Chapter Text
September 6, 1993
Leaves littered the damp sidewalk, splotches of orange-yellow-red stuck to the concrete. It was the first day of school once more, so that meant rickety yellow buses full of rowdy kids, bikes everywhere, and tired students shambling towards their school (which they most definitely despised). Nockfell High wasn’t the best place ever, it was for sure falling apart at the seams. Chipped paint, cracking plaster, water damage—this school had it all, really. What it had in compensation was a colorful cast of characters, a balance of those who blended into the background and those who stuck out like sore thumbs—and one of those people happened to be walking into school right then. Travis Phelps, the local intensely religious kid.
He stood out from all the others for multiple reasons: his physical form (being 6’1” and willowy doesn’t exactly help you in public school), his unnaturally yellow, bleach blonde hair (it was getting dark at the roots again, he needed to do some maintenance), and his temper, which stuck out the most of all. He had a very short fuse and was known to blow up at times—often along with an out-of-place homophobic remark.
Today was the first day of senior year and he, like many others, was dreading it. Not for the end of summer vacation, no (if anything he was happy about that). It was because of a fellow student that attended the school. As he approached the cracking brick walls, he practically felt a wave of disdain (or was it nerves?) wash over him, head to toe. This was promptly interrupted by a hand clamping down on his shoulder, startling him from his trance.
“Heyyyyy!!!!!!! Excited for our last year here, eh???”
Another loud-and-out there person: Holly Rivera, an attendant of his father’s ministry, who latched onto Travis as soon as she saw him—there weren’t too many friendly kids their age at that church. She was very animated, talking with her hands, and sometimes in Spanish. Contrast to his near-constant frown, she wore an ear-to-ear grin most of the time, expressing as much emotion as possible for as much time as possible.
They also happened to be in an agreement to be each other’s beards. Holly had come out to him once she had noticed his shift in attitude, noting that he seemed similar. That’s when he realized what he had going for him—it was getting a little tiring denying it. Since neither Holly nor Travis were ready to come out to the public yet, they struck up a deal: fake date each other. Nothing too serious, just be seen next to each other as much as possible, masquerade under the title of boyfriend/girlfriend.
“Not particularly. Uh- where were you for half of the summer?”
“Oh no—” She gasped, “I forgot to tell you, didn’t I??”
She started pointing every which-way, going on about how her parents didn’t agree with his father’s views and how they had decided to start worship at home rather than—quoting her mother— “Listen to that man’s stupid mouth.”
Before he could respond, a shoulder brushed up right next to him, and when he tried to lean away, it only followed.
“Hey, what’s your damage dumbas—”
He was thusly assaulted by the flash of a camera and two dismissive clicks of a tongue, chiding him.
“I thought you would be more ready for that, Highliter Feet! I mean, I warned you at the end of last year. Come on, gimme a bii~iig smile, now!”
He scowled, flipping the camera-armed assailant off—of which happened to be another friend he begrudgingly hosted. From the school newspaper club, Kay Wilson, a smug reporter who thrived on hallway gossip and secretive pictures. They wrote exposés on stupid things like little lies, school conspiracies (like how the bologna that was served to students was actually made of human flesh), and stuff like relationships in turmoil or hallway fights. Hoards of blackmail were in her possession.
“Damn. I can’t put this in the yearbook you know! Though you never make it in anyways, so,” They sighed, “who am I to care.”
They stuffed their camera somewhere deep within their messenger bag, while Holly had gone from apologizing to ranting about how fun school is going to be now that they’ll be able to leave this shitty building.
Travis didn’t believe that at all. Somewhere in his heart of hearts, he knew that this year was not going to go how he wanted it to. Some kind of wrench would be thrown into the gears of his plan to lay low, someone, something-
And then he saw him.
Blue and blank faced, difficult to miss: Sal Fisher. He took the number one spot on the ‘weird kid’ podium, mostly for his appearance—of which included a prosthetic face. Travis had bullied him for a chunk of freshman year but trailed off due to his better judgement. And his massive, undeniable, undying crush on the guy as well. And maybe how Sal had told him that he didn’t think he was a bad guy, even though Travis had straight-up punched him? Like, what? Travis found it hard to believe, but he remembered: Fisher is basically a saint. He sighed.
