New Beginnings: Thursday Morning
by Javian
Chapter 10: Thursday Morning
Disclaimer: It isn't mine. Or at least, the characters aren't. And the town. And the principal. And...you get the point.
Warnings: Some violence, some swearing
Feedback: Once again, thank you BelovedSlayer, MissEdith, Angels Shadow, Peaches Girl, and littlewiccan for reviewing. The reviews mean a lot to me.
~
Buffy grabbed her backpack, dumped its remaining contents out on the bed, threw in a notebook and some pencils, then went downstairs, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
Downstairs, Buffy glanced at the kitchen clock. It was 6:30, and apparently school began at 7:30. Buffy yawned a little and grabbed a granola bar to eat on her walk to school, then shuffled out the door. Outside, she noticed her dad’s car still parked in the driveway.
“So much for that early morning meeting he was going on about” Buffy muttered to herself. Pausing for a moment, she vaguely recalled not seeing her dad at all the previous night. ‘Oh well, I went to sleep earlier than usual last night anyway’.
Not dwelling too much on the matter, and hoping she remembered the way, Buffy set off towards her first day at the new school.
~
Willow rushed towards the school, wanting to just drop her thirty-pound backpack. She had checked a history book out of the library a couple of weeks ago, and it had been due yesterday!
“Stupid, stupid, stupid” she silently berated herself. She hoped the library would be open, it was almost 6:30, and she had been frantically rehearsing an apology to the new librarian, Mr. Giles. “The librarian’s going to hate me, forever and ever!” Willow thought, panicking. She couldn’t live with that. The old librarian, who had disappeared mysteriously near the end of last year, had treated her like a daughter, something she rarely even felt from her parents. That had been one of her most personal losses, and she hadn’t felt that gut-wrenchingly miserable since the death of her friend Jesse the year before. Xander had been there to share the pain with her, and they had each other to lean on then. Willow smiled a little, thinking of the way Xander had always been able to put a smile on her face.
Out of breath, Willow finally reached the school entrance, raced through to the hallway, audibly squeaked when she realized that she was running inside a school (“Ack! Must stop breaking school rules. Oh dear.”), and slowed down, making a beeline straight for the library.
~
Buffy doubled back for the second time, then did a silent cheer when she saw the high school just up the road. “Yay! I made it!”
She quickly shut up the little cheering voice in her head when she realized she had just arrived at a school, and displayed happiness. “Rule number one,” she reminded herself, “School is NOT a happy place to be.”
Frowning a little, Buffy remembered years ago when she’d jokingly made up these ‘rules.’ Mentally correcting herself, she recalled that her first rule had been, ‘home is not a happy place to be.’
“God, I was a dreary child” she commented to herself, not wanting childhood memories to be in her mind on her first day at school.
‘This is my chance to start over.’ She thought to herself. In a rare moment of optimism, she added quietly, “Nothing can go wrong”
Looking up, she entered the building and began looking for the principal’s office. A large clock on the wall showed that it was a little past 6:45.
~
Xander woke up and reached over to a sidetable, feeling around with his hands for his watch. Picking it up, Xander tried to make out the time, but it was too dark; the basement had no windows, or at least, the tiny one in the corner was so grimy that no light ever made it into the room.
Stiffly, Xander got out of bed and made his way to the stairs. His dad hadn’t come home at all yesterday, which was a little strange even for him. Xander had been kept up all night, trying to block out his mother’s awful screeching on the phone. Apparently, the pizza delivery guy had been a smartass, and she had immediately called the pizza place threatening to sue.
‘More like she just wanted to have a good ol’ rant, to spend the time when dad’s not here for her to nitpick at.’ Xander thought. Then, remembering his original question, he wondered ‘…If I was up till nearly 4 in the morning, and dad hadn’t arrived in a heap on the doorstep by then, where was he?’
Xander then realized that he had actually spent the best part of a minute concerned about his dad. He snorted softly. ‘Real soft, Harris, your dad doesn’t care a bit about you, why should you care about his business at all?’
In a desperate kind of way, though, Xander still wanted to care, even if it was only a little.
Xander made his way to the kitchen, on the way putting on his watch and checking the time. It was nearly 6:50. He yawned as he entered the kitchen. ‘Almost three hours of sleep, that’s gotta be bad for—“
His chain of thought was abruptly thrown from his mind by the sight in front of him.
“Oh, no, no, no” Xander whispered, backing up “It’s too damn early for this.”
