Chapter Text
Alexander wasn't sure how he expected his first day at a new school to go, but he certainly wasn't expecting the pencil pressed to his throat when he asked a tall girl in a leather jacket outside the principal's office if she was "Erin Burr." Apparently those are fighting words, because the next thing he knows, he's being pushed into a set of lockers with a newly sharpened pencil ready to take out his jugular. All the other students in the crowded hallway create a bubble of free space in order to avoid them, and the teachers on watch look the other way.
"I don't know," the girl says, crowding him further, "who's asking?"
"Umm," Alexander gulped, feeling the lead of the pencil brush against his Adam's apple, "I'm Alex, uh, Alexander Hamilton. I was told that you could get me to my first class?" The statement comes out more like a question, but Alexander is sure that anything more firm-sounding with land him with a more... physical reprimand.
The girl leans down to look him in the eye, and Alexander attempts to make himself seem smaller and less threatening. Whatever she sees must satisfy her, though, because she draws back and sticks the pencil behind her ear. "It's just Burr," she says before turning on her heel and going down the hall. Alexander doesn't know what else to do, so he follows her.
"What's your first class?" the girl asks briskly, breaking the awkward silence between them.
Alexander fumbles to get the paper with his class schedule out of his pocket, and realizes, belatedly, that his hands are shaking. "Umm, it says Homeroom: classroom S12."
Burr sighs in exasperation, and Alexander thinks that he hears her mumble, "Of course," under her breath. However, Alexander is too afraid to ask what she meant, and silence descends on them until they reach the classroom marked on Alexander's schedule.
"If you need anything else from me, feel free to take a hike," Burr says.
"Umm, thank you for showing me to class," Alexander says belatedly, but Burr is already disappearing behind a corner.
With a shrug, he peeks into the classroom and narrowly avoids getting hit in the face with a paper ball. The room is chaos, students chasing each other across the room, pelting each other with crumpled up notebook paper, and sitting on top of old science lab desks. There is no teacher in sight, and Alexander doubts there will be for at least another ten minutes when the bell is supposed to ring. Instead, he resigns himself to sneaking in the room by the wall where no one can see him and perching himself on an empty stool near a girl in a hot pink jacket. She’s popping the gum in her mouth very loudly, but she seems a lot tamer than anyone else in the room. Besides, this is one of the last seats available in the room.
Apparently, it’s the wrong seat because the girl turns to him with such a look of outrage, as if he had insulted her mother when he hasn’t even set his stuff down, that Alexander considers moving, anyway. “Don’t bother,” she says, popping her gum with particular viciousness. “You won’t fare any better anywhere else.”
He doesn’t know what to say to this, so he doesn’t, choosing instead to bury himself in his backpack as if he is searching for something. The area around the girl is calm, untouched, but Alexander, himself, feels as if he is in the eye of a hurricane, waiting for the inevitable to happen and the second half of the storm to hit. He doesn’t know why he fought so hard to get into any school in America that would accept him. He can’t remember why he worked so hard for that free ride scholarship when everyone here seemed to be so dead set on hating him and oh god its just like being back in St. Croix with all those kids ignoring his existence when they weren’t actively making his life a living hell—
“Hello.”
The voice breaks him out of his rapidly deteriorating thoughts and back into the anarchic classroom. There are two new girls sitting on the other side of the table and wearing matching pink jackets akin to that of the girl beside him. The one directly in front of him has a scarf tied daintily around her neck and has stuck out a perfectly manicured hand towards him.
“Hi,” Alexander says, cringing as his voice cracks on such a simple word. He takes her hand and tries not to be so aware of how dirty his must look.
“I’m Elizabeth Schuyler,” the girl says with a bright smile, “but most people call me Eliza.” Her grip on his hand gets just a tad bit firmer, more threatening. “Don’t call me Betsey.” She turns to the girl sitting next to Alexander and says, “Angelica, have you even introduced yourself yet?”
The girl rolls her eyes, and her lips turn up at the corner in a halfhearted snarl. “Angelica Schuyler,” she says briskly.
"And I'm Peggy Schuyler," the last girl cuts in, as if she’s afraid that she will be forgotten. She leans in close to Alexander from across the table, brushing her long hair out of her face sultrily, and whispers, "or Maria, if you're willing to pay."
"Down, girl," Angelica says before Alexander has a chance to turn her down, "this one looks a little too green for any time with the Reynolds."
