Chapter 11: Thursday, Continued
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***Sorry about the really, really long wait; I’ve been pretty busy. So a quick recap: This is Buffy’s first day at Sunnydale HS; she just met Principal Flutie, who has just enlisted Willow to act as Buffy’s guide for the day. Xander had a fight with his drunk father, and will be arriving at school late. Willow just came from the library and met Mr. Giles, the new librarian. School’s finally about to start. Now, starting from the hallway scene:
~
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?”
Buffy stepped to the side, unable to see over Flutie, who was still half-blocking his office door. A nervous-looking redhead had spun around upon hearing the principal’s request, and was now looking a bit curious and very jumpy at the same time.
Too much caffeine thought Buffy immediately. She smiled a little; she could definitely relate to that. The girl seemed like a nice person on first sight, somewhat geeky. Buffy felt a little relieved that she wouldn’t have to spend the day with some self-absorbed, too-popular ditz.
The girl quickly walked over. “S-sure, Principal Flutie, um…” She faltered a little, on the verge of asking a question, but suddenly not sure what she was going to say.
Principal Flutie didn’t seem to hear her, and instead declared loudly, “Well met! Willow Rosenburg, you’ll be helping our newest student here, um…” Forgetting her name for the moment, Flutie continued quickly. “well, you know, show her around, tell her about all of the wonderful resources available here at Sunnydale.” Turning to Buffy, he added, “You’ll fit in right away, so off you go!”
Then, shoving a couple pieces of paper into Buffy’s hand, Flutie turned and trudged down the hallway.
~
When Principal Flutie called her over, Willow was still jittery from her library book experience, but managed to reply in an almost overly-bright tone without sounding too guilty. The principal always made her nervous.
Now, Willow looked at the newest addition to Sunnydale High. This was interesting, another new student. They didn’t get a lot of them anymore, and a whole bunch of people had just moved out of, or disappeared from Sunnydale.
Immediately taking up her role as a new-student-guide, she offered a bright “Welcome to Sunnydale!” to the short blonde girl in front of her. The girl was looking at her with an unreadable expression, and Willow glanced down at herself, a bit uncomfortable with the gaze. Then, the blonde seemed to snap out of it a little, and replied.
“Oh, um, thanks, I guess…Willow? Well, I’m Buffy.” Then, Buffy muttered an almost inaudible “Buffy Summers, with two m’s.”
“Oh, hi Buffy. I’m Willow. Oh, well, I mean, I guess you know that, obviously, that was…” Willow looked a little flustered and gave up trying to finish her sentence. Instead she added “I’ll just show you around then…” , and moved further down the hallway with Buffy next to her, just as a few more groups of students entered the school.
As they approached the lockers area, Willow looked over at the papers in Buffy’s hand and asked “Is your locker number on one of those?”
Buffy quickly flipped through the papers. “Yeah, is this it?”
“Yup,” Willow headed over to the end of the row of lockers in the hall. “Yours should be right around…” Pausing for a second, Willow found the number she was looking for, and pointed. “Oh hey, your locker’s right next to Xander’s! He should be here soon,” Willow smiled and added to Buffy “I’ll introduce you to Xander, he’s my best friend. You’ll like him.”
Buffy smiled back. Nearly all of her nervousness was gone by now – Willow was really nice so far, and it was easy to relax around her.
“Oh hey, what classes do you have?” Willow asked, while helping Buffy open her locker.
Buffy glanced at her schedule, reading off “I’ve got algebra first, then physical science, gym, lunch, history, psychology, and English.”
Buffy looked again. “Wait, psychology? Is that, like, required?”
Willow opened her own locker, only two feet away, and responded, “Oh, no it isn’t, it’s one of the four academic electives you can choose. I guess they just put you in it, maybe because the other classes were filled or something. But you’ll be in my class! I’m taking it too.”
Buffy felt a little relieved…psychology wasn’t something she would ever have signed up for, but at least Willow would be there.
Willow put some textbooks and her jacket into her locker, closed it, and continued talking. “So that means you’ve got your first two classes with Xander, Xander and I both have gym and history at the same time as you, oh and lunch too, and same with English.” Pausing for a moment, Willow added “Oh and there's other people too, of course…” seeming to realize she’d just put Buffy’s whole day in the context of her and Xander. But then she realized she didn't really know anyone's schedules.
Buffy also left her jacket in her locker and shut it. “Wow, so I have every class with at least one of you guys? Is it normal, being in the same classes so much? My old school…” she thought about it for a moment, “no one was ever in more than two of the same classes. It was a lot bigger.”
Willow just nodded. “Sunnydale’s a small town; I guess it might take some getting used to. So at your old school, did you have to go through a lot of classes without any of your friends or anything? I’ve been in Sunnydale all my life, so I guess the small-town feel, is, well, just that. Classes without Xander always seem duller, it’s a good thing we always have some classes together.”
