Chapter Text
The first day of school was something Tori always looked forward to. She got to see her friends, meet new people, and go to volleyball practice at the end of the day. To date, Tori had never had a bad first day.
Until junior year. Her alarm didn’t go off, and by the time she woke up, Trina was hogging the shower and singing painfully off key.
“Trina, hurry up! We have to leave in twenty minutes!” Tori groaned. After Trina didn’t respond, Tori decided to trudge downstairs and make herself a bowl of cereal. She checked the fridge for milk, but all she could find was an expired carton of 2% percent.
“It’s not even fat free,” she whined.
Tori inhaled her dry cereal in record time before barreling back upstairs and into the now unoccupied bathroom. After a quick shower and some makeup, Tori was ready to put on her outfit and catch a ride with Trina to school.
Tori admired herself in the mirror. A pink blouse, skinny jeans, and brown cowboy boots weren’t too shabby as far as first day of school outfits went. She paired it with a brown leather jacket. There was still five minutes until they had to leave, so she quickly blow dried her hair to the best of her ability.
“Tori let’s go!” Trina yelled.
“Coming!” Tori slung her bag over her shoulder and ran downstairs.
Trina took one look at her and grimaced. “You’re gonna have to stick your head out of the car window.”
“Why?”
“Because, I can’t have your wet hair ruining my seats. Now do you want a ride to school or not?” Tori rolled her eyes but decided riding with Trina was better than taking the bus.
Tori realized her mistake pretty quickly.
Trina flew down the road going at least 15 miles over the speed limit. All the windows were down and pop music shook the entire car. Not to mention, Tori’s neck was starting to hurt from sticking her head out the window like a dog.
The ten minute car ride that seemed to go on forever finally ended when they pulled up to Hollywood Heights High School. Naturally, Trina double parked over two spaces. It’s a wonder she ever got her license. Tori rolled her now sore neck and stepped out of the car. Trina was already halfway across the parking lot by the time Tori slung her bag over her shoulder and took off her jacket. As stylish as it was, the California heat was already beginning to make her sweat. Wiping the slight perspiration that began to accumulate on her forehead, Tori made her way to the school entrance.
The parking lot was bustling with kids from all different social groups. The popular girls sat around at the Asphalt Cafe chatting rowdily, while the stoners were gathered around a car in a very sketchy manner. Tori took a peek at her schedule and headed towards her locker which was luckily situated right near the front entrance.
“Alright, English first, then study hall, and…” Tori’s eyes blew up as she realized what her third class was.
“SONGWRITING?”
A few students glanced her way, but Tori was too preoccupied by the fact that she was enrolled in Songwriting when she could’ve sworn she requested creative writing for her elective.
“No, this has to be a mistake,” Tori cried.
“What’s a mistake?” Tori whipped around and saw her friend and fellow teammate, Hayley.
“My schedule must’ve gotten messed up because according to this stupid piece of paper I have to take Songwriting!”
“Oh, please. It can’t be that bad.”
“It is! I can’t write a song, Hayley, I just can’t.”
“Well…have you ever tried?” Her teammate asked.
“...No,” Tori admitted.
“How do you know you can’t then? Just give it a shot, Tor. How different can it be from hitting around a volleyball?”
Tori raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“Those are two completely different things.”
“Whatevs. Bells gonna ring any second, what do you have first?”
Tori glanced at her schedule, “Uh, English with Mr. Hodges.”
“Samesies! Let’s go. I wanna see if we got any studs in our class,” Hayley grabbed Tori’s hand and dragged her down the hall. Tori was too busy adjusting her bag to notice the dark haired girl with green stripes in her hair about to crash into her.
The two collided and Tori let go of Hayley’s hand.
“Watch where you’re going,” The girl snarled. Tori gaped at the girl who shot her a glare as she stomped away.
“Don’t mind her, that’s Jade West. Rumor has it she just broke up with that nice hunk of boy, Beck Oliver, a week ago. You know, the one in our bio class last year? Anyways, she’s totes psycho,” Hayley whispered.
Tori kept her eyes trained on the grumpy girl as she rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.
“Yeah…there’s definitely something unsettling about her,” she noted.
