"Juniors," Xander muttered as he parked. "We're juniors, now."
"Yeah," Willow said, getting out of the car, "now the rest of us can get our permits and our licenses."
Buffy and Willow laughed while Xander grinned sheepishly. "Hey, you guys are getting a free ride out of this -- whether or not me not having a licenses yet and driving the two of you around is up for debate."
"No complaints here," Buffy answered and put her hands up in a mock surrender.
The group of friends wandered into Sunnydale High with optimism. Even though Buffy was a little worried about fitting it at first, she realized her true friends were what mattered. Everything else would come later.
"Oh," Buffy said out of no where. "That reminds me."
"What reminds you?" Xander asked.
"What? Um, random thoughts."
Xander nodded for her to continue.
"Thanks a lot, for inviting me to the beach and all. It…it really meant a lot. To me." Buffy tugged a loose strand of hair behind her ear shyly and looked at the ground. "I know I haven't been…quite myself this summer. But I'm changing! I'm getting better."
"And you're talking in full sentences," Willow added. "So that's a good change."
Buffy scrunched her nose and pouted. "I really didn't talk in full sentences?" Waving the rhetorical question away, she continued. "This isn't like a change, though. It's…different. Not exactly change…just…different."
Willow and Xander looked at her with confused expressions.
"Am I not making sense again?"
The two sadly smiled. Buffy sighed before consciously choosing not to engage with her friends' conversation on Cordelia and her matching shoes/outfit/car. For some reason, the topic didn't interest her as much as it used to. In fact, nothing even the least bit shallow interested her anymore.
She pretended to listen and nodded at all the right times. She laughed at all the mockery of Cordelia done by Xander, and even threw in her own two cents. But it didn't seem to matter. Even school seemed like a lie her whole existence was wasted on.
"Brooding, are we?"
Buffy snapped out of her thoughts. Both Xander and Willow looked at her with concern.
"Class bell," Xander said. "Where are you off to?"
She checked her schedule. The yellow card made her want to throw up whenever she looked at it, reminding her how school constantly cut away at precious hours of her short life.
"Homeroom with the band instructor," she replied, stuffing her schedule back into her baggy jean pockets. Adjusting the metallic belt buckle on her waist, she added, "guessing it's by last names once again."
"Once again," Willow agreed. "I'm the room down from yours."
The two young women waved to Xander before walking into the halls of their own classes. Buffy murmured a goodbye to Willow just as the bell rang. She ran a hand through her dulled blonde hair and sighed, opening the door to her homeroom. The teacher had just started calling roll, making it easier for her to slip into the back unnoticed.
Buffy slumped in her chair and stared at the ground. She couldn't wait to get home, already.
"Buffy Summers?"
She didn't look up. "Here."
The teacher noticed. "That's no way to be enthusiastic for the first day of school."
"The anti-school spirit squad ordered me here," she answered sarcastically. "Take it up with the boss."
"In a band room? I'm not surprised," the guy sitting next to her said. She smirked and made eye contact with him, immediately recognizing his laid back voice.
He might have been over the neighbor's house, she recalled. Or at least she thought he was. She decided to take a chance.
"You're a senior, right?"
The guy nodded. Buffy noticed she was in the same position he was: not ready for school at all.
"The name's Gunn," he said.
"Buffy."
There was no need for formal introductions. That's the way she liked it. That's the way it should be. She didn't look back as she left just as the bell rang to her next class.
She didn't remember to ask Willow and Xander where their current hangout spot was. Didn't remember…or didn't care?
Buffy decided to take the time to wander throughout the school. She figured she would have to run into the two of them, eventually. Strangely, as she walked through the school halls by herself, she didn't feel alone. Isolated, maybe; but not alone. Instantly Buffy recognized the various stereotypes being played out in their clichéd groups: the supposed 'geeks' bunched together in the computer labs, huddled over something more important than life. The anti-social kids who weren't even that anti-social. They are hanging out together -- and that's not very anti-social.
Little comments played over and over again in her head as she examined the school. After three years -- or was it four? -- she had forgotten Sunnydale. Never even got to experience Sunnydale High before moving to Los Angeles.
Not that I'm missing out on much, Buffy noted glumly.
She turned the corner, ending up in an area where very little people hung out. Noticing a cloud of smoke around one group, she swayed in the other direction and, not looking where she was going, almost walked into someone.
"Woah," the familiar voice said, barely catching a football pass. "Could you --"
Buffy looked up and smirked. "Gunn, right?"
The rudeness in his voice instantly disappeared as he gripped the pigskin with his hands. "Right," he said. "And you're Summers. Should be Winters."
"Why? Too cold for you?" Buffy joked without a smile on her face.
"You know what I mean. What are you doing around here, anyways?"