People had the tendency to stare at Sal ‘Sally Face’ Fisher, he was outside of the norm after all. For a while, Travis had thought that he kept staring because he looked weird—and that may have been true for a while—but it soon turned into guilty admiration. The boy was beautiful, and it wouldn’t be such a sin if he only admired him occasionally, right?
Travis hadn’t even realized that he had been stuck in a trace like a stick in the mud until he was snapped out of it by realizing that a rather pissed person had stormed into his line of sight, ready to swing. He didn’t have any time to react before a set of knuckles connected with his jaw. The kids all around gasped and laughed a little as he stumbled back, trying to regain his balance.
Ah, yes. Sal’s stepbrother and best friend, Larry. He despised Travis, and the feeling was mutual. Sal was most definitely the forgiving one of the pair. Whatever the case was, he was pissed off right now—but getting into a fight on the first day of school didn’t seem like such a good idea. He shot a nasty glare back at Johnson, steadying himself.
“What the fuck, you asshole!?”
“Ooooh, like you haven’t done that before. You deserved it, Phelps.” He scoffed, “Consider it payback.”
Larry wasn’t wrong—he had it coming. He regretted punching Sal, really, he just couldn’t work up the nerve to apologize. Everyone around them either already had their flip phone out, was in the process of getting it out, or waiting for a fight to break out. He really wasn’t in the mood to exacerbate the situation, so he just huffed out a quick “Yeah, fuck you,” and turned to leave.
Larry walked back to his brother, only to be punched hard, in the arm.
“What the hell was that, man?”
“First of all, ow, and that—my dear dude—was payback, as stated.”
Larry knew that it wasn’t so easy to ruffle Sal’s feathers, so treading lightly was the best was to proceed. Even if somehow punching his previous bully in the face was what pissed him off.
“I don’t see what the problem is here, little buddy.”
“You just punched Travis, unprovoked. Why?”
“I find it hard to see the problem here, enlighten me.”
They shuffled through the steady flow of people, weaving in and out to get to their lockers. The hallway was loud, filled by chattering of ‘oh I missed you’ or ‘wow you look different’, squeaky sneakers, the occasional reprimand of ‘no running!’. They fussed with their lockers, shoving their backpacks in.
“I mean come on; I punch him.”
“Yes, you just did that.”
“So? He punched you!”
Sal slammed his locker shut, giving Larry a look through the holes in his ‘face’.
“Yeah, only over 2 years ago, and he shut up after that.”
“He shut up? I find that hard to believe, with that big mouth of his.”
“Sure. Goodbye, Larry.”
Sal peeled off into the crowd, checking whatever class he had first on his schedule. ELA, not bad! He was a sorta good writer. Better artist, but you can’t have it all. He squeezed his way out of the confines of limbs and backpacks and through the classroom door. He scanned the classroom for familiar faces (or a seating chart)—and when neither of those were found, he slumped into a chair picked at random, pulling out a notebook.
As the margins slowly filled up with aliens and stick figures, he couldn’t help but think—is this year going to be like the last? Of course, it wouldn’t be the same in every way, but that recent interaction between Larry and Travis started things off a little less positive than he would’ve preferred. Travis Phelps. Sal had known deep down that he wasn’t an absolutely awful guy, and that interaction in the bathroom (and its results) had confirmed such suspicions. While the bullying had fallen off, that defensive façade was still upstanding and strong. Sal knew that Travis only had that because of how he was raised: afraid to be himself, but it made it hard to approach the guy. He wanted to break that wall down, be his friend, a friend that he could confide and place trust in for him. That, however, wasn’t just going to happen overnight; he needed to work for it—even more so now that Larry had started off on that wonderful foot.
He had barely noticed the pair of green eyes peeking at him over the edge of his desk, curious. On the topic of friendly faces, Ashley Campbell- part of Sal’s group, the artsy one.
“Sally. Hey. Sal. Buddy.”
“Oh- uh- hey! How are you, I didn’t see you like, at all over the summer!”
She stood up, taking the vacant seat next to him.
“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that. I was at a summer art camp, it was like, super fun! I even have a little gift for you.”
“No shit!”