The pair chatted as they continued their walk to class, finally making it to the classroom.
A couple kids were already seated inside, but none they recognized. Hayley dragged Tori to the back of the classroom, where they both sat next to each other.
“No hotties yet,” Hayley absentmindedly noticed as she tapped away on her Pear phone. Tori didn’t really get Hayley’s obsession with guys. Yeah, they were kinda nice to look at, and not all of them were ganks, but Tori didn’t have quite the urge Hayley did to scope them out like they were prey. She was fine focusing on school, her friends, and most importantly, volleyball.
Tori was hoping to nab a college scholarship with her athletic performance. She didn’t mean to toot her own horn, but she was a pretty good hitter. She just wasn’t certain if colleges would take too kindly to her height. Most college volleyball hitters were over 5’9”, and Tori had topped out in terms of growing at 5’5”. Regardless, the athlete gave the sport her all, and the effort showed.
Her stats were the best out of her entire team, and had been for the past two years. Despite her height, Tori had a crazy vertical, which meant she had no problem getting her hands above the net. It also meant she had no problem making varsity her freshman year.
As the bell rang, the last couple of students trickled into the classroom.
“Hello, class. I’m Mr. Hodges, and I’ll be your English teacher this year.”
For the next 45 minutes, Mr. Hodges had the class talk about their summer, do icebreakers, and complete a couple of writing exercises before dismissing the students. Overall, not too bad. Tori had been a bit worried that he’d assign a boat load of work on the first day, as many of her English teachers in the past had done, but she managed to leave the class with no work to worry about. Tori parted ways with Hayley and made her way to Study Hall in the Cafeteria. She scanned the area for any familiar faces before landing on Tara, another one of her teammates.
“Tara, hey!”
“Hey, Tori! Thank god you’re in this Study Hall, I was afraid I wouldn’t know anyone.”
“I get the feeling. So, what was your first class?”
Tara groaned loudly and pulled out a folder with a pile of worksheets stuffed in one of the sleeves. Tori rifled through them and had to guess there were around thirty math problems in total.
“AP Calculus. My stupid teacher wants us to complete all of these problems by tomorrow. What a gank,” Tara pouted.
“And here I thought Study Hall on the first day wouldn’t require any actual studying,” Tori sighed.
“Yeah, I better start working on these. But tell me about you first! How was your morning, what was your first class, any cute guys I should keep on my radar?”
“My morning was okayish. Woke up late so Trina was hogging the shower for like ever. Had English with Hayley and we didn’t get any homework thankfully, and I wasn’t really looking out for any cute guys, sorry to say.”
“Darn, well, sorry about the sucky morning, I hate you for not having an insane amount of homework already, and, Tori, you really need to start checking out boys more.”
Tori rolled her eyes, “Ugh, I’m not like you and Hayley, Tara. I don’t spend all of my time outside of volleyball gawking at guys. And quite frankly, I’m glad I’m not boy crazy. I have much better ways to spend my time.”
Tara scoffed, “Please, all you do is watch Celebrities Underwater and cat videos on SplashFace. Plus, boy watching is loads of fun, you just gotta try it.”
“Not a chance, now go do your math problems before the period ends” Tori pulled out her Pearbook and logged into the Slap. Her feed was full of kids tweeting about the first day of school, sports, classes, and to avoid the second floor boys bathroom. WIth nothing better to do, Tori decided to tweet about how her first day was going.
-
TORI VEGA:
Had to stick my head out the window while Trina blasted her terrible music on the way to school. My neck hurts :(
Feeling: Sore
-
It wasn’t a particularly interesting tweet, but Tori liked to view her Slap page as a place where she could log everything she did on a day-to-day basis. It was nice to reflect on some particularly crazy moments, like the volleyball pool party she attended during pre-season. Needless to say, Hayley’s parents forbid her from hosting any more pool parties, at least with the volleyball team.
Tori spent the next half hour browsing social media until the bell rang. Chiz, I have Songwriting now, this is gonna suck. Tori pulled out her schedule and made her way reluctantly to class. It’s not that Tori hated music or anything, in fact, she loved music. Specifically, Katy Perry. She just never considered herself particularly musically inclined. It’s not like she ever tried singing outside of the shower, and the piano lessons she took as a child were against her will.
