Chapter Text
Tori Vega lived in a world hued blue and grey. It had been like this since she could remember. She was all right with it though, she was still young. Most people didn’t meet their soulmate until later in life, never mind get to touch them. Her mother and father had told her and her sister the story of them figuring out they were soulmates all the time as they grew up. The sisters would talk about it excitedly constantly when they were children, fantasising about the boy that would brush past them one day and their vision exploded with colour. They’d finally be able to know what pink looked like and finally be able to see what they truly looked like.
She’d had so many dreams of who her soulmate was. Maybe he’d be tall, dark and handsome or maybe he’d be a total sweetheart. The thought of it excited her, it always had. She liked the idea that there was someone out there that was made, just for her. He wouldn’t be anyone else’s, just hers. She wasn’t a particularly jealous person, but she didn’t like the thought of the person who was fated to be with her, being with someone else. She supposed it was natural, she also didn’t like when other people called her best friend their best friend, but that was most definitely different.
On her first day of Hollywood Arts, she felt weird. Not in the nervous butterflies’ kind of way, she had never felt like this before. As she walked through the front door of the school with Trina at her side, the feeling intensified in Tori’s abdomen. At one point, she thought she was going to vomit. She thought to herself that it was definitely just stress. This school was filled with crazily talented, slightly eccentric, people and she was just normal. She didn’t have coloured hair or super stylish clothes. She was just Tori. Sure, her singing was decent, but that didn’t beat the dancer she saw as soon as she entered the building or the acting of the other people in her improv class. She was so intimidated as she followed the puppet’s directions to Mr Sikowitz’s class and entered to see the girl, Cat, whom she’d briefly spoken to earlier. It was nice to see a familiar face.
Just as her jitters started to settle down, she bumped into the most attractive boy she’d ever seen in real life. She’d managed to spill his coffee all over him. She apologised profusely before attempting to rub his shirt clean. It really wasn’t helping, and he pointed that out, but she was quite satisfied being this close to them. They hadn’t touched skin-to-skin yet, but she was silently praying that once they did, she’d see in colour. But then, a girl, who was slightly taller than Tori, barged through the classroom door, looking extremely peeved.
“Dude! Why are you rubbing my boyfriend?” she barked, glaring between the two. Tori really couldn’t describe how the girl looked, but she was definitely pretty. But, it did not look like they were going to be friends anytime soon.
“Oh… I – I spilled coffee on—" Tori started, but was cut off.
“Get away from him.”
“Relax,” the boy said calmly, kissing his girlfriend on the cheek.
Right then, the homeless man that Tori had gifted two dollars in the parking lot burst into the room, shouting something about a huge fire. The students in the classroom started stumbling towards the exits, panicking slightly. Then, the man laughed and explained that he was just trying to get their blood pumping and get their attention. He then started the lesson and introduced her to the rest of the class. He did not in the slightest look like a teacher.
After explaining to the boy, Andre, sitting next to her why she had given their teacher money, the lesson continued. She was introduced to the idea of improvisation and the girlfriend, her name was Jade, was set to be the team captain of the first group. She picked Cat, a boy named Eli, her boyfriend (his name was Beck), and her. Tori. It was her very first day of school and she was already being thrust into situations she was not even close to being comfortable with.
They were given the place of home and the situation of big. Tori had absolutely zero experience in the subject, so obediently agreed to Jade’s suggestion of her going into the hall to start the scene. She didn’t hear the start of it due to the classroom door being closed but knew to be offended when the first line she heard was Jade introducing her as the new family dog. She woofed, and then was reprimanded for both standing upright and saying, “yup, I’m the new dog!”
It was then that the girl that Tori had definitely deemed an awful person grabbed her wrist to pull her onto the small stage. Suddenly, the once blue and grey classroom burst into a variety of colours that the new girl had never seen before. She let out an audible gasp as she saw the girl who caused it. She saw her blue-green eyes and her pale skin, and her brown hair streaked with navy and purple. Tori saw her all-black outfit, save for her blood-red Doc Martens. She also saw the crimson drapes behind the stage and the multicoloured chairs scattered throughout the room. And the fact that the sky was the same shade of blue as what she thought the carpet of her room was and that the colours of her outfit really didn’t look right together.
And, just as fast as it had happened, it was over. Her soulmate had pushed her to her hands and knees and was talking about something. Tori wasn’t listening, only woofing whenever she was sure there was a silence. She was only pulled out of her overwhelmed trance by the shock of iced coffee cascading over her head. Without thinking, she rushed out of the classroom and back into the entrance hall, where she collapsed onto the stairs and dissolved into tears. She wasn’t upset that she had coffee in her hair or upset at all. It had just sunk in that she had found her soulmate at the age of fifteen and she was a girl, a mean, horrible, beautiful girl. She hadn’t even seen Jade’s reaction, which upset her slightly, but that was it.
Andre quickly followed her out of class and sat on the steps next to her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling my mom to come to get me,” she said softly, pulling her drenched hair out of her eyes, “I don’t want to walk around for the rest of the day with coffee on my hair.”
Andre then took her phone out of her hand and stuffed it in his pocket.
“Hey! Give me my phone back!”
“You’re going to quit on your first day just because of one mean girl?” the boy asked, shaking his head.
“I didn’t say anything about quitting. I’d just like to go home and shower,” she said sternly, folding her arms.
Before he could respond, the guy with the puppet ran up to them, asking them to go back to class. They promised they’d be back in a second before Cat came out.
“Sikowitz really wants everyone back in class!” the small girl said urgently.
The four of them argued for a few moments before Jade sauntered onto the scene looking smug, “if you guys don’t get back into class, our whack-job teacher is going to explode.”
Andre, Robbie, and Cat started walking towards the classroom. But, Jade hung around Tori.
“Why did you freak out when I grabbed you?” the mean girl asked, not in a concerned manner, but something about her tone was maybe confused.
“You didn’t see it?” the newfound brunette asked, maybe the other girl had also seen it and was bluffing.
“I don’t know what you mean?” she said, sounding positively confused this time.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not a liar. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“The colour! You’re telling me that you didn’t see the colour?”
“No.”