Here's the first actual chapter!
I tried to get everyone in character, but I don't think it worked that well. orz
Either way, enjoy!
Back in class now, a young girl sluggishly took her seat near the back of the room, between another girl and a boy of the same age.
"Roxy, you're late again," the boy, sharing her platinum shade of blonde hair, muttered under his breath.
"G'mornin' to you too, Dirk," she responded, making him scoff. "Not like you're the golden child or anything anyway," she added, finally sitting down and pulling a laptop out of the bag she carried with her.
"You really do need to start getting to class on time..." This time the other girl spoke up, never shifting her gaze from the teacher, who was talking about something or other involving a kid that had gotten out of their seat without asking permission.
"I know, Janey, calm your tits." At this point, Roxy saying something like that wasn't near unusual, and both Jane and Dirk sort of brushed it off.
"Hey, wait, where's English?" She asked no one in particular when she noticed the seat beside Dirk was empty, and it was unusually quiet in their little group at the back.
"Dunno. He didn't tell me jack shit about not coming today." Dirk was the first to answer.
"Come to think of it, he didn't say anything to me, either. Perhaps he's sick?" Jane suggested, making Dirk roll his eyes behind his pointed "anime shades" and Roxy chuckled.
"That kid doesn't simply get sick," Dirk began. "The amount of times he's stayed outside overnight during thunderstorms and blizzards and whatever the fuck else, without a god damn tent or even a blanket, I'd say his immune system is like a fortress of British dorkine-"
"Yawn." Roxy interrupted, holding her hand over her wide open mouth to mock him before shutting it again. "We don't need a novel every time you say something, bro," she laughed under her breath. "He's not here. Okay then. Thanks for the news flash."
"Oh shut up." Dirk grumbled, beginning to type something as the clatter of fingertips against keyboard filled the room. This, of course, caught Roxy completely off guard.
"Hey, Jan-"
"Sorry I'm late, ol' chaps!" It seemed like everyone in the class looked up at the exact same time, staring at the buck-toothed boy that just burst into the room.
"And why were you late this morning, Mr. English?" The teacher inquired groggily, clearly not amused. Indifferent to him being clearly uninterested in what his answer might be, Jake broke into a toothy grin and a look that said "I'm glad you asked!" washed over his face.
"Three bloody wolves, there were! Right outside my door!" When the response he got was a skeptical glare, he continued. "Honest, Mr. Droog! Gramps says they were right scraggly and lookin' for food for their pups."
"Mhm, care to explain why miss Harley made it to to her class on time?"
"She took off out the back door and left me and our Grandpa to chase off those nasty creatures!"
"I'm sure. Take your seat, Jake." Mr. Droog dismissed him before turning back to his desk, leaving Jake to frown and make his way to the back of the room, some sets of eyes still following him until he sat down.
"Wolves, huh?" Dirk immediately questioned.
"It's true, I swear..." Jake sounded completely crestfallen, and Dirk gave him a gentle pat on the back.
"Hush now. There's no need to be upset," he mock-comforted, earning a punch on the shoulder from his friend, which made Jane and Roxy giggle. Jake opened up his own laptop, covered in stickers of cerulean women and jungle trees as well as creatures of the forest, and Roxy turned back to Jane.
"Anyway, yeah, Jan-"
"I'll e-mail you a template for it, you just fill in the blanks with your own words."
"Thanks, Janey," she chimed, opening the browser and playing Duck Life instead of doing any work. Though, of course, very grateful, she opened the file in the e-mail Jane sent her in Microsoft Word. It took a matter of ten minutes to finish off the sheet before she returned to her game.
"Hey, watch it, bitch!" Roxy looked down at the shouting, black haired first year she just walked into, having been distracted by explaining a very important matter(that may or may not have been how to make a great martini) to Jane.
"Whoa, settle down, it was a damn accide-"
"My big brother's gonna fucking beat the ever-loving shit out of you!" He snapped immediately, not giving her a chance to finish.
"Oh, really?" Roxy felt her blood run cold as a look of utter fear flushed over the kid's face as Dirk walked up to stand beside her, poker face on behind his shades and his arms crossed, glaring down at him. The kid didn't say another word, but instead he forced the fear off his face and struggled to rush to his feet and take off down the hallway, and a pain pierced at Roxy as he left.
"Dirk, you didn't need to..."
"Force of habit," was his simple reply before he looked back over to who appeared to be a younger version of himself; same color hair, similarly colored eyes, both sets covered by a pair of shades, and the same skinny, yet muscled build. The only real differences were the clothing, hairstyle, the shape of their shades, and height. Plus, the younger was quite a bit more pale, being closer to borderline albino.
"Dave, you know that kid?" Dirk questioned monotone, mouth barely moving as he spoke.
"S'Karkat. I've seen 'im in the hallway, s'bout it. One a' Egbert's friends." He responded with the same tone, just a bit higher pitched, as he gestured to the kid with square-framed glasses beside him. Dirk's reply was a sniff, and they continued down the hallway, John and Jake close behind. Roxy waited a moment before eventually going along as well, wishing Jane wasn't using her lunch hour to study for an upcoming test.
"Are you alright..? You seem a little out of it, mate." Roxy was ripped from her thoughts by Jake, his voice already soft to show his concern(and probably to make sure Dirk didn't butt in), and even softer with his accent. Of course, as always, it made her smile. She hesitantly nodded, then nodded again with a little more enthusiasm.
"Ye... Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks," she murmured, causing Jake's eyebrows to furrow.