"Haven't you ever heard of practice makes perfect," Peggy teases, but she dutifully backs down.
Alexander wants to ask how Angelica would know how green he was, seeing as she hadn’t even given him the time of day before the other two had shown up, but he decides, wisely, to keep those words to himself. “I’m Alexander Hamilton,” he says, instead.
Eliza squeals in excitement. “From the Caribbean, right? Your accent is so cute.”
Alexander hates himself all the more when his blush betrays him. In an attempt to change the subject, he asks, "And are you all...?"
"Schuylers?" Eliza finishes. "Yes."
"But no relation," all three say, in sync.
He could’ve guessed it, but he also didn’t want to assume. Stranger relations had been revealed in St. Croix’s small population so often that no one would bat an eye at a dark-skinned Black girl, a mixed girl, and an Asian being blood-related.
"It was just a happy coincidence," Angelica continues, suddenly chatty, "and now everyone's clamoring to be a Schuyler Sister, or an honorary Schuyler Brother if they can't get in with the Revolutionary Set." She pops her gum and sizes him up. "I don't think you're too cut out for either."
The Reynolds, the Schuyler Sisters, the Revolutionary Set? Terms are just being slung around that Alexander can attribute no meaning to, and he feels his outsider status acutely showing.
As much as Alexander hates appearing like he doesn't know something, he's getting nowhere waiting for this group to explain anything to him. So he asks, "Who's the Revolutionary Set,'" and hopes that no one laughs at him.
Peggy and Eliza look at each other and then at Angelica who is picking dirt out of her nails with a folded piece of paper. "Lucky for you," she says, holding her hand to the light for inspection, "I’m feeling nice today. Tell the new kid about how things work around here."
That's the only invitation they need, because both turn to him eagerly and Eliza begins, "The Revolutionary Set are only the coolest cats around. They run the gang at our school, keeps them White boys next door on their toes."
"They only accept the toughest boys," Peggy says. "And anyone who messes with them, otherwise, are quick to learn their place. All the girls are always falling over themselves to even get them to look at them, but the boys typically keep to themselves. You'll know them by the leather jackets they wear around."
Alexander thinks of the girl in the leather jacket that saw him to class earlier. "Are any girls in the, uh, gang?"
"You mean Burr?" Eliza asks. Alexander nods.
"Word of advice," Angelica says, now having moved on to fluffing her hair in a handheld mirror, "don't call Burr a girl. The last kid who did ended up with some broken bones."
There feels like there's more to that conversation than Angelica is letting on, but Alexander just files that piece of information away for later. Peggy and Eliza wait to see if Angelica will say more, and when she doesn't, they turn back to him.
"So," Peggy says, "that's the Revolutionary Set, and they're for the boys."
"The Schuyler Sisters, on the other hand..."
"Are the girls' gang?" Alexander finished, tentatively.
They grin at him, and Alexander flushes under the silent praise. "Yes," Peggy responds. "That's us!"
"You know us by the pink jackets,” Eliza states, gesturing to hers. “We take in the girls who aren't afraid to break their nails in a fight."
"Or even the prettiest ones who think they're pageant material."
"Rich girls who are too bored with the fancy lives their parents set aside for them and are looking for a bit of fun."
"Which is why we have the Reynolds faction," Peggy explains. "Angelica put me in charge of it because she's too busy trying to be a sugar baby"—"Watch it," Angelica warns, but Peggy continues as if she heard nothing—"to want to keep it up. We lend out special services to some of the boys in the area if they got the money, hence the alias. Man, the other girls hate us."
"But we usually don't sell our services to virgins," Angelica says, and she looks directly at him when she says it.
And because Alexander knows a challenge when he sees one and would be damned before he took an insult lying down, the brain-to-mouth filter he usually prides himself in promptly shorts, and he responds with, "Good thing I'm not a virgin, then."
He could not have possibly said a worse thing, he realizes, because suddenly, all three girls have zeroed in on him with a shark-like intensity. Angelica has even stopped popping her gum for a moment, chewing in contemplative silence.
“So,” Eliza questions, “who is it?”
And there’s the downside of opening his big mouth. “No one you know,” Alexander says quickly, leaning back as they lean forward.
Peggy grabs his arm before he can get too far. “Nope,” she grins, “you gotta tell us now. Was it over the summer? Was she cute? Is she back in the Caribbean waiting for you?”
