Hi there, and welcome to chapter two! Reviews and Criticism is welcome! You might have noticed that I changed the name of their city/town from 'Jump City' to 'Brookford.' Only reason is because when I was writing this, I realised that the location I was describing was nothing like California (which is the unofficial location of Jump City). So the location has changed, but that literally means nothing in regards of plot - the description is a filler.
Chapter Two: The Vision Between Crazy Log Cabin and Modern Office
Dick watched as the slender figure darted through the cafeteria doors. "I repeat: could Kory Anders please make her way to the principal's office?" The voice repeated, and then the conversations resumed.
Gar chucked a french fry which narrowly missed his cheek. "Dude!" he called. "Were you listening to a single thing I just said?"
Giving a sheepish grin, Dick scratched the back of his neck, "I'm sorry. I was just thinking about Kory."
The blond boy visibly winced. "Yeah, I heard. How sucky is that, especially on the first day back? I was in the principal's office earlier on, and they're planning to repaint all of the walls by the end of the week."
Rachel frowned. "That's almost twenty-three walls."
"Twenty seven if you count all of the bathrooms, too." Dick added in, recalling the wide range of colourful words scrawled on the walls that were used to describe the redhead.
Gar munched on his fry and cringed. "Yuck. Do they even cook these?"
"Doubt it."
He groaned slightly, eyeing at the sandwich in front of Dick. "What's in that?" Gar nudged the bread with his fork, earning a scowl from his dark haired friend.
Rachel spoke before he could even remember what was in the food.
"Cheese and herb Italian bread with ham, tomato, Red Leicester cheese, lettuce, cucumber and butter."
Gar's mouth hung open in awe. "Woah, how did you know that?"
She rolled her eyes, fixating on him with a cold glare. "He eats that every day."
For one moment, Dick expected Gar to retort back in indignation, but the kid just shrugged. "Apart from the ham, that sounds pretty good." he paused and then gave a goofy grin. "Wanna swap?"
The choice seemed unbelievably obvious. His lunch could consist of Alfred's homemade sandwich of glory, or a burnt bean burger with fries that resembled rocks and half of Gar's juice carton.
He smirked in response. "No thanks. I'd rather not spend my afternoon in the E.R. with food poisoning."
Garfield Logan's extremely mature reply was his tongue sticking out of his mouth. "I'll end up meeting a cute nurse though!" he bragged.
A tray slammed into the table and Wally West grinned. His green eyes flashed with amusement as he sat down. "I doubt she'll be interested in you, when you won't stop vomiting. That's the biggest turn off."
Rachel snorted. "You don't say," she stated, the bite in her voice laced with sarcasm.
Gar folded his arms. "She won't be able to resist me!" he declared.
"Actually," Wally corrected, "she won't be able to resist me."
"Wait, why would you even be there?" He questioned, throwing his arms up dramatically.
It was as if Wally had known the answer all of his life. "Dude, the chicks dig thoughtful men!" (Dick had to do everything in his power not to scoff) "I'll be the caring best friend who doesn't leave your side, barely eating and never sleeping. She'll see how caring I am and my charms will woo her into my arms."
The conversations between Wally and Gar always found an unexplainable way to completely miss the main point and instead travelled through a long, winding path. It was entertaining up to a certain extent, and Dick realised it had reached that area when the redhead was trying to explain how he'd get Charlotte ("All nurses have to have sexy names!" — Wally's exact words) into bed.
Rachel beat him to the punch, for the second time that day. She wrinkled her nose and dryly said, "Wally, keep going and I'll drag you down to the depths of hell."
"Aww." Wally cooed. "You'd really do that for m—"
An unnervingly cold stare finished him mid-question.
"So…" Dick announced, hoping to break some of the tension. Wally and Rachel had never quite fit the way he had intended them to. Their personalities were too different — and Wally's irritatingly disgusting ability to flirt with anything that had breasts didn't help the matter.
If he was being truthful, Rachel didn't fit with him properly either, but that argument didn't deter him from becoming her closest friend — apart from Gar, but she would never openly admit that to anybody, not before killing them, anyway.
"Gar volunteered to chose our movie for next Saturday, but I'm not going to watch Star Wars for the fiftieth time."
