Chapter 3
On the morning of his first day of school, Link sat in the kitchen and nibbled at some toast as he eyed the coffee maker in the corner. Seven o'clock was far too early for any sane person to be up, and for a moment he longed to sample the strange black liquid that so many people swore by.
He wouldn't, though. Hiis whole life, he had gotten by just fine without it, and he saw no reason why that should change. He would just grin and bear it, as they said. Or perhaps 'grimace,' in his case. He was never really one for smiling.
As he finished up the rest of his toast, he turned his gaze back to the window and waited. His backpack sat in the corner, its contents checked once the night before, and again this morning. His shoes were tied, his hair was brushed, and he was ready to learn. Well, at least as ready as he ever got, anyway. All that was missing was his ride.
Kafei had left for work some thirty minutes ago, and he did not even want to think about how early Anju had left. They'd arranged for another student who lived nearby to come and pick him up on her way to school. He made sure he had a clear view of the entire street so he would not miss her.
As it turned out, he heard rather than saw her approach. He had taken a moment to turn to the sink and wash his plate when the the squeal of tires announced her arrival. He finished wiping the plate clean, and then, slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he walked outside to greet his ride.
The passenger door of the sleek black sports car opened as he approached. The driver was a rather surly-looking upperclassman. Upperclasswoman, rather. He couldn't make out much of her features due to her large sunglasses. Her short, blue hair stood out though, as did her faint odor of bubblegum.
"Morning, sunshine," the driver drawled. "Irene's Taxi here. That'll be five rupees."
He stared at her. Kafei said nothing about a fee. And he had no pocket money. He hadn't seen the need to bring any to school. Was she seriously expecting payment for this? It was supposed to have been a favor.
"Just get in," Irene said with a sigh. "Are you always this boring, or are you just speechless from my stunning looks?"
Link chose to focus on entering the vehicle and closing the door rather than giving her an answer.
"Guess it's the boring one, then. Way to make a girl feel special, kid. Looks like you're not getting the flattery discount today."
"By the Goddesses, kid," she continued as soon as he started to respond. "If you even think about looking at me like a wounded chipmunk, I swear you're gonna hear about it every day until the Life Festival. Chill. I wouldn't charge for a ride."
Link found it remarkably hard to 'chill' in the face of Irene's rather abrasive greeting, but he sat back in the leather seat anyway.
"You coordinate your hair with Kafei?" he tried.
She lolled her head over to stare at him as the car started accelerating down the street.
"Don't go into stand-up, kid."
Link did not feel the urge to speak for the rest of the drive. Irene, for her part, seemed content to listen to the obnoxious faux-metal hit song blasting from the radio.
"Try not to screw up your first day, kid," she said by way of farewell when they arrived at the school's parking lot.
"Nice to meet you too," Link beamed. Irene's glasses shaded her eyes, but she more than made up for it, rolling her entire head in exasperation as she left the car.
This was not the first he had seen of the school. He had gone, briefly, for orientation on the day after his dinner with Zelda. Even so, the splendor of it was still a little bit shocking. Out in front of the building, there was a large fountain, centered around a life-sized statue of the Goddess Hylia. The perfectly trimmed lawn about the building sported the most vibrant shade of green he'd ever seen.
Even the students themselves seemed more polished. Link saw none of the baggy pants or stained T-shirts so common at his previous school. Few people, if any, slouched, and there seemed to be an air of purposefulness pervading the environment.
He saw his first group of Gerudo on his way to drop off his spare notebooks in his locker. A handful clustered together nearby, laughing at something he couldn't make out. True to the stereotype, there was not a Hylian among them.
Zelda had cautioned him that the Gerudo would not be good prospects for his first friends. He wondered why. To him, they seemed no more closed off than any of the others in the school. Here, a cluster of athletic boys in polo shirts turned a corner. There, girls gossipped with each other as they lounged by the stairwell. Somewhere, he was sure, Irene would be enjoying her own clique of sassy car enthusiasts. Or whatever she was into. He doubted any of these groups would be particularly accepting of him.
Link shrugged and continued to his locker. Zelda must know what she was talking about.
He arrived to his first class, Chemistry, five minutes before the start. He searched for Zelda among the entering students, but apparently she did not have that class. Fortunately, the first day was quite light; after an hour of administrivia he emerged with only five pages of reading for homework.
It was his next class, Algebra, that worried him the most. In the excitement of the past week, he had completely forgotten about reviewing for it. Math was the one subject where falling behind was disastrous, so hopefully they would not move too fast.
The teacher was a slender gentleman. He stood before the class, hands clasped behind his back, only the hint of a smile on his face.