His father was in the kitchen, red-faced and reeling, still holding an empty beer bottle in his hand. His shirt was covered in stains, and he reeked of cheap beer. Tony Harris smiled drunkenly at Xander, a nasty, twisted version of Xander’s own usual grin.
“Look who’s here!” Tony began, taking a heavy step towards Xander. “Worried about where your pop’s been all night, huh? Well look, I met a brand new bar buddy last night! New in town. Couldn’t believe it. Doesn’t really matter though, it’s just another reason to get a double round...”
Knowing that nothing his dad said really mattered anyway, Xander disgustedly turned to leave the kitchen. Why had he even bothered worrying about his dad before anyway?
“Hold up there, don’t you dare turn your back on me, boy, show some respect. Act like a Harris for once, you rat, turn around and face me. Got a problem with me, is that it?”
Xander realized his mistake, but was quickly growing frustrated as his dad continued his drunken rambling. However, Tony now had both his hands firmly holding Xander’s shoulders, and was breathing into his face as he talked, working himself into a rage.
“You’ve always been an ungrateful whiny little bastard, but you know what, I think it’s about time some things changed around here. You think you can keep sneaking around the house, avoiding your very own parents, hanging with that scummy little redhead all the time?!”
Xander jerked away from his dad. The fact that his dad had even noticed who he hung out with caught him by surprise, but his reference to Willow as being ‘scummy’ was absolutely uncalled for.
He didn’t know if it was the lack of sleep or the stress that had been building up since the round of deaths in Sunnydale, but a second later he snapped, and he heard himself shouting.
“You don’t even deserve to call yourself parents! If you think I’m whiny, well you---“
Crash.
Tony threw the bottle at Xander. “You try and finish that sentence, boy, and you won’t even be able to wish you were sorry, you’ll be that far gone!”
Xander stumbled back. Thankfully, the bottle had mostly hit the floor in front of him, he could feel a twinge of pain in his foot. He was barefooted and some of the glass had cut him. Not daring to look back at his dad, who had also backed off and seemed about to pass out, Xander hurried back to the basement to change his clothes and get to school, hoping his mother hadn’t woken up yet; that would make this morning unbearably worse.
Feeling a headache coming on, Xander held a hand to his head as he went down the basement stairs, trying not to use his left foot, where several small cuts were bleeding. Looking at his watch one more time, he cursed as he realized he was going to be late for school again. He really needed Willow right now, she could always bring a smile to his face no matter how early in the morning it was. Now he would have to go straight to class, either that or skip first period entirely.
~
Buffy knocked on the door to Principal Flutie’s office, and a voice quickly called out “Come in!”
Nervously, Buffy took a deep breath and walked in.
“Hello, I’m Principal Flutie. And you must be Buffy Summers, our new student. Please sit down. New faces are always so refreshing! You’ll find that Sunnydale High will always be here to meet your needs. That’s right, we cater to your needs. You should also know, every student here starts off with a nice, clean slate. So anything you might’ve done in your previous school, it’s all been erased. Completely blank.”
Principal Flutie placed an empty folder labeled “Sumers, B” on the desk in front of him for emphasis. Tapping it, he continued cheerfully, “We expect you to work hard and be the good student we know you can be! I hope you caught all that,” he added, looking sternly at Buffy for a moment, as she had stopped staring at him and was now looking at the name on the file folder.
“Oh, yeah, of course, it’s just that—“ Buffy was about to indicate the misspelled name on the folder when the Principal cut in.
“It’s quite alright, Miss Summers, we’ll all get along fine. I’ll just find someone to show you around the school now, shall I?”
Flutie half-smiled, half-grimaced at her. “If you’ll follow me now, then.”
Buffy looked at the principal for a moment, wondering what the hell had just happened. ‘Wow, they let this guy be a principal? He has a crazy kind of resemblance to my history teacher’
Flutie was already out in the empty hallway, looking for a victim to be the new girl’s guide.
“Ah, perfect! Miss Rosenburg, come over here for a moment, would you?”
~
Willow had just returned from the library. She was still slightly puzzled at the conversation she had. Both she and Mr. Giles had stuttered and Willow ended up babbling for ten minutes (she blamed it on the coffee the had this morning) while Mr. Giles just had this amazed and slightly disturbed look on his face at the fact that any student could possibly be so anxious about a library book. He had been so taken aback that instead of being the usually strict and very British librarian that he was, let the furiously blushing redhead check out the book for another week. All in all, it was an enlightening experience for both of them.
~
A/N: Buffy's first day of school will continue in the next chapter. Please read and review!
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