"Are you sure? You know I'm always willing to listen to your problems. You can tell me anything."
"I know, Jakey," Roxy tried to sound as cheery as possible. "I'm fine, really. Don't worry about it!" She laced her words with a bit of a giggle, gently bumping his arm with her elbow as she did so. He shrugged it off, reluctantly turning back toward Dirk when he called his name. The platinum blonde boy murmured a few things in his ear and, even though no one could see it through his shades, he cast a glance back at Roxy a couple times. Jake proceeded to lean back from him a bit as he shook his head with a rather flustered look on his face, struggling to keep from looking back to Roxy as well. Dirk murmured something else, and it continued in a pattern like that for a while.
Roxy, on the other hand, rolled her eyes and sort of half-frowned, then looked down a bit when she noticed Dave and his friend had lagged a bit behind the other two boys, as if to keep her company.
" 'Sup, Lalonde?" Dave questioned flatly, forcing a giggle out of her.
"Nothin' much, lil' Strider," she answered in a mocking tone, earning a giggle-snort sound from John.
"Shut up, Egbert," Dave muttered jokingly.
Roxy chuckled again and listened to them talk back and forth between each other taking in little snippets of their conversation. Something about one kid in their class having passed out during a gory part of an education film they had watched, another thing about how their English teacher had gotten a paper cut and "had a fucking heart attack over it", and other things like that.
After the lunch break ended, both Dirk and Roxy decided to skip the rest of their classes for that day and go home.
"Mom! I'm home early!" Roxy stood completely silent in the doorway of her house after she shouted, hearing the faint echo and listening for a response. After a minute, there was, as usual, no sound to answer her, and she let out a sigh as she kicked off her shoes and dragged her bag to her room, where she immediately slid her bag in the corner and lay down on her bed, laptop on her stomach.
She first checked her emails to find no new messages, then her chat clients to have the same thing greet her, and not a soul online except for Dirk, but she knew he'd be too busy explaining to his much older brother why he was home early from school again. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back on her pillow, closing her laptop and sliding it off her stomach as she did so.
Don't do it, Roxy.
You're stronger than that.
You can't keep going back to it.
Wait.
Think about what you're doing to yourself.
You're just making it worse for yourself.
No, you idiot, st-
Oops, too late.
Roxy seemed to drown her mind and thoughts with the alcohol now slipping smoothly down her throat, the sickening taste dulled by the bottles and bottles she'd forced down in the years before. In addition to the taste no longer being revolting, she could also handle it a lot better than most. A lot better than she used to be able to.
It took her a matter of six good gulps of the vodka before she felt a buzz begin to grow behind her eyes and in the back of her skull, and she sat the bottle back down on her desk, flinching slightly at the clunk sound it made, before closing her eyes and clenching her teeth.
When she was sure she could down more, she didn't hesitate, and took another gulp, leaving her room with the bottle hanging at her side when she swallowed. She made it to the living room before collapsing face first onto the couch, her knees hitting against the floor as she slumped forward.
Roxy lifted her head again only when she heard a soft purr that turned into a meow, then back to a purr, coupled with a small, furry object rubbing gently against the back of her head. She forced a smile, sat the bottle on the coffee table, and picked up the cat, who was wearing a tuxedo jacket that looked like it had been made for him by a very expensive tailor, which it was.
"Oh, Frig... Frigglish..." She murmured, slurring her words a bit.
"You notice when I'm upset, huh?" She smiled when he let out another purred meow, as if in response.
"Of course you do..." She positioned him so he was sitting on her lap and facing her, and he tilted his head a moment after.
"A lot of things have been happening again lately... But I had to tell Jake nothing was wrong, right?" She sighed, sliding her socked feet along the hardwood flooring.
"Dirk scared that kid because of me... The poor lil' guy..." Frigglish twitched an ear at her words, and it made her smile a little more, though it turned into a sad smile.
"Kinda like you, sweetie..." Roxy pulled Frigglish to her chest, hugging him gently and petting his head and half way down his spine even more gently, and repetitively. Eventually, her petting gradually slowed, and she drifted off to sleep, Frigglish following her soon after, curled up in her arms and lap.
Roxy was rudely awakened by a relatively quiet bang on the table, but more so by claws being involuntarily shoved through her clothes and into her skin.
"Christ!" She spat, letting her arms fall to the floor at her sides and her legs lay flat to allow Frigglish to take off in frightful interruption of his slumber.
"Rona will be rather displeased to find you've been drinking again, Roxy." She looked up to the source of the voice to find her sort of adopted sibling and the the bottle of remaining vodka had been the cause of the bang on the table.
"Mom doesn't care that I drink alcohol," she began spitefully. "She sure as hell doesn't drink it, and there has to be some reason she keeps the house stocked full of the shit, you little snot."
The younger of the two snorted, a shit-eating smirk spreading across her face. "Whatever you say," she said as she shrugged, screwed the cap back on the bottle and heading for the cupboards to put it back where Roxy had originally gotten it from to take to her room.
"If she's mad, though, don't blame me. I did try to warn you, after all."
"Go get raped by those fucking wizard tentacles you're so obsessed with, Rose."
Rose only laughed snarkily and headed out of the kitchen and to her room before calling down the hallway, "I think you had better get to sleep before Rona sees your drunk ass and grounds it."
Roxy cursed under her breath, but reluctantly took Rose's advice, though sarcastic, and drug her feet along the floor on the way to her room, where she slumped onto her bed face first into her pillow and ass in the air, and drifted back to sleep only moments later.