CW/ discussion of dissection in Sixth Grade section. I didn't write the actual dissection so hopefully no one gets squeamish!
Kindergarten
A worm...there was a squirmy worm...in her lunch box. Rey's skin crawled along with the worm's wriggling. Who…? she thought. Looking up, Rey caught sight of her classmate, Ben, standing across the playground from her, trying not to look like he was watching her. And I shared my snack with him too! she hissed to herself. I thought he wanted to be my friend, she mourned silently, angrily wiping away a tear. She looked down once again at her Care Bear lunch box and recoiled slightly. It was still there.
There were a great many things six-year-old Reyanna Samantha Andor was fiercely proud of, and one of them was being her daddy's big brave girl. I will not let that poopyhead see me afraid! she inwardly vowed, as she reached into her lunch box, small fingers trembling, and scooped out the long slimy tormentor.
Rey glanced around the swingset to find a place to drop the worm. She didn't really want to hurt it, after all, it wasn't the worm's fault it was utterly 'usgusting. She was also very aware that he expected her to scream and make a fuss. No way, uh-uh.
Fighting her natural inclination to squeal and chuck the creature, she carefully got up from her seat and walked over to the old elm tree where the dirt was soft from the recent rains.
"Goodbye Mr. Worm!" she hollered loudly. "I hope you find a Mrs. Worm and be happy forever!" Rey didn't want that Ben Solo to think he'd scared her.
She went back to the playground and, gathering her lunch up, looked straight at Ben and stuck her tongue out at him. He was a big doodyhead! She swore to herself that she'd never forgive him forever n'ever!
Third Grade
"What d'ya get?!" Rose asked, plopping down next to Rey.
"I don't know! I wanted to wait for you," Rey exclaimed.
It was Valentine's Day, and the sounds of over-sugared children filled the air. Everyone had delivered their cards and their teacher, Ms. Holdo, had said they could look inside their boxes now.
Rey pulled a dinosaur card out first.
"You are Dino-mite!" she read. "It's from Mitaka. Look at this cool tattoo it came with!" She promptly licked the back and stuck it to her arm.
"I got a Princess card from Kaydel." Rose held up an Ariel valentine. "Hope your day is filled with song. And look!" She held up a RingPop, "Score!"
The two girls rummaged through their boxes, squealing over candy and examining the three handmade ones. Rey had made hers out of her mum's scrapbook paper and stickers. Each one crafted painstakingly...even his.
Rey had been going to skip Ben, but her mum caught on when she double-checked the class list. Rey had wanted to use black paper and spider stickers, but once again her mum spoiled it. They had finally agreed on a blue heart covered in airplanes. Ben's dad had once spoken at Career Day about being an airline pilot.
"Last one!" Rey chimed, digging deep into her box. When she drew out a lollipop, she smiled and turned to show her friend, but her joy quickly turned into yelling instead.
"Rose!" she wailed, holding the lolly as far from her body as physically possible. "There's a dead bug in it! It's got tiny feet things and-" she gagged for a moment, unable to go on.
Rose calmly took the sucker from her and inspected it.
"This is both gross and cool. Can I keep it? I wanna give it to my sister." Rose's eyes twinkled mischievously.
"Yeah. Who gave it to me?" Rey asked face darkening into a tiny thundercloud.
"Ummm." Rose inspected the tag. "He who must not be named," she whispered dramatically.
And mum wants me to be nice to this...this Voldemort?! Never!
Some day she'd pay that boy back…
Sixth Grade
Rey pulled the curtains open to a dismal, rainy morning and pouted. At least the weather fit her mood for school today. It was the worst day of the school year…dissection day. This being sixth grade, it was the eyeball. Rey's skin crawled at the thought of touching the squishy blob. She just knew it would stare at her wherever she moved. If only after could squirrel into her blankets and go back to sleep. She'd asked her mom and dad to sign the form to get her excused but they felt it was "educational."
No matter how many sighs she heaved or how slowly she ate her breakfast, her parents were unaffected. They'd dropped her off on the school steps without a backward glance. Maybe they were aliens in disguise after all. She was sure real human parents wouldn't be so cold-hearted.
By mid-morning Rey was sure she'd entered some kind of time warp. Art, English, History, and lunch period had all flown by, and now she was plopping into her assigned seat around a table with five other classmates; a covered plate in the middle. Rey could almost feel the menacing thing looking at her.
