As he walks through the school gates, the afternoon's orange sunlight ablaze on his skin, Robbie's chest deflates. He releases a breath he hadn't really been consciously holding. To his left, Beck is talking about a new movie he wants to see, something about scissors and little girls returning from the dead. Robbie's not really paying attention, too wrapped up in his thoughts. High school, it's not quite the collage of bullying and being shoved into lockers that he'd expected. It's also needlessly confusing, a disorientating blur of new faces and the emotions associated with them.
"So you're coming, right?" Beck asks, yanking Robbie out of his thoughts and into conversation.
"Uh yeah, sure." Robbie mumbles, brows knitted together as his eyes flick to Beck.
"I knew you'd be down." Beck affirms, grinning like a madman. It's not at all reassuring. While it's nice to be down, the uneasy feeling prickling the back of his neck makes Robbie wonder just what exactly he's agreed to. He doesn't ask though, not when Beck is the only person at Hollywood Art he can really call a friend.
The rest of the way back to their street, Beck espouses his views on the symbolism behind the use of scissors in horror movies. Robbie knows this because he trains his ears to Beck and nothing but Beck's words. The exact nature of what he's agreed to never quite slips into Beck's words again though. By the time Beck's clapping him on the shoulder and hopping over the fence to his house, Robbie's still in the dark. Frowning, he watches Beck for a moment before trudging the rest of the way home, mind adrift in a sea of possibilities.
Eventually pushing the thoughts aside, Robbie unlocks the house he's called home for the past three years. The living room is empty when Robbie steps into it, a familiar sight. Grimacing at how hollow everything feels, Robbie makes his way into a kitchen, dropping his backpack beside the dining table. Apathetically, maybe because he's spent most of the day beside Beck, Robbie shoves his hands into the refrigerator and snags a can of Wahoo Punch. Robbie kind of despises the Pineapple flavour that consistently flood the fridge, but at least his mom does the shopping, he guesses.
The night is almost violent in its refusal to move forward. By the time Robbie has drained his Wahoo Punch and finished the meagre amount of homework assigned to him, it's barely past 6 O'clock. He's draped over the couch, a rerun of Drake & Josh buzzing in the background, when his phone goes off. Tugging it from his pocket, Robbie's slightly underwhelmed that his mom's name is splayed across the screen. Tapping the icon, he opens the message.
Mom's been invited to dinner along with several of the more promising candidates, attending is critical to her chances of being chosen, she says. Robbie smiles thinly at the tone in his mom's words. He feels like he's been cast as the parent in this situation as he taps out a quick replay telling his mom to go for it.
Sighing roughly, Robbie drops his phone onto the cushion beside him. It's great news really, the sort they've both been waiting on for months. Selfishly though, Robbie wishes his mom were around though, to break up the monotony if nothing else.
Dinner is a quiet affair, as is the rest of the night following it. By the time it's 10 O'clock, Robbie feels relieved. It's late enough to fall into bed without feeling like a total failure of a teenager. He slips between his Galaxy Wars sheets, and maybe his body is just as bored as he is, because sleep soon follows.
Robbie's eyes flutter open to furious red numbers. Bleary-eyed, he stars at them for a half dozen flashes, mind slow to click into gear. With comprehension comes Robbie stumbling out of bed and into a clean pair of jeans. As he thunders down the stairs, Robbie's suddenly thankful that he'd been bored enough to shower twice last night. On the way out the door, he doesn't so much eat an apple as he does inhale it.
The journey to Beck's house isn't a long one. In fact, Robbie spends less time walking there than he does waiting on the porch, impatiently drumming the doorbell with his index finger. When Beck finally answers the door, he's still wearing a ratty hockey jersey and sweatpants, while Robbie has been waiting for eight and a half crucial minutes. Beck's hair is hanging limply over his eyes, and he barely seems conscious as he twitches an arm up in greeting. A strangled sound leaps from Robbie's throat, shortly followed by comprehension.
"You're not – why aren't you dressed yet?" Robbie erupts incredulously, arms jolting in Beck's direction and then dropping back to his sides.
"Uh, the movie isn't until eleven. I was sleeping." Beck grunts in response, with all the finesse of a caveman. Robbie's eyes blow wide open with that statement and slightly manically, he rakes a hand through his hair.
"The movie?" Robbie demands, dropping his hands into fists and stooping forward slightly. "We've got school, school Beckett."
In response to Robbie's scathing summation of the situation, Beck absently lifts an arm and scrubs imaginary wax from his ear. Quirking his head to the side, Beck assesses Robbie for a moment, dark eyes narrowing slightly. "You uh, you do remember agreeing to ditch class, don't you?"