"Why don't you want to watch Star Wars?!" Garfield cried. He checked off the points with his fingers. "It's got hot Princess Leia, action, fighting, R2-D2, Darth Vader, and hot Princess Leia!"
Rachel pointed out, "You've already said that."
"So?" he argued. "She's Princess Leia! It's one of the greatest sci-fi series in the world – in fact no, it is the greatest sci-fi movie series to ever exist!"
She only replied with an over exaggerated groan whilst Dick turned to Wally. "Any suggestions?"
"Das Star Wars," he said, holding a poor attempt of a straight face.
Dick internally cringed. "That's not even correct German!" he protested. "If you want the correct translation it's —"
Gar interrupted with the enthusiasm of an excited puppy. "So are we watching Star Wars or not?"
Rachel didn't seem to protest and he was outvoted two-to-one, leaving him no choice to reluctantly accept. There wasn't anything bad about Star Wars — except they'd already had two movie marathons this year, and he didn't have the patience to sit through another.
Wally brought up the next question. "Whose house are we bunking at? My parents have some work thing and they don't trust me home alone."
"What a surprise." Rachel contributed. "That's probably got nothing to do with the fact that you trashed your house last time."
It was no secret that Wally West thrived on socialisation, and therefore it made perfect sense that he would inevitably throw some sort of overly extravagant house party. Unfortunately for him, the large majority of teenagers who came had never met him before and completely wrecked the place. Dick still hadn't forgiven him after their gang had spent five hours trying to clean up flaked vomit off the walls.
He could still picture the scene. Beer cans littered on the floor like a second carpet, the sofa stained with whiskey, pizza on the ceiling fan. It was another indicator of how disgusting teenagers could be. There were several moments during that weekend where they had discussed hiring cleaning help (Dick had the money) but ultimately decided against it. After all, any respectable person would probably have had a heart attack after stumbling on their scene.
Wally turned his head to regard Dick, giving a hopeful smile. "Star Wars at Wayne Manor, then?"
He thought back to his guardian's stern words at the end of the summer and shook his head. "Nope. Bruce's still bitter 'bout that time you and Gar went crazy over sugar and smashed his vase."
An apologetic look settled over Wally. "It was an accident, I swear!" he defended.
"And I'm sure it wasn't even that much," Gar chimed, despite knowing the exact price. "I'm pretty sure Wal-Mart sell them."
Dick shook his head. "Regardless, he's been pretty stressed about work so aggravating him won't exactly help our relationship."
He could sense that Gar had questions, but he was glad nobody touched the subject. It wasn't his favourite topic currently.
Gar shoved a handful of fries into his mouth, ignoring Rachel's extremely disgusted look, and smiled lazily. He seemed to have switched places and now leant on the table as opposed to actually sitting on the bench provided. Wally did the same, but the present girl in their group sat with her hands in her lap, extremely daintily.
"Looks like we're spending next movie night at my place." Gar drawled.
"Yippee!" Rachel deadpanned.
Dick snickered in response before checking the time on his watch. Five minutes 'til class started, and he'd only taken seven bites of his sandwich. Three hundred seconds to reach his infinitesimal locker, grab his numerous stack of books and find the best seat possible. Definitely not impossible, but it really wasn't how he wanted to spend the next few minutes.
Wally flicked a chunk of apple in his direction but it managed to skim across the air and end up six feet away from its intended target. After sighing, his thoughts mirrored Dick's and he groaned.
"I guess we better get going then. Only two more hours of this hell that they call school."
Dick shrugged. "I've got French and Physics. Probably the worst two classes."
Wally gave him a look of disbelief. "Dude, physics is literally the best class ever. And you speak fluent French, so I don't know what the heck your problem is!" he stated accusingly, tones of humour underlying his words.
It was true; Dick spoke French, Spanish, and Romani (the first two due to Bruce's incessant nagging – "The heir of Wayne Enterprises should be intelligent." – and the last, for personal reasons). But it didn't mean that French lessons were an absolute holiday (far from it, actually). It meant that Madame Rouge was forever trying to catch him out with obscure slang, or passing him worksheets that had no relevance to the language.
Kory Anders spoke fluent French too, but Madame Rouge held the same feelings towards her, and had shoved her the opposite corner – meaning that he couldn't interact with her in any way. Besides, Kory might have been pretty, but her priorities were askew.