Rose sat beside her, knee jiggling with excitement while Finn, her newest friend, sat on her left looking bored. Across from her sat her schoolyard nemesis. The teacher had assigned the groups and Ben had gotten placed at the table where his dad would be in charge of all the actual dissecting. Great. I bet Ben throws the- circular object at her...if he gets the chance. Boys are so immature, she thought.
Rey twiddled her thumbs while sneaking glances out the corner of her eye at Mr. Solo, Ben's dad. His brown hair was sprinkled with gray and underneath, friendly brown eyes twinkled when he caught her observing him. She was surprised to find Ben's father so... normal looking. She'd almost expected him to be like Mr. Malfoy in Harry Potter; all mean and nasty inside. Not unlike his son who sat in the chair next to him, arms crossed and usual scowl evident. Apparently, dissection day wasn't his favorite either. Or maybe he just disliked being in the same group with her as much as she did with him. Determined to ignore him, she turned her attention back to Mr. Solo who had started the lesson at last.
"Alright, kids, let's see what we've got here," he said. He pulled the tray toward himself and lifted the lid off quickly. It almost seemed to Rey like he was in a hurry to get this done too.
"Well," Mr. Solo said, "that's an eyeball all right. Does anyone remember what this part is?" he asked, pointing to the outside layer of the eyeball.
Rey's hand shot up into the air, "That's the cornea, Mr Solo," she said with a smile.
"And you are correct, young lady!" Ben's dad replied. "What's your name?"
"My name is Rey."
"Oh-oh, you're Rey," he said with a smirk, as he nudged Ben in the side with his elbow.
"Dad," he hissed. "Stop it!"
The other kids at the table giggled at the interaction between father and son and Rey felt mortified at being the center of attention.
Rose interrupted the awkward moment by speaking up, "Mr. Solo, it looks like we should already be on step three of the dissection. Everybody else is already slicing the eyeball open. Can we do that now?"
Science was Rose's favorite subject, and she'd actually been looking forward to this day.
"What's that? Oh yeah, right, right thanks, kid. Guess we better get moving, eh slugger?" he said with the wink at Ben and a chin tip in her direction.
Rey didn't know why this kept happening to her; she'd hardly even spoken to Ben since the beginning of the school year. They'd been paired up to quiz each other before an upcoming Science test. What had begun as a simple class assignment had turned quickly into a war to see who could answer the most questions correctly. It ended with Rey smirking and then he'd...he'd… Rey felt her cheeks burn at the memory. Ben had winked at her and all she had done was gape at him until the end of lunch period.
Afterward, she'd never been certain if she'd won fair and square, or if he'd thrown it to make her feel good about herself. Either way, he was a bigger pain in her opinion. It'd just made her angrier at him and added another item on the 'List of Things I Hate about Bean!'
She'd started thinking of him as Bean back in the fourth grade, after an incident at lunchtime. He'd shot a green bean out of his nose and onto her favorite t-shirt, after choking on it. Rose swore it was because Rey had spoken to him, in a rare attempt to be friendly, and she had surprised him. Rey wasn't convinced that Ben would choke on a bean simply because she said hello. That would be ridiculous.
Anyway, it didn't matter. They would never be more than frenemies. He was simply the last boy on Earth she would ever choose to have anything to do with.
Rey sighed, squirming in her seat trying to appear to pay attention in class without actually doing so. This was the grossest dissection day yet. A glance at the clock on the wall over Ben's head revealed she only had to survive thirty more minutes. She could do this. She was an Andor. Tipping her head back to stare at the ceiling, she missed the look on Ben's face as her eyes drifted over him without recognition again.
Grown-up Rey would have seen sadness sweep over his features like an incoming tide and heard his little sigh. Grown-up Rey would realize those funny looks he gave her were only because he was embarrassed to get caught watching her again.
But eleven-year-old Rey didn't know any of this. Boys were a pain. Especially one Benjamin Solo…
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A/N: This is a birthday gift for a Reylo bestie. Happy Birthday, Girl! And a shout-out of thanks to a friend for checking it over for me, and catching a few commas along the way ;p I believe this story will only hit about three chapters, and I plan to have it completed in the next couple of weeks. In the next chapter we take a big time jump (fourteen years) to meet adult Ben & Rey. We'll get to have all those lovely coffee shop vibes and angsty awkward meetings to revel in :) Woot!