She dug around in her satchel, decorated with doodles and patches and keychains—one of which was a little doll that looked like her. She muttered a small ‘you sneaky bitch, where are you?’ under her breath, almost shoving her whole arm in. Triumphantly, she pulled something out, strands of blue yarn sticking out between her fingers.
“I present to you: Mini-Sal!!”
She revealed in her palm a small replica made of yarn in his likeness, pigtails and all.
“Oh. My god. Ash! This is adorable! You made this?”
“Yessir,” She nodded, “and there’s a lot more where that came from. We learned to make yarn dolls at camp! I took the assignment a tad further and made matching keychains for our group. Todd’s hair was way harder to make than it should have been.”
“This is awesome, thank you so so so much, Ash.”
“No biggy, lil man. You excited for class?”
He pocketed the trinket—he could put it on his backpack later.
“Yup!”
---
While this was going on, Travis was stuck in biology lecture, wishing that this year would just pass by already. He didn’t really have any friends in first period, but he did have an enemy. God had decided to punish him today, jeez. Larry sat only 2 desks over from him, and Travis didn’t miss the way he stared death at him when he walked into the room. He didn’t really pay attention to the teacher as he rambled on about something like how ‘these seats are the ones you’ll be in for the rest of the year’. Travis couldn’t really give a shit, he just wanted to get through the day without being punched again—the week or the month even—that is, if he was lucky.
As if on cue, the bell rang, releasing everyone from class. The day progressed onwards in the same fashion: teachers introducing themselves, filling out syllabi, going on about how no horseplay would be tolerated, that rule being ignored, and the bell ringing. Monotonous and stable. Sixth period was lunch, which was loud and obnoxious as always.
The tables were almost all full, aside from the one that Travis usually sat at. Holly was there already, tucked into a book about ghost stories. He slid in right next to her, peeking at the words on the page. Something about the ghost of a drowned woman in Nevada.
“Hey Holly.”
“Heya dude,” She dog-eared the page and stuffed the book in her bag, “how’s senior year treating you so far?”
“Not too bad. Larry is in my homeroom though.”
“Oh. Well, maybe you could make up this year or something?? Whatever prevents your face from being smashed in.”
He grimaced at the thought, and she giggled a little, standing up to get lunch. The school lunch was never particularly good, it was at best mediocre. Sub-par, maybe. The only thing that was a little good was the bologna, and ever since Kay had decided that it was cannibalistic indoctrination, it had become tainted by the fear of possibility. Well, nobody really liked it in the first place—Travis was kind of the only one, but the fearmongering just made it worse. They waited in line to get food, taking small steps towards the finish line.
“So… Halloween is next month! And then there’s Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Ea-“
“Yep, that’s the order they go in.”
“Yeah- what was I getting to…? Yes, right. You have any plans?? Working on a costume early or uh,, something…” She trailed off, distracted by other thoughts.
Travis never really had any plans. Holidays weren’t particularly celebrated at his house (save for Easter and Christmas). If Trick-or-Treaters did come up to his house—which they rarely did—they would receive a lecture on how Halloween is a devil-worshipping-sin fest from his father. That and a brochure for the church. Thinking far ahead wasn’t really Travis’ style, he preferred to focus on the now—but he was finding even that to be hard.
All he could hear was how squeaky people’s shoes were and how loud the lunchroom was and how his head hurt and all of it made him want to claw out of his skin and away from this place. That, of course, wasn’t achievable, so as Holly continued to drone on about holiday plans or gardening or ghosts or something, he just sort of grunted in response to her questions, trying to engage at least a little bit. These episodes happened to him sometimes, with no warning. Usually after a particularly long day, but they made the day seem even longer.
By the time they had gotten back to their table, he just couldn’t deal with it all. He had to get out, to go somewhere else. The bathroom seemed good enough. He cut Holly off in the middle of what she was saying, gesturing vaguely to the door.
“Bathroom, goodbye.”
He walked away before he could even hear her response, weaving through the mess of legs and backpacks on the ground to get to the door. He walked as fast as he could through the hallways, rounding the corners. Bursting into the bathroom, he headed for the stall closest to the far wall, that one was his. He locked it, resting his back against the wall. He put his head in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut. If he ignored the humming of the fluorescent lights, he might be able to pretend that he was a-okay. Yeah.
Just fine.