Chapter Text
It’s not that it was abnormal, per se, for people not to find their soulmates before their fifteenth birthday, but it was generally frowned upon.
Amity Blight never understood why that was such a thing. They were children, for crying out loud. Why did they need their soulmates so young?
She was doing just fine without a soulmate. And so were all of her friends. Like...okay so she couldn’t really name any of her friends that didn’t have soulmates but, that didn’t matter. It was fine. Perfect, even.
Amity was thriving. She was always on time, the top student and was very responsible at parties. But not too responsible. Amity could still be fun. Right?
But one night, she was at her friend - or ‘friend’ - Boscha’s house and they were talking about the words on their arms. The first ones that their soulmate said to them, the ones that faded the second that they were spoken aloud.
And Amity was pretty much the only one with her word tattoo still intact on her arm, open for everyone to see. Or they would’ve been, if Amity didn’t always wear long sleeves specifically to hide the words.
“Do you call yourself little miss perfect too, or do you leave that to them?”
Because ordinary, for Amity, was out of the question. No one called her little miss perfect. Right? Who’s them? What happened for this to well, happen?
She was teased about it when she was younger, and the people she surrounded herself with started calling her little miss perfect, as a joke. Everyone did. Except for one of her closest friends, or, ex-closest friends, as it seemed. Maybe she did now. Who knew?
They teased her mercilessly and it would’ve taken all her effort to not cry, but Amity hadn’t cried in so long, she’d forgotten the feeling and lost the urge. She’d force herself to smile and laugh along, until soon enough, it came naturally.
They did what they usually did at sleepovers. Eat too much ice cream, popcorn and pizza, watch movies, play truth or dare, talk about boys, do each other’s hair, try and summon a demon, share secrets and all that jazz.
Amity had a lot of practice when it came to saying the thing people wanted to hear. Whether or not it was the ‘right’ thing. And so what if she lied during truth or dare, and made up secrets to share. Didn’t everyone?
And it’s not like they would ever know. And before they could find it in themselves to bring it up, everyone fell asleep. Well, everyone except Amity. She couldn’t fall asleep if anyone else was in the room. She had the twins to thank for that.
So she just sat by her window, looking into the night sky. She could see the stars, and almost hoped that one of them was a shooting star so that she could make a wish on it.
Not like she believed in that stuff of course. Wishing on shooting stars was for children. And Amity was not a child. But she couldn’t help the thought from crossing her mind…
***
Boscha was telling Amity about a new girl that was transferring (or something) to their school. Well, telling, complaining about, it was all the same with Boscha.
“What’s the big deal?” Amity accidentally blurted out.
“You’re joking, right? Amity, please tell me that you’re not being serious right now.”
“I’m just saying,” So Amity was really doing this. Huh. “That I don’t see why you care so much about a new student? I’m the top student, you’re the captain of the girls football team. It’s just who we are. It’s not going to change because of a stupid new girl.”
Their - well, Boscha’s - posse greeted them, and started talking to Boscha about sports and whatever. Amity used to like sports, but….she didn’t like to think about why.
So she just looked around. And there she was, or so Amity guessed.
It had to be her, didn’t it? The new girl they’d been talking about. She’d never seen someone look so out of place and yet so at home.
“That’s her,” someone said, not-so-subtly pointing to the girl Amity had seen.
“The new girl,” someone else sneered.
Amity just rolled her eyes. “Come on, don’t you guys think you can cool it a little? It’s not like every boy in school is going to forget about you and like her. I mean-” she cut herself off, not having the words to explain it. “She’s just one girl, why do we care so much about her? We have classes and homework and-”
“What if she’s smarter than you? And you’re not the student with the highest grades anymore? What’d you think of her then, little miss perfect?”
“I-”
“Then what? Exactly. We don’t know anything about her. What if she’s like, a witch or something and steals all of our skills? She takes Boscha’s sportiness and their artistic talent and all your school stuff? You never know.”
They didn’t. This girl could be anything. But that also meant that she could be a perfectly nice, agreeable, open-hearted and- she was talking to her. Amity’s former best friend. Amity decided, in that very moment, that she did not like this girl one bit.