All too soon, the athlete was outside of the classroom. With a gulp, she opened the door. A few kids were already seated inside, but Tori didn’t recognize any of them. Tori figured she’d sit in the back of the class to keep attention off of her. She pulled out her schedule and checked out her other classes. Next was lunch, then Algebra, History, and…Improv?
“What about Science?” Tori muttered to herself. She quickly scanned her schedule and realized that it didn’t say Study Hall, it said Chemistry with Mr. Stu Hall. Great, just as the day started to look up, Tori managed to unintentionally skip class on the first day. Not to mention, Tori didn’t get any of the electives she wanted. Instead of Photography, she was stuck taking Improv. She slowly slid down the chair and pouted. Today was not her day.
Just before the bell rang, the teacher walked in.
“Hey, guys. I’m Mr. Jones, but you can call me Anthony. Just a little disclaimer, I know not all of you are super familiar with songwriting, and that’s okay. I want this to be a class where you can explore your creative side and learn a bit about music,” Tori sighed in relief. Maybe she could survive this class.
“However, this doesn’t mean you guys can get away with sitting around and doing nothing. As we progress through the year, I’ll start to grade more harshly. But fear not, I’ll be grading based on your individual progression, and trust me, you will get pretty damn good at writing songs in my class. Essentially, all I’m asking of you guys is to put in the work. If you do that, we can have some fun. Now without further ado, let’s-”
The classroom door flung open and an all too familiar girl stomped into the room.
“Jade, so glad you could join us. How about you take a seat next to that young lady in the back,” Anthony pointed at Tori, who’s eyes widened as soon as she recognized Jade. The dark haired girl rolled her eyes and made her way to the back of the classroom, slumping into the chair next to Tori in an aggressive manner.
“Back to what I was saying,” Anthony continued, “Let’s start by introducing ourselves to the people around us. Nothing crazy, just a little chit chat. Talk about whatever you want.” Voices slowly started to raise in volume and soon the classroom was full of students talking animatedly. Tori, however, sat quietly in her seat. As did Jade. Figuring they got off on the wrong foot, that is, if Jade recognized her, Tori decided to introduce herself.
“Hi, I’m-”
“-You almost knocked me over in the hallway, cheekbones,” Tori was taken aback. So she did recognize me .
“Look, I’m really sorry about that. No hard feelings?” Tori tried to put on her cheeriest smile, but Jade just grimaced.
“Um, so I’m Tori. You’re Jade, right?”
Jade didn’t turn towards Tori or even attempt to make eye contact with her, she just grunted in response. Tori figured that’s the best she’d get out of the girl so she turned to face the front of the classroom. The voices eventually died out and Anthony went on to play a couple songs for the class and go through some songwriting basics.
“Nice job today guys. I know you’ll all probably be swamped with work by the end of the day, but I do have an assignment to give. I’m giving you all a week to write a song, but don’t worry, you’ll get to work with a partner, which I will assign.”
Anthony started listing out pairings from a clipboard. Tori bounced her leg nervously. She didn’t know anyone in the class, how was she supposed to write a song with a total stranger? Tori was so lost in thought that she almost missed when her name was called.
“Tori..you will be working with Jade,” The athlete’s heart dropped. She turned to Jade who was scowling at her desk. As soon as Anthony dismissed class, Jade flung her bag over her shoulder and scurried out. Tori quickly followed. It was clear the girl wouldn’t talk to her, but they did have an assignment to complete.
“Jade, hey. So, the assignment,” The grumpy girl stared blankly at her.
“We should probably figure out a time to meet and stuff, you know, get in a little brainstorm action or-” Jade grabbed Tori’s phone and started tapping away before handing it back.
“My number. Text me and we’ll set up a time to work on this thing,” Jade pivoted, leaving a dumbfounded Tori standing in the hallway.
“That was easier than I expected,” she muttered.
Tori tucked her phone into her pocket and made her way to the Asphalt Cafe. She had a sore neck, accidentally skipped a class, and had to work on an assignment with a girl that didn’t seem to want anything to do with her.
Could this day get any worse?