All of the blazing, righteous anger in Robbie's gut freezes with the question. His jaw snaps shut with a soft click and he straightens. Words from yesterday drift into his head. They're muffled by his own thoughts of the day, indistinct. Among the murk, stray words that correlate with what Beck is saying begin to appear. Swallowing, Robbie assembles his expression into something apologetic. Beck watches him for a moment, eyes discerning.
"I'm –"
"It's cool man. I'll see you later. Just like, cover for me or something." Robbie doesn't even get the chance to spit out his apology before Beck's accepting it. Their first argument had fizzled out before it's even begun.
"Yeah, I'll – I have to go, but it'll be good, I promise!" Robbie affirms, shouldering his backpack and twisting toward the footpath. Beck waves magnanimously as Robbie leaps off the porch and toward the footpath. Feeling fortunate and slightly envious of Beck's ability to remain unperturbed in even the most adverse situations, Robbie advances toward the horizon.
The walk to Hollywood Arts, without Beck's chatter, it's longer than Robbie remembers. Still, it's not so bad. The quietness of it all – amidst the occasional scream of a car horn – gives Robbie the chance to prepare himself for his second day at high school. Given he's running into the onslaught of unfamiliar faces alone this time, that's something Robbie is desperately grateful for. By the time the silhouette of the school is poking its head into view, Robbie's thoughts have begun to hover around chemistry class and the girl he'd first seen inside of it.
Shoving Hollywood Arts' front doors open, Robbie barrels into an empty hallway. Taking slow, loping strides, Robbie hesitantly steps toward his locker. The stillness of it all is eerie, a glaring contrast to the buzz of activity that had greeted Beck and himself yesterday. Robbie's just managed to fish his locker key from his pocket when the Hollywood Arts bell reverberated through the air. Convulsing from the shock of it, Robbie drops the key. It clatters against the polished floor below him, impossibly loud. A jangling alarm bent on alerting any faculty members within the school walls to his tardy presence.
The Science department is fortunately enough, only a few narrow corridors from Robbie's locker. He's standing in front of classroom S01.04, palm resting hesitantly against it, just a few moments later. With a slow, reluctant nod, Robbie carefully steps forward and wedges the door open with his shoulder. The hinges scream as Robbie takes his first step into the room, pulling discerning stares from half of the classroom. They're not the thing that catches Robbie's breath in his throat though. The sight that seizes Robbie's limbs and freezes his limbs is the expression on his teacher's face.
"Mister Shapiro, you're late." Mr Ferguson hisses, eyes cold and grey as he regards this, the latest intrusion on his lesson.
"I'm uh, yes. I'm not early." Robbie squeaks, hands jittery as he shuts the door behind himself. Several additional faces twist toward Robbie with that rather ineloquent statement, several of them snickering. In directing his eyes toward anything but Mr Ferguson, Robbie comes to realise all of the desks are occupied by at least one person.
"Correct. Take a seat please." It's as if Mr Ferguson has seen into Robbie's mind and plucked this latest insecurity from its depths as he speaks. Robbie's eyes widen to the size of dinner plates, horror crawling over his expression as he whips his head from one side of the room to the other.
Looking excessively pained by Robbie's slow response, Mr Ferguson drags the decision from Robbie's hands with his next instructions. "Next to Miss Vega, if you don't mind." He intones, hanging an arm in Tori's direction.
Robbie blinks. He tenses the muscles in his jaw; somehow keeping it from slamming into the tiles below as Tori twists around and points to herself. Far from the sneer he's expecting, her lips have creased with a light smile. It's a welcoming expression, yet it's more intimidating then any glare. Swallowing the lump of iron in his throat, Robbie shuffles forward, feet inching forward in the smallest increments he can muster. Finally reaching the seat beside Tori, Jade's seat, Robbie hesitantly lowers himself onto it. Though he's careful not to make a show of himself, Robbie's neck prickles, with the feeling of being watched. As he swings his head toward the girl beside him, a gentle laugh gets swept up in the air.
"Tori Vega, not a vampire or a werewolf. I don't bite and it's nice to meet you." The introduction comes with a crooked grin and eyes brimming with the type of playful energy one might expect from a puppy or a kitten.
It's then that Robbie's jaw swings loose, hanging slack because man she's so pretty and she's treating him like an actual human person. Taking a breath, Robbie carefully attempts to choreographs his lips into the smile that Beck conjures so effortlessly.