"Good morning, class. My name is Mr. Owlan. Welcome to Algebra. I will not waste your time with a definition of the word. We will just say we are continuing your math education, yes?" His soft, baritone voice carried surprisingly well in the large classroom.
"I will be trying something new this semester. Find a partner. Choose wisely, for you will be together for the rest of the semester. I cannot make you study together, but you will sit with each other, and group work will make up a significant part of your grade. You have two minutes."
Fantastic. Now he would be an embarrassment not just to his class, but to his designated partner. There was nothing in the whole world, he decided, that could not be made worse by the addition of group work.
Around him, people were already busy pairing up. Most chattered happily with their new partners as they edged their chairs closer together. The one exception was the Gerudo who slumped in her chair next to him. She seemed to be the only one in the entire class.
"Um… partners?" he asked her.
"Why the hell not?" she muttered without moving.
"I'm Link," he offered, trying to put some happiness in his tone, though it had all long since drained out of him.
"Aghreal," she replied. "New kid, right?"
Link nodded.
"You any good at math?" she asked.
"Nope."
"Of course not," she sighed.
By then, Owlan was clapping his hands for everyone's attention. The conversations died down as all turned their attention back to the teacher.
They began with a lightning drill of arithmetic. When Mr. Owlan pressed a button, twenty problems were projected upon the wall. Above the questions, a timer began counting down from two minutes. Link did well at first, and for a brief moment he was proud of his work over the summer. But as soon as the negative numbers, the rules of arithmetic fled from his mind. He found himself lost in a sea of minuses and plusses, and he had no idea where to put them.
Beside him, Aghreal moved her pen calmly across the paper, her face showing nothing. Link was not even halfway done when she dropped her pen and fell back in her chair.
All told, he managed to complete twelve problems. As the answers revealed themselves on the screen, he saw to some relief that he had managed to get most of them right. Must have been luck, he figured.
Then they moved on to question-and-answer.
"Who can tell me which operations are associative?" Mr. Owlan asked the class. "How about you? Link, is it?"
He could feel everyone looking at him. Here was the moment where he made his impression. Here was where he became either bright, or stupid.
"All of them," he said with as much confidence as he could muster. Link saw from the twitch in the man's face that he had gotten it wrong. A couple snickers broke out throughout the room, but Mr. Owlan spoke again before they grew too loud.
"Perhaps your partner can redeem you. Aghreal?"
"Addition and multiplication," she intoned.
She wasn't even trying, he realized, as Mr. Owlan praised her and moved on to his next victim. He must've somehow gotten paired with the smartest kid in the room. He supposed he ought to be grateful; he couldn't possibly hurt her grade too much, and maybe she could even teach him some tricks to get by. But he couldn't help feeling that the girl was constantly judging him. Naturally, he was failing to live up to her expectations.
At the end of class, Aghreal was on her feet and moving toward the door before the bell had even finished ringing. Link hurriedly threw his books into his bag. He had to catch her before she left the room. They were partners after all; they should at least exchange phone numbers.
A hand on his shoulder stopped him.
"Trust me, you want as little to do with that as possible, mate," a voice said. "Whores, all of them."
Link turned to see a round-faced boy grinning down at him. He heard no venom in his voice. He had said it casually, as though merely passing on common knowledge.
"You're the new kid, right?" the boy said. "The one Mr. Dotour adopted? My name's Mike," he said, extending a hand.
He certainly seemed friendly enough. No one else had tried to talk to him that day. Like as not, he was just trying to help. Link certainly didn't feel any pressure. Mike stood back an appropriate distance, arm outstretched, looking the very image of a curious young sophomore.
And yet…
Whores, all of them.
This was not a person whose friendship he desired. Let him spread rumors. Let him snigger. Saying nothing, Link shouldered his backpack and made his way to his next class.
Old Hylian was not nearly as bad as Algebra had been. Here was a subject where everyone was a novice, and he was glad to start out on an equal footing. But then in Literature, everyone else had had summer reading, and he found himself staring out the window as the class discussed some ancient text he'd never even heard of before.
Then, at last, it was time for lunch. He felt more than the weight of his bag leaving him as he dropped it off at his locker. An entire forty-five minutes to not think about anything. It would be wonderful.
He sat by himself with his meal of roast beef and steamed carrots, but he didn't mind. He found himself ever less fond of his classmates as the day progressed. They'd all be whispering about him by now, he knew. He'd spent the entire morning stumbling and sputtering through material that he didn't understand. And so far the nicest person he'd met had been Irene.
His spirits lifted when Zelda sat down across from him.
"So how's the first day?" she asked.
"It's school," Link said, determined that the princess would not hear him complain.
"Is Mr. Owlan doing that partner thing to you too? I mean, I'm really excited to get to work with my best friend, but I just feel there'll be a bit more work this way, you know?"