Willow grinned, thinking about how classes with Xander were. He always managed to make things more interesting. Not necessarily in a class-related way, but in his very own Xander-exclusive way.
Thinking about Xander, the warning bell for first block rang, and Willow looked around, still not seeing Xander. She hoped he wasn’t too late; Willow was familiar enough with his habits that a very late day meant he’d had a bad night at home. Willow bit her lip, slightly worried for her friend.
When Willow mentioned Buffy’s old school, and friends, Buffy fell silent. There was a very definite 'no-friends'-shaped hole in that page of Buffy-history. She really couldn’t relate to missing her friends in classes. She did notice, however, that the only friend Willow had mentioned at all was ‘Xander,’ and watched the redhead look around worriedly as the bell rang, obviously looking for him.
Now that students filled the hallways though, Willow realized that 1), it would impossible to spot Xander and get to class on time, and 2), she had blatantly ignored Buffy for a good few minutes when she’d been lost in her own thoughts.
Buffy was looking at her again, not particularly trying to get her attention, but Willow immediately felt guilty.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I just completely ignored you, I’m a really bad student guide, um, I’ll show you where your first class is, we’ve got a couple minutes before the first block bell rings; that one was just the warning bell…”
Buffy blinked, a bit startled at the sudden, babbling apology she was being given. It had hardly seemed like 2 seconds that Willow had ignored her, and as Willow quickly led her down another hall to her class, Buffy couldn’t help smiling at the redhead’s antics. She’d never met anyone like Willow, and wondered why she only seemed to have the one friend, Xander. After only spending a few minutes with her, Buffy thought that if all of the people at her old school were like that, she might actually have enjoyed school, and made friends.
Smiling, Buffy waved to Willow as she reached her class. “See you in gym then I guess. Thanks for helping me out and everything.”
Willow also smiled and replied before heading to her precalc class. “No problem, I’ll see you later Buffy.”
~
Willow walked quickly to her precalc class, getting there just a few seconds before the bell rang. The new student, Buffy, was a really nice girl. Her and the other new kid, Angel. Willow suddenly realized she hadn’t mentioned Angel at all. Angel would be in history and English with Xander, Buffy, and her. Angel always seemed to disappear right after school, so she and Xander only really talked to him at school. But still, it would be fun doing introductions. As class started, Willow quickly turned her focus to the teacher, but was looking forward to the rest of her day. She was really hoping Buffy would make friends with her and Xander, and not end up following Cordelia’s ‘CCC.’
~
Buffy walked into her algebra class, looking around a bit nervously again, now that Willow was gone and she didn’t know anybody. A few people were already looking at her curiously, quickly seeing that she was a new student. The teacher wasn’t in the classroom yet, so Buffy moved towards the back of the room, not wanting to accidentally take someone’s seat. Also, she was used to always being in the back of the room. There were only two empty seats left in the very back row, and she randomly chose one and sat down just as the bell rang and the teacher walked in. The rest of the class was here, and all the seats were now filled except the one to her right.
The teacher, Mr. Prinsley according to the sign on his desk, scanned the room, taking attendance. Seeing Buffy, he looked down at his roster and then looked up at her again. “So, you must be Buffy Sumers, our new student, is that right?”
Buffy nodded, but quickly corrected “Summers; it has 2 m’s” when he pronounced it ‘soomers’.
“Oh.” Mr. Prinsley made a quick note on his attendance sheet, then straightened up again. “Well, welcome to the school, Ms Summers. You should be able to catch up fairly quickly; we’ll just be spending a couple more days on review, and then we’ll try some new material. And the desk you are at will now be your assigned seat.”
He glanced at the empty desk next to her, and added to himself, “So, Mr. Harris is late again, and the school year’s hardly begun….”
Mr. Prinsley moved towards the door to shut it, when running footsteps could be heard clearly coming towards the room. A few seconds later, Xander limped in, completely out of breath and looking slightly pale, his hair a complete mess. Not saying a word, Xander just walked to the empty desk, dropped his backpack next to it, and slumped down in the seat, looking as if he were about to fall asleep.
Mr. Prinsley, looking annoyed, snapped. “Alexander Harris, if you’re late one more time, I’m just going to send you to Mr. Flutie’s office. I’ve heard of your abysmal attendance from your previous teachers, and I’ll have you know that it most certainly will not be tolerated in my class…”
Buffy looked over at the dark-haired boy, nodding wearily at the teacher, and made the connection. So this is Willow’s best friend?
~
A/N: I know I switched between Buffy’s and Willow’s points-of-view a few times. I hope it wasn’t too hard to follow, but I wanted feelings from both sides without having to repeat all of the material and separate it, like I was doing in the previous chapter. I’m going to try to keep Xander’s point of view separate for a while though, since he just came in.
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