"R-Rapiro – Shobbie. Uh, Robbie Shapiro." He eventually blurts out, observing each word that drops off his lips with increasing horror.
A pained sigh emanates from the front of the classroom, yanking Robbie's attention away from Tori. With Robbie's attention refocused on the lesson, Mr Ferguson resumes his opening lecture – something about compounds. From the corner of his eye, Robbie sees Tori lifting her elbows onto their desk, tenting her hands and smothering a laugh behind them.
"Totally picturing you rapping right now." She subtly comments, words slightly muffled as they edge around her fingers.
Involuntarily, Robbie snorts with great amusement. He ducks his head, attempting to cover the sound with a cough, but his acting could apparently use a little work. When Robbie's eyes creep upwards again, Mr Ferguson is once again peering in their direction. This time it's slightly more effective in silencing Tori. She twists her eyebrows in an apologetic way, and frankly she's gorgeous. Robbie's always tried to keep his expectations low, but when Tori flashes him those kinds of expressions, he can't quite help himself.
For the next several minutes, Mr Ferguson meticulously outlines the project he's designed to dominate the next month of class time. Eventually, and thankfully, he wraps up the description with a final piece of information that will turn Robbie's life on its head. "Alright, now, this will be a group assignment. I want you all to take this time to select your lab partner. Choose carefully, you're going to be working together very closely. I'll be back with your assignment in a few minutes."
The classroom erupts into a maelstrom of movement the moment that the door clicks shut behind Mr Ferguson. A girl with tightly cropped purple hair flies past Robbie and he feels like he's a part of it all, that he's in the eye of the storm. He's not though, not really. He might as well be watching the chaos around him on a weather report. There'll be nobody skipping across the room or turning excitedly to him. Eventually the clouds will clear, there'll be one last, left out person searching amongst the huddled pairs for a partner. They'll spot Robbie and meander over to him, stone-faced and reluctant. He'll graciously accept their offer to be partners, pleasantries will be exchanged, and then his workload will magically double for a few months.
"Hey, uh Robbie. Do you have a lab partner in mind?" Tori's voice breaks Robbie from the metaphors he's wrapped the bleakness of his situation in. Slowly, hesitantly, Robbie pushes his eyes in her direction. Tori's twisted in her seat, entirely facing him. Her hands are lying in her lap, one is draped over the other and drumming a jittery beat.
She's nervous, but Robbie is the one that emits a sound that belongs somewhere deep in the Amazon. At least Tori's fingers still, her nerves soothed by Robbie's total lack of social co-ordination. Tori catches her bottom lip between her teeth, clearly more amused than irritated. It's not quite enough fuel for Robbie to muster words, but he does manage to shake his head.
"Oh good! Well not good, but uh…I was going to partner with my friend – you haven't met her, well you might have, I'm not sure. Her name is Jade, she's quite abrasive, but don't take it personally. Uh, anyway she transferred into another class. I'm not, I don't really know anybody in this class, so do you want to be uh, lab partners?"
Robbie blinks.
Tori's babbling and still gorgeous. Robbie's eyes remain fixed on her, mystified. He'd thought he was the only one with the ability to turn an eight word question into a Shakespearian monologue. Albeit a monologue loosely held together by flustered pauses and manic hand gestures.
"Yes. You and I lab partners, yes." Robbie states abruptly, shovelling the words off his tongue as quickly as possible when he realizes Tori's eyes are still trained on him. She's got every right to look disappointed, but that's not the sight confronting Robbie. Tori's lungs deflate with a relieved exhale, and her lips fly into a smile that doesn't even appear forced.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr Ferguson bursts through the door. He's cradling a mountain of papers against his abdomen and muttering about a man named Erwin breaking the copier again. Robbie immediately laments his teacher's arrival. Not because he hates science or anything, but mostly because Tori's managed to reel him into a conversation that's more than just stilted small talk and awkward pauses. That's a minor miracle in and of itself, but they've also stumbled upon a shared fondness for the nineties. Tori is in the midst of reeling off a half dozen Totally Kyle lines, accent and all, when Mr Ferguson clears his throat in a very obvious way. Smiling apologetically, Tori slowly angles herself to that she's paying attention to Mr Ferguson again. Watching as Tori flattens down the hair she'd ruffled up to look more like a 1990's Drake Bell, Robbie gets the impression Tori's never had a detention in her life.
After class, Robbie scampers back to home base, his locker. He stands there for a long while, posted against the cool steel and wondering if Beck has had a change of heart. The crowd starts to thin again, mostly shuffling in the direction of the quad. Robbie sighs, resigned to being one of those strange kids occupying an entire table all by themself.
