III. Belle, September 7

Belle's alarm clock buzzed. She reached over and turned it off, then sat up in bed. A brand new day—the second day of school. Yesterday had been… admittedly somewhat bizarre. But it wasn't necessarily bad. She sighed, looking around her room. The house she and her father shared was somewhat small, but her room had everything she could ever ask for—shelf after shelf of books. She was surrounded by bookshelves on all sides, filled mostly with books she had read several times. She always bought her books cheap—at used bookstores and warehouse sales and such places—but because of this, she was able to have a multitude of fabulous worlds in which to escape. There was one large window directly across from her bed and the sun was beginning to shine through it as she threw the covers back, stretched her arms toward the ceiling, and headed for the closet.

As she contemplated her limited options, her mind drifted towards the events of yesterday. The first class of the day had been the most interesting… Literature with Mrs. Tremaine. Mrs. Tremaine was well-known for being horrible, but Belle still looked forward to the class, if only for the opportunity to be exposed to new books or to read old favorites. The class certainly had an interesting cast of characters, if nothing else.

The first person Belle had recognized in the class was Jasmine Sultan, WDHS resident "slut," a title known to everyone, apparently, except for her poor, somewhat naïve boyfriend Aladdin. Belle felt bad for him. No one had the heart to tell him, but everyone knew Jasmine was sleeping around. Of course, there was nothing wrong with being promiscuous in itself—and Belle held objections to the term "slut"—but cheating wasn't really excusable. Jasmine hadn't always been that way. It seemed like it began to happen towards the end of last year—Belle's sophomore year, and Jasmine's junior year. Jasmine and Aladdin had been together for a pretty long time—perhaps Jasmine had gotten bored. Maybe her obnoxiously long and unpronounceable last name had finally driven her mad. Oh well. Belle felt she couldn't judge someone without knowing the whole situation anyway. Jasmine was a senior, as were all the other members of the class. Belle was enrolled in the senior English literature class, having qualified to skip ahead—freshman year, she took sophomore English because she had read all the assigned books for freshman English, so she had always been a year ahead.

Also in the class was Gaston Dufort, or as Belle liked to call him in her head—albeit somewhat dramatically—the bane of her existence. Gaston was a big, muscular senior—star of the football team and all that. He'd been after Belle since she first accidentally caught his eye, but she was absolutely not interested. Gaston was a complete and total brute and could probably single-handedly set feminism back fifty years just by opening his mouth. He was positively primeval and the complete opposite of a gentleman. Belle didn't even like looking at him she was so repulsed by him. Some other guys from the football team were in the class, too—Phoebus Chevalier, Kocoum Algonquin, Shang Li, and Tarzan Simms. It was as if they had scheduled their classes all together. None of the other guys were as bad as Gaston, and Belle actually liked a lot of them. In fact, none of them seemed to like Gaston all that much, and often shot him down whenever he made some horrible remark.

The last notable person in the class was a boy named Adam Desrosiers. He was mainly notable because Belle couldn't remember ever having seen him before. He wasn't new, so surely she must have passed him at some point in the hallways or something, but he had somehow escaped her notice up until this point. He seemed strange to Belle—maybe just because he was a novelty. He had long, light reddish-brown hair and wore a t-shirt for a band Belle had never heard of. He had carried an acoustic guitar case with him to class yesterday. Belle had sat across the classroom from him the first day, but she was determined that today she would sit next to him and find out more about him.

She picked a green dress from the closet—she preferred dresses to two-piece outfits. It just seemed simpler. Humming a song, she slipped into the dress and twirled her way down into the kitchen, where her father was sitting, reading the paper.

"Good morning," she chirped, kissing him on the head.

"Oh, uh, good morning, Belle!" he said distractedly, apparently not having noticed her until she was right next to him.

