her.

"So make some noise for the last song of the tour!"

Adri woke up well past noon. She didn't even have to check the clock because she always woke up past noon after concerts. The only difference was that this time she was waking up in her own bed. The tour had ended last night in her hometown of Good Ol' Gotham and her parents had hightailed her home.

Good Lord. She hadn't been home in months. She had missed home but she hadn't really known what she missed.

She had missed her big blanket and her stuffed bear.

She had missed the string of photos she had strung up on the wall.

She had missed her bookshelf, full of books and school work she had to catch up on.

Ugh. School work. Adri had forgotten. She promised her parents that after spending all of middle school and half of highschool being homeschooled she would go to a real school and make real friends and have real teachers.

See, Adri rose to stardom in middle school and had to start being homeschooled because she simply didn't have the time to go to school everyday or adhere to its strict schedule. This also meant the only friends she had anymore were semi-snooty fellow child celebrities and adults in the music industry. Her parents thought going to Gotham Academy would fix this, but Adri wasn't so sure.

She had already planned it all out.

This was her Junior year so she could take it slow and have another album out by the end of her Senior year, do a tour that summer, and still be ready for college in the fall.

The only problem was getting her parents on board. She had only heard little whispers between them about this and that but she was getting the feeling they wanted her to drop the whole celebrity thing.

Which… wasn't an option.

Performing her heart out on that stage was her calling. She didn't know if she could just stop.

Knock knock knock. Her door creaked open and her mom came in to sit down on the side of her bed.

"Well, you look tired." She commented

"I am." Adri rubbed her eyes, trying to wake up. Her mother obviously wanted to talk about something.

"I'm gonna cut to the chase. I think you should start school tomorrow." She burst. "I know we were planning on going back Monday, but if you go tomorrow then you only have to spend one day there to get acclimated, have the weekend to get your bearings, and then you can go in ready for anything on Monday!" She ended her spiel with a heave of her chest, catching her breathe. "Also I already bought your uniform~" She grinned.

Adri wanted to say no. In fact, an abhorrent, "Hell to the no," was on the tip of her tongue. However, it was clear her mom wanted this and thought it was a fantastic idea. So Adri agreed. After all, it was only one day, what could go wrong?

It looked like everything could go wrong. The second she stepped out the car she was getting stares. Luckily, it was just a parent in the drop off area whose kid had just left the car, so they had no one to tell.

So she pulled up her hood and strode off to homeroom. No one spared her a second glance and she sighed with relief. Maybe this wasn't going to be as horrible as she thought it would be.

Yeah, that changed when a passing teacher yanked her hood off with a snippy, "No hats or hoods in school, Ms. Bachman."

"Hey, did she say Bachman?"

"As in Adrianne Bachman?"

"OH MY GOD, SHE'S HERE."

"Adrianne Bachman is here?

"We have to get her autograph!"

She could have sworn she saw someone faint as she gave a small wave to the crowd growing around her. A wave of reluctancy washed over her and she put on a fake smile.

The next 10 minutes consisted of her signing anything and everything people could get their hands on and taking pictures with so many people. So much so that by the time the crowd quieted down and was now just invading her personal space, she asked if someone would show her to her Chemistry class so she wouldn't be late.

Of course, an entire swarm of people walked her out of the crowd and to the classroom. It was good luck too since the bell rang the second she stepped through the door.

"Ahh Ms. Bachman, how nice of you and your posse to show."

Oh no.

This was the same teacher that had pulled down her hood in the middle of the hall and caused her to get mobbed. Adri dug her nails into her palm and gritted her teeth as she held her tongue. The things she wanted to say to this woman. She probably thought she deserved to get mobbed.

"Have a seat in the back next to Mr. Wayne." She drawled. "Very good luck, considering he didn't have a lab partner for the first two weeks of school."

Adri felt a sassy retort rise to her lips but she bit her tongue, sliding into the seat next to what's-his-name.

The woman started addressing the class about a quiz coming up next week and talking about polyatomic ions. The girl sighed with relief, she had already learned this topic with the pyrotechnics guy on tour. Leaning back in her chair, she took a peek at the guy beside her before deciding to introduce herself.

"I'm Adrianne, by the way." She whispered, holding out a hand for him to shake. "Adri for short."

A look of slight disgust passed his face. "Damian." He left her hand hanging in the air.

Adri ended up surviving the first half of the day. But now it was lunch. And that was a whole different ball game. So instead of following the flow of students walking towards the cafeteria, the girl broke away and left what she understood was the South Building.

A light rain was falling, but it wasn't enough to get her wet, so she dawdled outside for a while, trying to figure out where to go.

"I guess I could just wander around and try to get to know my way around…" The girl wondered out loud to herself. She ended up digging her lunch out of her backpack and chewing on an apple while wandering, not really caring where she ended up.

