Fast update! (for me...) W00t w00t!
Yeah. This is a shortie but a sweetie, if you ask me. The FourTris flower blooms... (Shoutout to kaseys328 ) )Also, it sets the stage for some developments down the line...
In some cruel trick of magic, or at least the human psyche, the last period of the school day was always the longest.
Beatrice bit her lip and doodled a star around the edge of her math notebook. Her Algebra teacher, a short, rather large man by the name of Mr. Quetz, was of the variety of teacher that spoke everything in a particularly abrasive monotone. At 3:00 in the afternoon, Mr. Quetz was absolutely killing the process of factoring monomials and polynomials in equations.
Beatrice leaned back. Her seat was towards the front, but on the side, affording her the ability to zone out, without being too obvious about it. Slouching, she began to sketch intricate 3-D hearts on the margin of her paper… Obviously the best usage of class time. Obviously.
Suddenly, a faint plink! Sounded on the floor of the classroom, just next to Beatrice's right foot.
She reached down, surreptitiously sliding her fingers along the cool ground until they brushed against something. Her fingers closed around whatever the object. It was cold, smooth, and round. Was it—yes, it was.
Beatrice unfurled her tightly shut hand. She was holding a ring.
It was silver or maybe just steel, but polished to gleam darkly. The outside was tarnished slightly, the inside not. Beatrice knew from the various Crime TV-shows she watched that that meant that the ring's owner wore it frequently. There was something written on it, etched into the very surface, but it was written in a language that Beatrice couldn't even name.
She stared at the ring for a moment more. She wasn't sure why, but something about seemed to draw her in. It was the mystery, the romance, even, of finding a ring. The undecipherable inscription and the silvery glint only added to it.
So although she felt awfully guilty about it, Beatrice slipped the ring into her pocket.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Beatrice whistled softly as she frowned at what as supposedly her locker. The slip of paper in the folder that Principal Oblivern had given her claimed that the code for her lock was 7765, but despite having typed it in at least 30 times, the locker refused to open.
The hallways were clearing out. School had been over for twenty minutes, and already, the fluorescent lights and Formica tiles seemed sad and lonely without their customary companions, the students.
With a growing sense of desperate-ness, Beatrice urgently twiddled the lock. There were literally no people left. No one to help her. It seemed like the kind of situation that would only happen in a comic book, or a really cheesy rom-com. Because seriously, being locked out of your locker after school on your first day at a new High School? Can you say cliché any louder? Still though, the situation rankled. And cliché or no cliché, Beatrice needed what was in her locker.
"Need some help?"
Beatrice recognized the voice, and spun around. It was the boy with the dark hair and blue eyes from Oblivern's office.
"Uh, yeah. The code isn't working."
The boy laughed. "That's 'cause the codes that the office gives are always one digit off of what they should be."
"Well, they said the code was 7765-"
"-Yeah, so it's actually 6654."
"Are you sure?" Beatrice cocked her head, spectacle. It seemed highly unlikely that the school itself would make such an instrumental error with the locker codes.
"Why don't you try it, and then we'll see." The boy's eyes met Beatrice's. They weren't just blue, she realized, as a rush of something warm and bubbly coursed through her. They were like the blue part of a flame, pulsing and glowing and burning with an intensity that both enthralled Beatrice, and terrified her.
She reached over, and entered in the code that the boy had given her. Her hands shook slightly, and she hoped that the boy wouldn't notice.
Much to her relief, he didn't seem to notice, (or if he did, he made no indication of it) and much to her surprise, the locker swung open.
"Thanks," Beatrice said, flashing the boy what she hoped (prayed) was a nonchalant, quick smile.
"Anytime." The boy returned a smile of his own. "Oh, and any time now, I kinda want my ring back."
My ring? Beatrice froze for a second, and felt her cheeks burn tomato-bright.
"Uh, yeah, I didn't mean to- I mean, I didn't know-" Her pathetic stuttering attempts at an explanation where cut short when the guy suddenly, mysteriously, beautifully, delicately rested his hands on her wrist.
"Hey- chill. I just want it, eventually, y'know."
Beatrice managed a nod and a weak smile. He was touching her! HE was TOUCHING HER! Her heartrate was fluttering hummingbird-fast, she was sure. The boy could probably feel it pulsing in her wrist, where his slim, pianist's hands lay delicately, almost hovering above her skin.
The moment might have been infinity or a second (although it leaned towards the shorter side of things) and it had the kind of blurry-edged vignette quality to it that only love secenes in old movies, like West Side Story or whatever, had.
The boy's eyes, fiery blue, burned holes in Beatrice's light hazel. His fingers sparked into her skin. In that moment, she was his and he was hers.
And then he drew back his hand, ran both through his hair, and smiled that crooked smile he had.