But, class was starting soon and Amity didn’t exactly have the time to brainstorm a list of everything she absolutely despised about the new girl. So she went to class. Being the student with the highest grades didn’t exactly come easy, after all.
And, just like they were in some sort of coming-of-age movie, the teacher cleared their throat and announced the new kid. Luz Noceda, was her name, Amity learned.
“Take a seat next to Amity,” the teacher said, and a little part of Amity died inside.
But she forced a smile, and Luz followed with a real smile and a wave. Neither of them said anything; they just paid attention to the lesson.
And yet, once again, just like it was a movie, the teacher had to leave the classroom. Unsupervised. Amity always hated when their teacher did that because it meant-
Boom. Crash. All that. Amity couldn’t even begin to imagine what her classmates had done to trigger...those things. But those things weren’t the worst part, not for Amity, at least. That title was reserved for her friends, mainly Boscha.
Because they wouldn’t stop talking. They never did, but at least when the teacher was teaching, Amity couldn’t hear them. And that meant that their words couldn’t worm their way into her head and make her lose focus, being losing focus meant that she wouldn’t do as well in her classes and she’d just lose everything she’d ever worked for.
So yeah, she hated her friends distracting her the most.
They were just laughing then, about something that Amity couldn’t hear. And then she got hit by a paper airplane. Except, this paper airplane had words on it.
It was teasing her, of course, calling her little miss perfect - something Amity guessed was for the specific reason that she absolutely hated the nickname. It was so-
“Do you call yourself little miss perfect too, or do you leave that to them?”
What? What? What? Wha- okay, Amity, that’s enough. After going through the seven stages of grief - in half of a second, of course - she looked up to see who said that, the words, the ones written on her arm, the ones that she could literally feel fading away from that ‘tattoo’ on her arm, and it was none other than Luz Noceda.
A girl. The new girl. She swore, probably like, ten times, all internally. Her parents were going to have a field day with that information. That is, if this so-called field day was actually just The Hunger Games.
Why did her soulmate have to be a girl, why did her soulmate have to be this girl, why did-
“Are you okay?” Luz Noceda asked her, “you look like you’re going to pass out. Do you have water? Any like, medicine for this? I can go get the teacher and tell them you need to go to the bathroom or something-”
Amity found her face flushing, then shook her head.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Luz asked, but there was nothing mean about her words. There was nothing mean about her, period. Luz radiated happiness and light and excitement and buoyancy and enthusiasm and- “seriously, you look like you’re going to pass out. Are you sure that you don’t have any water?”
Once again, Amity shook her head, and luckily, her face wasn’t as warm as before.
Luz seemed to go through a state of realization. “Oh my god,” she started, “oh my god, oh my god, are you mute? I’m so sorry if I was pressuring you into talking, I didn’t know and I’m so, so, so, sorry, please forgive me, I-”
Amity had trained her ears to identify Boscha’s laughter, and contrary to what she had expected, she didn’t hear Boscha laughing at her.
She was ready to pretend that this was a coincidence, that this had never happened. Because Luz Noceda, as cute as she was, was most certainly not Amity’s soulmate.
“I talk. I just only really interact with a select few. It’s better that way, and stops me from making friends that are boring and ordinary,”
“Oh,” Luz said, and Amity noticed words on Luz’s arm. They were fading, yeah, but Amity could still read them. She’d always had perfect eye sight - it was something that Boscha and her posse teased her about, sure, but it really did come in handy at times like these. What could she say? She was curious.
She craned her neck slightly, trying to get a better view of the whole phrase. And there it was, right in front of her, no mistaking it:
“I talk. I just only really interact with a select few. It’s better that way, and stops me from making friends that are boring and ordinary.”
Well that- that was definitely something. Amity looked up at Luz, whose cheeks were almost tinted red, but she was sure it was just the light.
They were soulmates, apparently. She couldn’t really deny it now, as the words on both of their arms faded away.
But just because she’d found her soulmate today didn’t mean that she had to deal with it, right? It could be a mistake in the system or… they could just be platonic soulmates or, something like that. There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for...this.