Belle grabbed a cereal bar off the counter and said goodbye to her father, grabbing her messenger bag off the floor and heading out the door. She didn't have time to make any breakfast, but the cereal bar would do. She grabbed her bike from the side of the house and pushed off toward school. She loved her morning bike rides to school—the feel of the wind on her face made the ride seem much more exciting than it would have on a school bus or in a car. Though her books could temporarily fill her appetite for adventure, she still wished she could experience something like that in real life.

She parked her bike in the rack and pushed some stray hairs away from her face, fixing her hair into a loose ponytail. She checked her old flip cell phone for the time. She had a few minutes before class started, but not enough time to make any stops along the way to the classroom. The number one goal today would be to avoid the torment of Gaston.

Yeah, right, she thought. I'll be lucky if I can avoid him for five whole minutes.

"Belle!"

She sighed heavily. Not even in the classroom yet, and already she couldn't avoid him. He was hanging out the door of the classroom, shouting down the hall to her.

"When are you going to let me take you out—show you a good time?" Gaston shouted.

"Gaston, I'm positive your idea of a good time is absolutely not compatible with mine," Belle said, pushing past him as best she could to get inside the classroom.

"Come on, Belle," Gaston said, wrapping his arms around her waist and hugging her to him from behind. "We both know where this is all leading—I know you want me. Everyone wants me."

"Well I don't," Belle said, struggling against his admittedly strong arms. "Let go of me, Gaston!"

"Hey, leave the girl alone, Gaston," Shang said as he entered the classroom. "Clearly she wants nothing to do with you."

"How do you know what she wants?" Gaston said, putting his face in her hair.

That was it—Belle didn't want Gaston's disgusting, greasy face touching her head. She jabbed him as hard as she could with her elbow. His chest was pretty firm, but it must have hurt at least a little bit because he loosened his grip and made a small noise of pain as she wriggled away.

"I could get you kicked off the team for that behavior," Shang threatened.

"You must be joking," Gaston guffawed. "With Hook as our Captain, we can do anything we want. You know it. I know it. So why not take advantage of it?"

He went to grab Belle's arm, but Shang shoved him away. Shang was strong, but considerably smaller than Gaston. Gaston could definitely take him. Easily. Belle was impressed—she didn't know Shang very well at all, but she felt instant respect for him.

"Just because you can be a jerk doesn't mean you should be," Shang said. "But clearly your cause is helpless—you'll always be an asshole, Gaston."

Gaston made a grotesque snorting noise at Shang, but backed off and went to take a seat. Shang turned to Belle.

"Are you alright, Ms.—?"

"Oh, please just call me Belle," she smiled. "And yes. Fine."

"Ah, Belle, yes," Shang said. "You're a junior, aren't you?"

"Yeah… skipped a year of English, kind of a long story," Belle said.

Shang nodded, "Smart, then. Well, it was good to meet you, Belle."

"You too," Belle said, returning his smile.

The bell rang. Mrs. Tremaine wasn't in the classroom yet, but everyone began to take their seats anyway. Belle looked around the room. There was Adam, sitting in the same back corner seat he had sat in the day before, isolated from everyone else in the class. Belle marched over and sat in the seat right next to him. He looked over at her warily and she gave him a kind smile. He didn't say anything. She waited a couple moments.

"Hi, I'm Belle," she said.

He looked up at her for a moment, then looked back down at the crumpled schedule on his desk and sort of grunted. Okay. At least he didn't ignore her.

"So… got a name?" she asked, even though she knew—just making conversation however possible.

He pushed his schedule over where she could see his name printed at the top. She sighed.

"What, can't you talk?" she asked, somewhat exasperatedly.

He shot her an angry look and grumbled harshly, "Of course I can talk."

Belle rolled her eyes and looked away—clearly this guy didn't want to talk to her. And he had some temper. She could see Gaston pointing in her general direction, whispering to another brutish boy and snickering. She didn't even want to imagine what he could be saying. She pretended not to even notice. She wouldn't give Gaston the pleasure of knowing she was upset. It would only feed his unstoppable ego.