"I'll be outside, y'know, by the benches and stuff with a few of us later on. Come if you want." He turned and walked a few paces, but then stopped and looked back. "Preferably with my ring." He winked, and then he really was walking away, a lithe black-clad figure like so many others.
Beatrice leaned back against the cold metal of her locker. It burned against her bare arms, but she could still feel the warmth of the boy's fingers on her arm, the intensity of his sapphire gaze.
She didn't even know his name, but she had fallen head-over-heels for him.
Beatrice let that thought sink in for a few moments, but her pontification was interrupted by-
"Oh, hey, Susan," Beatrice said, channeling her giddiness into some form of enthusiasm for seeing the other girl.
"Hi," said Susan. " I just wanted to let you know, we're having an Abstinence Society meeting now, and you'd be more than welcome to join us!"
An Abstinence meeting? A room full of nerdy girls like Susan, trying too hard to even get anywhere near to where they wanted to get?
"Aw, no, I gotta get home. Y'know, unpack and all…" The lie oozed out, quicksilver quickly.
"Got it." There was a pause. Susan, blinked unsurely. Beatrice stared at her scuffed gray Chuck Taylor's. "Well, some other time, then, huh?"
"Yeah," said Beatrice, smiling like a Barbie doll: Hard, plastic, and too perfect to be genuine.
Susan nodded her head a few times, her short, wavy ponytail flapping, gave Beatrice one last puppydog smile, and then turned and strode away.
It was only watching her walk away down the hall, alone, that Beatrice realized how slumped her shoulders were, how sad she looked with her massive backpack and too-big skinny jeans and wagging ponytail.
A rush of guilt washed over her, cold and sharp. Susan was only being nice- in fact, she was a really, really, honest-to-god good person. For a moment, Beatrice debated running after her, telling her she actually didn't need to unpack that badly. But- then she'd actually have to go to the meeting. And… She felt the ghosts of the unnamed boy's hands touch lightning fast on the soft part of her inner wrist.
She had made her choice. Selfish, maybe, but it was what she wanted to do.
A few minutes later found Beatrice striding out of the school building. Her gray sweatshirt and black down-vest where on, but the chilly wind still seeped in. Her backpack was on, in all of it's-glory? Horror? Backpackiness. She felt a little like a 4th grader, but it felt good to be like a little kid, innocent and excited, for a bit.
"Yo, you made it!"
The familiar voice of the boy (in her mind, Beatrice was thinking in capitals- The Boy.) carried across the parking lot. Beatrice glanced over to where it seemed to be coming from.
By her locker, the boy had said they would be by the benches, but that wasn't exactly true.
The back of the playing fields faced the parking lot, and a copse of black-clad figures sat among the crisscrossed metal structure that held up the bleachers for the football games, like a bunch of ravens or craws. It was too far away to really tell properly, but from where Beatrice was, she could see that they were all pretty high off the ground.
A strange mix of exhilaration and terror coursed through her, and she picked up her pace, striding confidently across the cracked asphalt lot.
"Hey," she said, smiling, as she reached the bleachers. Up close, she could see that the group was comprised of three girls and four boys, and they were all perched about ten feet off the ground- except for one of the girls, a red-head with a shock of white in her hair, who was hanging upside down a good five feet further up.
"Hey yourself," said one of the guys, a black kid with sharply spiked hair and gem bright eyes.
"Oh, hey, nice to see you!" The boy (The Boy!) swung down from the rod he was perched on, grinning at Beatrice. "Everyone, this is-"
The question hung in the air for a moment. It was just two words, just a simple question, but it was so much more. It was a chance to reinvent herself, to be anyone she chose to be, in a world free of Susans and their conventiality.
"I'm Tris," she said. She had no idea where she'd come up with that from, but it rung nicely. Tris Prior, rebel. Tris fit her better than "Beatrice," her stuffy old-lady name, especially now, with the damp wind stirring up her hopes and ambitions and dreams and laying them out on the concrete.
"I'm Four," the boy (Boy) responded. "This here is Uriah-" he gestured at the guy who'd said hello to Tris before, "-Lynn-" A girl to Uriah's left, with dark hair in two high ponytails, munching nonchalantly on a muffin,"-Zeke, Uriah's brother-" he nodded at a boy who looked like a slightly taller, more muscular version of Uriah, "- Jasper-" He pointed to the guy sitting next to Zeke, who had light brown hair that fell to his shoulders, and full, dark lips.
"Wow, I can introduce myself, it's cool-" A sassy girl's voice broke in. The voice belonged to a curvy girl wearing purple Doc-Marten's along with her black attire, with curly brownish hair died blue in streaks. "I'm Olive, but that's Liv to you."
"Great to meet you all," said Tris, and she actually meant it. From Liv's boots to Uriah's smirk to Four's, well, everything, she knew that for the first time in her memory, there were actually people in her new school, not just variations on the same paper cutouts that every school was made up of.
Fast update! (At least for me...)Wohooo!
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