Wandering legs led to a wandering mind and Adri wondered if this thing -school- would work out. She hadn't been especially popular when she was a kid in elementary school and almost everyone she had talked to today had that twinkle in their eye, the same one that was in everyone's eyes at meet-and-greets. Would that go away? Would these people ever view her as just one of them?

Sometimes Adri just felt as if she could never stop attracting attention.

Lunch came and went. Her AP U.S. History class graced her with an amazing teacher. And now she had three music classes back to back for the rest of the day.

First was chorus. Everyone freaked out that a popstar would be singing with them, but the teacher, Mrs. Layton, quieted them down. Adri took a seat in the Soprano 2 section and as they sang she asked a few people about how to pronounce some words, and sightread through most of the music. Adri had missed this. Performing for thousands of people with her brightest sounding voice was exhilarating but nothing was as calming or relaxing as singing in a choir.

Chorus ended and Band came next. Specifically Jazz Band. Needless to say, Adri was nearly exploding with excitement. The band kids weren't nearly as excited as the choir kids had been, but she didn't really have time to say hello to anyone since the band director, Mr. Green, rushed to set her up on a piano as soon as she stepped into the room. She played along with the band and was giddy with happiness at how wonderful everyone sounded. She could get used to school if she got to end every day like this

Orchestra was… different. The violin was definitely her strongest instrument. It was the one she had played for the longest, and the one she felt most comfortable with. Maybe she expected too much, but Adri had assumed coming into the classroom that this ensemble would be as good (if not, hopefully better) as the other two she had just played with. She was disappointed. First of all, the Orchestra room was pushed back into a small corner of the school and Adri almost didn't make it to class on time because of how long it took her to find it. Secondly, the director, Mr. McGinley, didn't even recognize her as a new student until she spelled it out for him. He just seemed like a very disorganized and, for lack of a better word, stupid man. Third, they sounded atrocious. Adri didn't know how else to put it.

"I'm going to put you in second chair, Miss Bachman, I trust that you're a wonderful violinist." He wasn't even going to audition her? And what was up with second chair, if anything she deserved first-

Oh. That's why.

Sitting in first chair was none other than her lab partner for Chem. Danny was it? No… he looks pretentious. He probably goes by Daniel.

Adri sat down in her designated chair and quietly warmed up her fingers.

Daniel didn't say a word to her until they played through their first piece.

"You messed up the triplet run in the first system of the second page." He muttered.

Adri almost snapped something back but she bit her tongue and leaned back. "Oh whoops, I forgot to raise the leading tone. Sorry this is my first time playing this piece."

This actually wasn't the first time she had played this piece. She used to play it with her old teacher as a warm up before she started homeschool and touring.

So then why did I mess up? Adri asked herself. Mr. McGinley played the rest of the class away and the girl absentmindedly went through the motions, pondering on this oddity.

There was also the question of why she lied to Danny about her experience with the piece. She didn't have anything to prove to him.

She left school in kind of a daze, putting her headphones in and turning up the music. Maybe it was just the surrealness of going back to school that had shaken her up. Yeah. She'd chalk it up to that. Walking back to her car was an experience. People acted like excited dogs when they saw her, beaming at the sight of her, saying hello, asking her to hang out and all the like. With a small sigh, Adri just wished she didn't have to go back to scho-

"WATCH OUT!" A split second later something crashed into her and she was on the ground, head reeling from hitting the pavement.

Her headphones had fallen out, and she could tell that the world was quiet, but the pulsating beat inside her head was thundering around like a rocks in a washing machine.

"What the hell was that for?!" As her eyes focused on the thing -person- that had tackled her at breakneck speed, she realized that it was Mr. Bad Attitude himself.

He looked at her like she was stupid as he got up off her and dusted himself off. "You walked right in front of a car going 50."

Adri was speechless. Daniel offered her a hand to help her up. She took it and he pulled her back up to her feet with ease, but she swayed, the world doing barrel rolls. He caught her before she fell again but had a look of distaste on his face.

"You can't drive."

Adri felt like disagreeing, but she couldn't really focus at the moment so she let Daniel call the shots.

He led her over to the curb to sit down and fiddled with his phone, calling someone and lifting the phone up to his ear.

Meanwhile Adri was on the brink of an existential crisis. Daniel, the guy who had been standoffish and rude was helping her. Not the people who kept mobbing her every which way. Not the people vying to get a selfie with her. The person who almost ran her over didn't even stop to make sure she was ok! You would think people could care about her all the time, not just when they needed something from her.

"Are you crying?" Daniel said, with an undertone of, 'Please stop, I don't want to deal with that.'

Adri sniffled. "You're a good person, Daniel."

He raised an eyebrow. "My name is not Daniel."

Her jaw dropped in embarrassment. "Shit."

Hi people!

So this is my first story in (literally) years.

I originally started out writing Adri as someone who ended up with JASON. (Tbh he's my favorite, but Dami is more fun to write)

She was a doctor and shit.

But yeah, I scrapped that and ended up with this.

Hope y'all like it.

(Pray for me though cause Dami is hella hard to write.)

-H