Mrs. Tremaine walked into the classroom with the same sour look on her face that she had had the day before—and every day Belle had ever seen her. She had thick, gray hair and a slender face with black, arched eyebrows that appeared to have been penciled on. Apparently the two Tremaine girls—Anastasia, a sophomore, and Drizella, a senior, were her daughters. Belle hadn't heard this from any particularly reliable source, but it was certainly believable. Anastasia and Drizella were both extremely unpleasant girls who made a habit of making everyone around them miserable, much like Mrs. Tremaine. Supposedly Cinderella Miroir, who was in Belle's year, was Mrs. Tremaine's step-daughter, but Belle didn't know if there was any truth to it. She had spoken to Cinderella a couple of times but didn't know her very well at all.

"Hello class," Mrs. Tremaine said flatly as she dropped some books onto her desk rather loudly and began rifling through some papers. She paused for a moment, looking at something she had written. "Which one of you is Belle LeClair?"

"That's me, ma'am," Belle said, raising her hand nervously.

Mrs. Tremaine rolled up the paper she had been holding and walked slowly over to Belle's desk, tapping her free hand with the paper. She stopped and looked down at Belle with her piercing gaze.

"This is your eleventh year of school, is that correct?" Mrs. Tremaine said quietly, but loud enough for the rest of the class to hear.

"Well, yes, I—"

"So you're a junior," Mrs. Tremaine interrupted.

"Well, I'm—"

"Answer the question."

More than anything, Belle wanted to melt into the chair and disappear underneath the desk, never to be seen or heard from again. But she stayed sitting up straight, practically frozen from nerves.

"Yes," Belle said, barely audible.

"And are you aware, Ms. LeClair…" Mrs. Tremaine tapped the desk with the rolled-up paper, "that being a 'Senior Lit' class, this is a class for students in their senior year at this school?"

"Yes, but—"

A few students snickered.

"Silence!" Mrs. Tremaine glared around the classroom. "What on earth do you think you're doing in a class that is clearly beyond your level?"

Belle felt a spring of anger bubbling up, but did her best to keep herself calm—just because she happened to be a year younger than the average member of the class didn't mean that the class was above her mental capacity. Still, she resisted the urge to give a snappy remark, knowing that would only get her into trouble.

"I was allowed to take sophomore English my freshman year because I had read all the freshman English books," Belle said as calmly as she could muster.

"Oh, an overachiever," Mrs. Tremaine said with faux delight, tapping the paper against her hand. "And why didn't you just wait to take that English class your sophomore year and not have an English class your freshman year?"

"I…" Belle hadn't been expecting this interrogation, so she felt completely unprepared and assaulted. She looked around the room and immediately wished she hadn't. Seeing all those faces staring at her was not helpful. "My guidance counselor told me to… I thought maybe I'd take AP Lit next year. I really like English literature, so I thought—"

"Sucking up will not do you any good in this class," Mrs. Tremaine said, giving the desk one last firm tap with the paper roll before heading back towards her desk. "Shame on you. I suppose there's nothing we can do about it now; you'll just have to stay in the class. But don't expect any special treatment from me just because you're younger."

Belle thought of several things she might say to defend herself, but figured it would be best to keep her mouth shut and lay low.

Mrs. Tremaine droned on for a few minutes then passed out a worksheet and announced that everyone was to work in groups of two, and no more than two, and that if you couldn't find a partner on your own then you could work alone. The worksheet, she said, would be due at the end of class and would count as a test grade. No extra time would be given. Belle took a look at the worksheet. She could do it pretty easily herself, but she saw an opportunity.

"Hey, Adam," she said, forcing a smile as she looked over at him. "Want to work together?"

"I can do it alone," Adam said.

Belle glanced at his worksheet. He had his name written at the top, and nothing else. He clearly was unsure of where to even start.

"You can brood all you want in your next class," Belle said, standing up, picking her desk up, and moving it over next to Adam's, "but right now, you're going to work with me—and that's final. No arguing, and you're not going to change my mind just by being rude."