"Doesn't mean I actually want to be there." Dick muttered, but Wally had already found himself on the other end of the corridor, flirting with a blonde girl.
Kory pulled at her skirt, and resisted the urge to sigh dejectedly. It had been thirty minutes since Principal Blud had requested her to come to his office. He'd been in a "simply unavoidable meeting, sorry Miss Anders," for the past fourty minutes, and she was beginning to question his presence in school.
The little bench in the reception was home to an assortment of colourful graffiti. If she traced her fingers over the wood, she could feel each letter of interesting sentences, such as, 'Hal J. rocks,' and 'Sel and Pam are best friends forever.' She supposed if she knew any of those people, the words would make more sense.
The receptionist's telephone let out a series of beeping noises, indicating that it was yet another person calling. Kory grimaced as the beeps continued, finally stopping after fifty seconds had passed.
When the architects had planned this room, their vision had fallen between crazy log cabin and modern office. There was an abundance of coloured glass used for the receptionist's desk and the surrounding panels, but the rest of the room was covered in slick oak. It meant that the overall effect was clashing materials and an ugly design.
She didn't even know the receptionist's name. "Excuse me? Miss?"
The receptionist looked up and chewed on her piece of gum. "Yes?"
"How long is Principal Blud going to be? I've got class in five minutes." If she was being truthful, Kory didn't mind missing class, but she knew she would regret it in the future.
Her face curled into an apologetic smile, whilst the older woman shrugged. "His meeting will finish within the next ten minutes."
The redhead crossed her arms frustrated with the same response that had been given to her twenty minutes ago. She was caught between terror – it was a meeting with the principal – and relief – she didn't have to endure the whispers and glances about her.
Her mind swam back to the incident with Kitten and on cue, her stomach growled slightly. She was starving, and the stress of the day had begun to make her nauseous. A tanned hand placed itself on her gut, in a weak attempt to calm herself down.
The doors opened and Principal Blud strolled through. His name fit his appearance – bloodthirsty – with narrowed eyes, a grey beard and a pinstripe suit. An elderly woman who shared his white hair and wiry frame accompanied him, but she soon disappeared through the doorway that led out of the school.
His presence was unnerving, to say the least.
He turned to face her, and Kory's whole stomach lurched violently. Everything about his expression indicated that he was not pleased to see her, and that only made confirmed her fears.
Principal Blud motioned back to his office. "This way, Miss Anders."
His lack of politeness and extremely cold tone irked her, but it gave her enough incentive to stand up and move.
The office was sickeningly white – an extremely sterile environment. White walls and beige carpet. Ivory cupboards and ivory drawers. Even the three chairs that surrounded the desk were white with snow-coloured, linen cushions. The only dark colour was the magnificently sleek desk in the middle.
He motioned once more for her to sit, before taking his place behind the desk.
"I am sure you understand why I have called you to my office." Principal Blud said.
"Yes," she lied.
"This is an extremely serious matter and your parents will be informed by the end of the day. Due to the nature of the graffiti, you will be required to visit the school's guidance councillor twice a week." He sounded angry, as if Kory had personally requested the meeting.
The principal continued, staring blankly at her whilst she shuffled under his gaze. "The school will be using students with after-school detentions to clean up the walls and repaint them."
When he didn't say anything for longer than thirty seconds, she took it as an unhelpful cue to leave. But as soon as the redhead stood up, Principal Blud started speaking again.
"However, regardless of the circumstances, it does not give you a right to act rudely or aggressively towards other students. Miss Katrina Moth reported your behaviour, but we have decided not to take any action, yet." The last word stung, slicing through the air and bringing back every single feeling of worry to Kory.
She cocked her head slightly to one side. "Wait…what aggressive behaviour?"
Principal Blud's hands rifled through the drawers until they found a yellow slip. "According to this report," he read, "You insinuated that Katrina was a 'stupid slutty bitch.'"
Kory's mouth opened in shock. "What? I never said a single thing to her!"
"Do you believe Miss Moth is lying?" There was a razor sharp edge to his voice, and if Kory protested any further, she had an awful feeling he was going to rectify his decision and give her some sort of punishment.
Kitten's dad was on the board of directors and in some cases, he held more power than the principal himself. There was no point trying to deny Kitten's vicious lie, so Kory only shook her head in response.
She had an awful feeling that her week wasn't going to become any better.