Link told her about Aghreal. "Bit of a bad attitude, but she's really smart," he concluded. "I don't know why people say bad things about her."
"Bad things?" Zelda prompted.
"Well, after class, Mike called her…" He glanced down at his food. That was not proper language to use in front of a princess, but there was no other word for it.
"Let me guess, a whore?" Zelda finished for him.
Link nodded.
"Sometime I just want to lock up everyone here in a room with Nabooru for a few days," she said, sighing.
"Would that help?"
"It would be fun."
Their mood thus darkened, they continued their meal in silence. But Link was not satisfied. After a few moments, he blurted: "But why? I don't get it. What problem do people have with the Gerudo? The last war was forever ago."
Zelda chewed on her lip for a moment, placing her fork carefully on her tray.
"The Gerudo have not been too eager to fit in," she said at last. "An all female race, remember, and they don't marry."
As Link opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, Zelda raised her hand to stop him and continued.
"Think about it. For centuries, the only man among them has been their king. With the exception of the odd honorary member or two, of course. But after what happened with their last king, the devastation that followed, their near extinction… Can you imagine what the thought of bringing a man into their household must seem like?"
"So, what, they just 'hook up' with a Hylian, and then… raise the child among themselves?" Link said, struggling to complete the thought.
Zelda nodded. "Which in a Hylian culture…" she prompted.
"... would make them whores."
"I wouldn't let Nabooru hear you phrase it like that, if I were you," Zelda teased.
Link forced a smile.
"Well, obviously, I wasn't trying to say-"
"I get it, Link, I do," Zelda interrupted with a giggle.
As it turned out, they had the next two classes together. She accompanied him to his locker en route to Mythology, where they sat through a tiresome discussion on the subtle nuances dividing myth from history.
Finally they came to gym class. He was never as excited about gym as the actual jocks always were, but he had to admit its appeal. You got points just for trying, and there were no wrong answers. Never mind that there weren't any actual questions in the first place. It was just a solid hour of brute-forcing everything.
He could do brute force.
They started off the class with a one-mile run. Though a couple boys started off at a sprint, Link soon took the lead, savoring the rush of air across his face. The stress of the day peeled off as he sped around the small track, leaving all his problems behind him along with all the unsavory people.
It ended much too quickly. After four laps, he reluctantly stopped at the side of the track as he waited for the others to finish.
"Good job, Link," the teacher said. "Have you considered trying out for track?"
"I need the time for studying," Link said.
"Ah. Pity."
Soon a crowd formed at the track's side as more and more students completed the mile. He thought he heard someone mutter "So he is good at something," but he tried to ignore it. Besides, he didn't even know they were talking about him. It could easily have been someone else.
Then Zelda staggered to halt in front of him, face covered in a sheen of sweat.
"Wow, I couldn't believe how fast you ran that," she said in between large, gasping breaths.
"Yeah, that was super awesome! How come I haven't seen you before?" said a girl to her side. If he hadn't known that Zelda was an only child, he would have thought them sisters. She wore the same bubbly smile and was only maybe an inch shorter. She had a braid of brown hair instead of Zelda's blond, though.
"That's because he hasn't been here before, Desi," Zelda explained. "Remember the kid Mr. Dotour adopted that I told you about?"
The other girl glanced upward for a few seconds before finally her face brightened and her excited smile returned once more.
"Oh yeah, I remember! Lee, right?"
"Link," he corrected.
"Desiree," she replied, pumping his hand up and down. "But you can call me Desi. Everyone else does. 'Desiree' just has too many syllables, you know?"
"Hey, maybe we could go running together sometime," Zelda said. "Nabooru always says I need to be faster. I bet a running partner would make training more enjoyable." As she talked, Desi stood slightly behind her, screwing up her face and making gagging sounds.
"Oh stop that. Running's good for you," Zelda said, turning to the girl.
"Yeah, well so's asparagus and chores," Desi said, and stuck out her tongue.
In a rare burst of courage, Link replied: "I'll run with you, if you help me study."
"Deal," she said, and they shook on it. "Start Friday? Nabooru can drive us to the castle after school. I know this awesome trail right nearby."
"Friday," Link agreed. It was the perfect end to a miserable day. He was relieved to know that as bad as things got, he would always have Zelda's company to cheer him up. Zelda's, and perhaps her friend's too. He may just survive Hyrule High yet.
A/N: Confession time: Irene is the entire reason this story exists. I saw her in ALBW and thought "Hey, it would be cool if there was a modern fic where she was Link's ride to school." And here we are.
I wanted to include more canon characters in this chapter, but Desiree got set up three chapters ago, and I couldn't think of anyone mean enough for Mike's role. I know Groose is a jerk and all, but I couldn't fit him in what I needed for this.