Adam looked stunned for a moment, but didn't respond. Well, that was some manner of success. Belle smiled to herself and took a pencil out, and started a conversation.

By lunchtime, Belle was still thinking about English class. Things with Adam had been… interesting. At first he had basically been non-responsive, but eventually she had gotten him to have a somewhat stilted discussion with her in an effort to answer the questions. Any small negative feedback from Belle, though, and he would just shut down. In the end, she wound up quickly filling out both worksheets in the last ten minutes of class. They would both get As for sure—unless Mrs. Tremaine let her unfair bias against Belle influence her grading—but Belle felt it was largely undeserved on Adam's part. Oh well. She had tried. It was an experiment. She knew better than to try to go there again. Maybe tomorrow she would sit by Shang. He seemed nice.

Wham. Belle collided with another girl, who was carrying a lunch tray. Luckily Belle caught the tray and nothing was spilled—crisis averted. Still, she felt her face reddening. She looked at the girl she had smashed into.

"Oh, hey!" Belle said. "Daydream girl."

"Ex…cuse me?" the girl gave Belle a strange look.

"Yesterday. In the bathroom. You were blocking the door," Belle said, and a look of recognition, then embarrassment, washed over the other girl's face. "I told you I did it sometimes, too. Now we're even."

"Oh… yeah… sorry about that," she said awkwardly.

"Hey, don't be embarrassed, I almost just spilled pasta all over you," Belle said amicably.

"I might be better off with it on my shirt than in my stomach, come to think of it."

They both laughed.

"I'm Belle," she said.

"Tia."

"Are you sitting with anyone?" Belle asked.

"Yeah, a couple of my friends—Lottie and Ariel—over there," Tia said. "There's a seat free, you're totally welcome to join us if you want."

"I'd love to," Belle said with a smile. "I'll go get some food and see you over there."

"Great," Tia said. "I'll save you a seat."

Belle sat in a comfy chair in the library after school, working on homework. Homework never seemed as bad when she could completely surround herself with books while doing it. She was just finishing a math problem when she saw a girl looking around confusedly. She walked up to the map that hung next to one of the library doors and stared at it hopelessly. She was pretty short—she was surely a freshman. She had long blonde hair pushed back from her face by a black ribbon that served as a headband. Definitely straight out of middle school. Belle put her homework in her bag, slung it over her shoulder and approached the girl.

"Need help?" Belle asked.

"Oh my goodness, I am terribly lost," the girl said sweetly and innocently.

"Freshman?" The girl nodded. "I'll help you out. Where are you going?"

The girl was looking for the ID services office, having already lost her ID card—poor thing. Such administrative offices were in the basement by the vocational classes. Belle escorted her all the way there, knowing how confusing the palatial school could be to a new student. Of course, everyone had been a freshman at one point—it seemed like a lot of the upperclassmen quickly forgot about that fact.

"Thank you so very much!" the girl said with an awkward curtsy-like movement before slipping into the office.

Belle felt good, having done her good deed for the day. She turned, thinking she should head home now, when she heard the sound of a guitar faintly. She looked both ways down the hall, then headed towards the sound and away from the exit. As the sound of the guitar became louder, she heard a voice accompanying the guitar. She couldn't make out the words until she was right by the door to the chorus room. Most of the students had left the school by this time and occasionally someone would go into the chorus room to practice music if it wasn't welcome at home or just because they had time to spare. She didn't want whoever it was to see her, lest they stop playing. She stood by the door and just listened for a few moments.

The lyrics were not great—clearly this was an original song, presumably written by the singer—but the tune was great, and the guy was clearly talented. Belle had to know who it was—just a peek. She peered through the glass window in the door and stopped—it was Adam, sitting on a platform, strumming his acoustic guitar. The case was off to the side on the floor and he was alone in the room. Belle forgot everything and just stood looking into the room. Adam suddenly looked up and saw her there. Belle gasped and did the first thing her body could think to do—she ran to the exit as fast as she could, grabbed her bike from the rack, and pushed off towards home, wind against her face.