Here's Chapter 5, my first Mulan POV. I finally mapped out how I want the next ten chapters to go, so the next chapter will definitely be a Wendy POV. Enjoy!
People usually say two's company and three's a crowd.
In my case, three's perfect and two's just lonely.
Alice, Meg, and I became friends on the first day of kindergarten. That was because neither Meg nor Alice had remembered to bring crayons with them. I, on the other hand, had a brand spanking new 64-pack with more colors than there were people on the earth. At least, that's how it seemed at the time. So our teacher sat them on either side of me and from then on we were inseparable.
I was the glue that kept us together, but we were really like three parts of the same person. Meg was the mouthpiece and skin, all tough and sharp and mean to people who picked on us. Alice was the face, quiet and beautiful. I was the brain and body because I was an athletic, intelligent artist. It was us against the world, and if the world won sometimes, so what? We were still doing fine because we had each other. I'd spent the best times of my life with those girls and I'd give anything to get it back.
That all changed when eighth grade or, rather, when Hercules happened. He swept Meg off her feet and far, far away from us. Without Meg, we fell out of balance. Nothing worked as well anymore. Then Rapunzel showed up. She was a feisty little seventh grader and fit right into Meg's shoes. But I'll be the first to admit that Alice and I depended on her too much. We wanted Meg back so badly that we tried to change Rapunzel into her. Poor thing dealt with it. She still deals with it.
That summer, Alice's older sister, Mathilda, died. She had had cancer for almost four years and just graduated. It hit the Pleasance family hard. Alice's parents got divorced and Alice turned to drugs to escape. She entered high school with a new reputation: Alice Pleasance, stoner. It didn't help that Rapunzel was still in junior high. It meant that Alice and I were stuck to stand up on our own.
Meanwhile, Meg made the JV squad, which was rare for a freshman. I became the only girl in school history to try out and make the football team.
So began my new reputation: Mulan Lu, super jock. It was great. I still hung out with Alice and Rapunzel, of course, but I had tons of really cool guy friends. Okay, Shang helped too. Shang Li was my boyfriend and we were very, very happy together.
Honestly, Hercules was a great guy. I begrudgingly liked him. It totally surprised me when Meg dumped him out of the blue. I'm sure that made things between her and her "bestie" Jasmine Walters tough.
Jasmine Walters was basically evil personified and stuffed into a size six frame. Over the summer, she'd nabbed and brainwashed yet another football player. This time it was Flynn Rider, a cool guy in our grade that I had always thought was interested in Rapunzel. But as soon as he showed up to practice with a hickey, I knew he was gone for good.
Anyway, it was the first day of my junior year of high school. I was wearing a new shirt. It was pink, which had totally shocked everyone, and fit tightly enough to show that yes, I had a pretty small waist. I could tell that people had noticed, too.
One person definitely hadn't, and that was Alice.
But I don't really think she noticed much anymore. Like she hadn't noticed that she was overdue for a haircut. Her light blonde hair was almost to her butt and looked stringy. She hadn't realized she was wearing one of her nicer pairs of black flats with a pair of old gray jeans and a worn out maroon tank top.
"Where were you yesterday, Al?" I asked. We were sitting in Home Ec. during sixth period. "You were supposed to help me get my hair ready for today. I had to put it in a bun again. And where were you during lunch?"
She pouted at me. Her lips were looking kind of scary. They were dry and chapped and deathly pale. "I was in Wonderland, Mulan. You should've been there. It was so beautiful I cried. I wish you could go with me." I could see her eyes were red and glazed over. She took my hand and laid her head on the table and didn't talk for the rest of the period.
I tried to focus on what Ms. Queen was saying. Ms. Queen's class was the class that all the girls took because it was easy and all the guys took because Ms. Queen was hot for forty-something. She was about my height and pale, with chestnut hair. She looked like she'd had some work done, which was probably because her husband was loaded. Her stepdaughter was Charlotte Irving, a popular senior girl everybody called Snow White. All the cheerleaders took Ms. Queen's class because she was their coach and was a lot easier on them.
"Welcome, class," Ms. Queen said in her low, sultry voice. Ferdinand Rossi, Snow White's boyfriend, was sitting in the front row. He was a total scumbag, so I'm sure he was enjoying the view of Ms. Queen's over-the-top cleavage. "This year, I'll be teaching you how to cook, clean, sew, and basically manage a household. How does that sound?"
An overly perky freshman sitting behind me chirped out, "Great!" Most of the other people in the class started laughing. I turned around in time to see her cheeks turn bright red as she slumped down in her seat.
"Glad to see someone's had their morning coffee," Ms. Queen said meanly. Shang had taken her class last year and had said that she was pretty much a grown up mean girl. I was starting to think he was right.
"Anyway, we'll start real class on Monday. So today you can just hang out or whatever. Just don't bother me. Ripley, Arista, Jessica, Cindy, can I talk to you girls for a minute?" I sighed. Great. Some of the infamous cheerleaders were in this class.
"Al, you okay?" I whispered to Alice. She seemed to be fast asleep, so I turned to the freshman girl behind me. She looked ready to cry.
"Are you okay?" I asked her. She looked up and seemed shocked that anyone was talking to her.
"Um, I'm fine," she mumbled. She seemed really down after embarrassing herself like that. I also saw that she had a huge red mark on her face.
"What's your name?" I asked her. She was kind of pretty in a young way, with big blue eyes and dark brown hair. But you could tell by looking at her that she wasn't just pretty. It was like there was something below the surface that was waiting to make itself known. Her eyes looked sharper than the eyes of most of the dumb freshmen. They looked like the kind of eyes that had seen things nobody needed to see. Her mouth looked like it was used to smirking. She reminded me of someone, but I wasn't exactly sure who it was.
"I'm Jane Porter," she answered. And then she smirked. "You probably haven't heard of me."
Then it clicked. It suddenly made so much sense that I blinked several times and shook my head a little. When I finally focused on her again, she had her right hand on her hip and picked up a bored expression. I swear it was like looking at the ghost of someone I used to know.
Jane Porter looked exactly like Meg did before Hercules. Before popularity. When she was still my friend. Jane Porter was suddenly a name I wished I'd have heard before this.
"People will probably know me more now," she continued, "I just got in a fight with some senior girl. I think her name was Megan or something."
My shock kept growing. "Was it Megara? She's a little shorter than me, dresses real skanky?" I offered.
"Was she dating the Hercules guy?" Jane asked. I nodded and she smiled. "Yeah, I asked her if she could help me find my locker and she was a bitch to me so I was a bitch back and she tackles me so I punched her and stuff. I gave her a black eye," she told me cheerfully.
My jaw dropped to the floor. "Seriously?" I stuttered.
Jane kept smirking. "Totally. I wouldn't lie about that." And then, in total Meg fashion, she said "Do you know who that guy in the back is?"
I did. He played football and his name was Tarzan. He was in my grade. "He's probably too old for you," I told her gently.
Jane threw her head back in a laugh. "I guess we'll see," she said confidently. Then she finger-combed her short hair and sashayed over to talk to Tarzan.
I just sat there in disbelief. "Mulan," Alice said hoarsely, "How much time do we have before seventh period?"
I checked the clock. "Tons of time," I said.
"Perfect," she said with a crooked smile. "You should go help little Meg out." And then Alice went back to sleep on the desk.
And at that point, I could see what people meant about reincarnation. Meg wasn't even dead, but we already had a new version of her prancing the halls of Castle Heights High School. But I also knew what they said about history and how people involved are doomed to repeat it. At the moment in time, I swore that I wouldn't let Jane and Tarzan happen.