Flinching at the sunlight Robbie steps into the quad, veins running hot with apprehension. As if aware of his close proximity to food, Robbie's stomach gurgles, alerting him to a very sudden and very intense hunger. Pursing his lips, Robbie sinks his hand into his pocket as runs his finger over his 'emergency' money. Regarding the fairly suspicious looking Grub Truck across the quad, he supposes that this qualifies and joins the end of the line.
"Uh, could I get a salad, hold the dressing?" Robbie enquires, squinting up at the menu and then the dark skinned man below it.
"No salad. Just burritos. You have two orders of Burritos." The man, Festus according to his nametag, answers. His accent is heavily accented, but Robbie can't quite place it.
Leaning out of the truck window, Festus plucks the twenty dollar bill from Robbie's hand before he has the chance to react. Robbie's mouth opens and closes, but no protests come out. Moments later, he finds himself stumbling away from the Grub Truck holding a tray of burritos that he can't actually eat.
"So, that Festus, huh?"
An elbow brushes Robbie's side, plucking his attention from an empty table beneath an outcropping of trees. Tori's there, backpack artfully draped over her shoulder, a tray bearing two salads braced against her torso. Again, his lips flail for words, but he's silent.
"He doesn't like new kids." Tori elaborates, rolling her shoulder like it's something she's had experience in. Her dark eyes flicker from the salads to Robbie, meeting his eyes. An itchy feeling, nervous and heavy, drags Robbie's eyes down to the burritos he doesn't really want. He mumbles something inaudible.
"But hey," Tori tries again, undeterred by the socially inept robot in front of her. "I think you're a swell guy, so I got you a salad too." She says, lifting the tray slightly and jiggling it enticingly.
"You – me salad?" Robbie stutters, inarticulate in the face of her relentless kindness.
"You salad, me Tori." There's a laugh hidden amongst Tori's reply, but it's mostly buried by her attempt to sound like a boy – caveboy, more accurately.
"I would uh, yes please. If I could just - do you want these burritos? We could make the exchange here, so you don't keep your friends waiting."
Tori cocks her head to the left with Robbie's fumbling attempt to release her. She regards him warily for a moment, eyebrows linking above her nose. Robbie looks around the quad, heart jumping heavily against his chest as he realises the table he'd been eying up has filled with freshmen. When he looks back to Tori, the beginnings of realization are crawling over her features. Straightening, Tori's lips curve with a smile that's perhaps a little coy.
"Robbie Shapiro," She says, with an authoritarian voice as he wonders how she knows his full name. "You can't just take my salad and run. Come and sit with Andre and I."
Swallowing thickly, Robbie jerks his head into a nod. It's not every day he finds himself invited to lunch by a girl that's cover girl pretty. With his clunky gesture, Tori flashes a dazzling smile at him that's brighter anything Robbie's seen on the red carpet and organic in all the ways an actress couldn't ever produce. Following her lead, Robbie finds himself heading toward a table currently occupied by the welcoming figure of Andre, and the less reassuring presence of Jade.
"Robbie's joining us today." Tori announces, eyes flying to Jade, challenging her to resist. Robbie huddles tightly behind her, all kinds of pathetic under the weight of Jade's cold emerald eyes.
A tense moment passes. Robbie swallows nervously, Adam's apple bobbing up and down. Tori emits a low and somewhat terrifying noise that sounds a little bit like Jade's name if it were being hurled from the depths of hell. Robbie takes a halting step backward, wondering if his presence has thrown off a very delicate balance. He's contemplating an all out sprint for the Boy's bathroom – a safe haven from potentially terrifying girls – when Jade's shoulders finally jump with a complacent shrug.
"I'm eating his burritos then." She mutters to the soundtrack of Tori's triumphant shriek of glee. There's a flurry of movement after that, Jade lashing out and snatching the burritos from Robbie, Tori tugging him onto the vacant seat beside herself.
Robbie eats the salad Tori's gotten him once he's seated. It's good too, a lot better than yesterday. After that, he spends most of the ensuing time an observer, watching Andre and Jade and especially Tori interact. He occasionally ducks into the conversation, mostly when Tori or Andre ask him something. He even yanks an unintentional laugh from Jade by relaying the tale of how he'd met Sikowitz. She contorts her face into a scowl shortly after, but Tori gives him an approving nod, like maybe he's fitting in or something.
Well, here's another chapter for you all! :D Review, it makes us happy as authors.
On another note, you should go check out We're Going Nowhere by Maybewolf, the fabulous author that I'm co-authoring this story with