Buffy's pride hitched down a notch, mainly because she couldn't seem to classify which stereotypical group Gunn belonged to. "I'm…well, I'm --"
"Lost?"
"Not really," she grinned sheepishly. "I lost my friends."
"Metaphorically, or…"
"As in can no longer locate them."
Gunn let out a breath. "Thought you were going to go on a death rattle or something," he said, shaking his head. "How would you like to meet new ones?"
The two looked over to where Gunn was pointing. Someone waved in the distance -- Buffy reasoned he was the one who threw the football. There were a few others sitting on top of abandoned bleachers -- mainly guys, she realized.
"Uh, I…I don't know," she panicked. "Maybe I should just go."
Gunn laughed. "Nervous? Miss Winters, nervous?"
"OK, I'll go," Buffy chuckled, "but only if you call me Buffy."
Both laughed before she found herself walking side-by-side with Gunn towards his friends.
"Lorne," he said to the guy who threw the football, "this is Buffy. Otherwise known as Anti-School-Spirit-Lad."
Buffy crinkled her nose. "Doesn't the term 'lad' refer to males?"
"Not the point."
She laughed and shook Lorne's hand. "Nice to meet ya," he said before snatching the football from Gunn. He laughed before escorting Buffy over to the tables, where almost the entire group had noticed her by now, making her highly uncomfortable. She turned to Gunn. "Maybe I should just --"
"Hey, guys!" Gunn said in an overly loud voice, ending the conversation. Buffy shook her head and almost laughed at his attempt to get her embarrassed. "I'd like you to meet Anti-School --"
"It's Buffy!" she said, talking over Gunn's 'introduction'. "Just Buffy."
Gunn laughed and patted her head, just to have his hand swatted away by her. "Don't touch my head," she scowled in a friendly way.
"Feisty, eh?" Buffy looked towards the person talking and also recognized his hair from last night. "You'd get along good with Faith."
The group laughed as the girl next to him, presumably Faith, punched him squarely on the shoulder. "Also no-touch-girl. Probably would get along with Angel, too." Everyone except for Buffy laughed and agreed.
Gunn pointed to each person as he introduced them. "This here's Spike, Faith, Oz, and Kate." Buffy smiled at the group a little uneasily. Everything was happening so fast, there was no time for quiet reflection or brooding.
Brooding? That was what Willow and Xander always called her. Instantly, she remembered she should be looking for her friends. She cared about them, and she didn't want either to worry. She didn't want to lose them.
Uttering a quick hello, she turned back to Gunn. "I really should get going now," she said. "I have to find my friends --"
"Hang out with us for a little while, pet," Spike interrupted.
"Yeah, B," Faith added. "You haven't even met all of us, yet."
Lorne, placing the football on the bench, nodded in response. "Angelcakes should be here any second."
Angelcakes? Lorne must have been in the car at the neighbor's house --
"I'd love to meet…Angelcakes," Buffy said, emphasizing the unusual name for a girl. "But I really, really have to go. Do you know where I could find the library?"
After managing to get Gunn's friends to calm down and stop laughing at the "Angelcakes" crack, Buffy got her directions to the library. Oddly enough, no one wanted to take her to the library for some reason concerning their rebellion against school -- which Buffy respected one-hundred percent. Unfortunately, the bell had rung before she even had a chance to step into the sacred land of books.
The remainder of the school day was uneventful. Buffy acted as a ghost through all her classes, confusing all of her teachers and classmates who participated in stupid introduction games such as naming your favorite hobby which starts with the first letter of your name. Basketball for Barney, Ukulele for Una. As if life was every that simple, simple enough to rename hobbies based on letter organization.
She wondered if things were different in Los Angeles. With her father. With her father's fiancé, what's-her-name. It didn't matter. What happened in the past stays in the past. Buffy sighed before heading towards the parking lot, where Xander's wave beckoned her over. She didn't care about the past, but wasn't too particularly interested in the future. The only thing to look forward to was the present, and that was gone before you knew it.
Present.
The Present…a present…gift…birthday party…
Buffy gasped. Her mother said the new neighbors were coming over right after school. She tried to recall the conversation; only remembering bits and pieces.
"There's a gift I'm supposed to get…" Buffy murmured to herself as she neared Xander and Willow. "Gift for…dinner, after meeting family…time? Oh, time. Four, maybe…" Buffy looked up and realized she was nearly a foot away from Xander's old car. "Do either of you remember what I'm supposed to do later on?"
Willow shook her head and Xander cleared his throat. "You barely said anything this morning."
"Right," Buffy muttered. "Do you think you could do me a favor and stop by the local flower shop?"
The trio hopped into the car. "Any particular reason?" Xander asked as he started up the engine.
"I'm supposed to do something, but I don't remember what."
"Ah," he said, steering out of the parking lot. "The game of life, itself."