Chapter Text
Kieren Walker was ambushed as soon as he walked in the doors of his high school. “Hello Amy.” He managed to breathe out despite being suffocated by her embrace.
“I missed you so much!” Amy said, being awfully cheerful for the first day back to school. She pulled away, but only slightly, only enough to not crush his backbone anymore.
“You saw me yesterday. And the day before that, and practically every day this summer.” He said, cautioning a hand to reach up and push his bangs to the side. He could only imagine what this looked like to an outsider: a strange, colorful girl with a long poofy shirt and a flowery shirt clinging onto an awkward, skinny bloke that looked like he walked out of the dork factory (according to his sister Jem). “What are you doing here so early anyway?”
“To decorate my locker, dum-dum.” Amy grinned, letting him go and linking their arms together instead. They walked down the hallway that was just starting to fill with other groups of friends reuniting, on their way to his locker. “I’ve got stuff for yours too, of course.”
“Oh wonderful.” Kieren muttered, less than enthusiastic at his friend’s attempts to ‘cheer up his home away from home’. Of course, Amy always put her trademark cheer into everything that crossed her path; last year she managed to smuggle in a potted fern into her locker, Kieren had no idea how she managed to keep it alive the entire year.
He vaguely wondered what magnificent set up she had this year when he caught sight of who was hanging around his locker. Gary Kendall. Fuck, Kieren thought as he glanced at the locker numbers, hoping that it wasn’t true, that his locker was down the next hallway. 231. 232. 233. 234. He stopped right beside Gary and his group. Fuck. Amy leaned against locker 233 with her arms crossed and glared at the group, while Kieren went about ignoring them and wishing that they would go away. If only he were so lucky.
As soon as he reached into his bag and pulled out his schedule for his locker combo, Gary snatched it out of his hands. “Hey there Walker.” He handed the schedule over his shoulder to one of his posse.
“Give it back, Gary.” Kieren said, rolling his eyes. It was the first day of the new school year and he already had to put up with this shit. It wasn’t fair.
“Oo, you’ve got English w’me, sunshine.” Dean grinned as he looked over Kieren’s schedule. He passed the schedule over to Freddie, who was standing on his right.
Gary ignored Dean’s comment. “How’s your sister, Walker? I saw her in the mall over the summer; it looks like she’s been filling out quite nicely. I can’t wait to get my hands on a bit of that.” He smirked.
“Fuck off.” Kieren said, trying to snatch back his schedule from Freddie, who wasn’t about to hand it back to him.
“But you wouldn’t know anything about girls, would you?” Gary continued, “Being what you are.” Freddie let the schedule flutter to the floor and as soon as Kieren crouched down to get it Gary quickly stepped on it with his boot. He leaned over, getting right up in Kieren’s face and said:
“Looking forward to being locker neighbors this year.” He smirked and pushed Kieren over easily, letting him sprawl on the floor while the three walked away.
Amy helped him up, “He’s such as asshole.” Kieren brushed himself off and leaned down to pick up his schedule, which now had a dark boot-print across the back. “We could go see if you could change lockers?” She suggested.
“You know they never do that, even if there is a real issue.” He unlocked his locker and opened it. Well, Gary hadn’t done anything to it yet, but Kieren was sure that he was going to open his locker one morning and a waterfall of dissected frogs was going to fall on him, or something equally as disgusting and humiliating.
“Gary /is/ a real issue.”
“Shouldn’t he have graduated by now?” Gary had been terrorizing Kieren for the last two years of his high school career (now going on a third it looked like).
“He was held back two years remember?” Amy said then shrugged. “Here’s the things for your locker, it’s looking a bit drab.” She smiled and rooted through her backpack, pulling out a picture of the two of them that they took over the summer that she had bedazzled in the corner with sparkly letters that spelled out BFFS 4EVR. She stuck the picture on the inside door of his locker with a bit of tape, “Now, that’s a little better, you have to admit.” Kieren couldn’t help but smile at her; it did make him feel a little more cheerful.
“I’m taking Photography this year, so don’t think I won’t decorate your locker even more!” Thus was the start of Junior year for Kieren Walker.
His first period French class consisted of the same 17 people that he had been taking French with last year, complete with bad accents and droning chant lead by the teacher. In all sincerity, Kieren didn’t think it was a bad class; it was just the people in the class that were the problem.Not to say that he was absolutely the most perfect student either but at least he tried to pay attention most of the time. Last year he had the task of waking up the sleeping kid next to him (It was a pair assignment and everyone else was already paired up), he woke up and asked what the math assignment they were working on was. At least Kieren knew what class he was in, so he figured everything else was just a bonus.
Of course the real reason he paid attention in class was because his French teacher often told them of her love affair with her pen pal from France named Guinevere. After the first or second week of class (last year), Madame Fosse noticed that no one was paying attention to what she was teaching so she just started talking about how everything was going to be better for her when she went to France to see Guinevere. There were only a few people listening to her over the loud din of the rest of the class. At first Kieren didn’t know what she was going on about, but as the year went on he found himself quite invested in the story. He would never tell anyone else—not even Amy, she would never let it go if she knew--but he found it really romantic.
Soon enough, the bell rang and everyone rushed out of the class to take advantage of the five minute passing period; everyone but Kieren, who didn’t understand why people were so anxious to talk to their friends who they just saw not an hour ago. During these five minutes, Kieren usually found himself trying to dodge groups of students—who found it their mission in life to stand in the middle of the hallway-- and trying not to get slammed into lockers by the other people trying to get by. Over the past few years he had gotten fairly good at this, so he managed to get to his next class with three or so minutes to spare.
The new English teacher was…not unattractive. He was wearing a suit which meant that he was taking the class seriously –at least until he realized that the students didn’t share his enthusiasm, then he’d turn into every other English teacher Kieren has had over the course of his school career. Kieren couldn’t deny that the suit was a good look though.
He took a seat in the second row of desks, near the center of the room (not too close to the teacher’s desk) and waiting for the class to start.