“How romantic,” Angelica sighs, sarcastic and dramatic. “It won’t be nearly as fun to corrupt you, now.”
Alexander figures he’s already shot himself in the foot enough times, might as well aim little higher. “Actually, he isn’t waiting for me because he went back to South Carolina and I’m here.” He tries to shoot for nonchalant; he doesn’t think he reaches it if the stares are any indication.
Thank god when the bell rings and a teacher suddenly materializes to bring the class into order. But Angelica takes the time to whisper, "Pretty brave of you, there, telling us total strangers," with a new look of respect in her eyes. The others, too, seem to be sizing him up in a different light, and he thinks that maybe he can get through this.
“Alright class,” the teacher shouts, “settle down. I’m about to take roll.”
Students scramble for seats, and just as the teacher is about to close the door, three boys in leather jackets rush in. “Cutting it a little close, aren’t we boys?” she says, raising an eyebrow.
“Je m’excuse, Madam,” one of them says with a heavy French accent, but Alexander finds his eyes drawn to the boy combing his hair back beside him who couldn’t possibly be who Alexander thought he was.
Except the teacher says, “John Laurens?” in an expectant voice, and that’s the name of his summer fling but, to be fair, ‘John’ is an extremely common name. And freckles aren’t that uncommon on brown skin, even if Alexander is certain that he has traced that particular set at least twice on the nights that he was able to sneak away from the foster home and his John could get away from his family.
And maybe he could have found more excuses as to why this John couldn’t possibly be his John except that this John has the last name Laurens and when he opens his mouth to say, “Won’t happen again,” to the teacher, there is no more doubt because yep, Alexander could live a thousand different lives and never forget that voice.
“Mulligan, I expect you to do better in keeping your friends in line,” Alexander hears the teacher say somewhat distantly, but he is too busy freaking out about the fact that John Laurens, summer fling John Laurens, I’m-going-back-to-South-Carolina-forever John Laurens is here in New York, at his new school, and could his life be any worse?
The boys find their seats towards the back of the class, behind Alexander and the Schuylers, and he wishes that he had let his hair down today instead of sweeping it back into a ponytail to appear more ‘professional.’ What would a bunch of high schoolers care, anyway, if he looked like he actually deserved his scholarship or not? Besides, all it does, now, is make him feel like an imaginary guillotine draws closer to his neck the closer the teacher gets to his name. He thinks that he might as well rip the metaphorical bandaid off quickly and mumbles a quick, “Here,” when the teacher finally gets to him. It takes roughly five seconds after Alexander feels Laurens’ gaze zero in on him for him to see Angelica connect the dots, having been looking back and forth between the group and Alexander, and yes, his life could get so much worse.
Roll finishes up much too quickly after that, and Alexander feels particularly betrayed when the teacher says, “You’re free for the rest of the period. Don’t bother me,” sits down at her desk, and pulls a book out. The class becomes a playground once more.
“Alexander Hamilton,” Angelica starts, an unholy light gleaming in her eyes, “do not tell me that you spent the summer with—”
A shadow overtakes them, and there is a brush of heat along Alexander’s back before he feels the hand descend on his shoulder. “Ladies,” Laurens interrupts pleasantly, “I’m afraid that I need to borrow Alexander for the rest of homeroom.”
Peggy and Eliza glance at each other in confusion, but Angelica still looks at him like the cat that ate the canary. “Don’t you ‘ladies’ us, Laurens!” she says with a grin. “You can’t just charm away our new friend and expect us to be satisfied.”
“The mademoiselle makes friends?” Lauren’s friend says, placing a hand over his heart in mock puzzlement. “The world must be coming to an end.”
“Don’t patronize me, Gilbert,” she responds, and the look of teasing is replaced with a quick anger. He seems about to say something back when Laurens cuts him off with a quick flick of his hand.
The hand on Alexander’s shoulder tightens. “Schuylers,” Laurens says through gritted teeth, “I would love to stay here and insult each other like we normally do, but I really do need to take your new friend and show him the ropes.”
Eliza seems ready to protest, but with a shake of Angelica’s head, she settles back down with a frown. A sting of betrayal settles on Alexander, but he tampers it down by clenching his fingers on the edge of the table.
“Can’t this wait until after class?” he asks, desperately, trying to ignore the way he can feel every one of Lauren’s fingers through his thing shirt.
“No,” he says, “it really can’t.”
He tries again, one more time. “But the teacher—”
“Won’t bother us,” Laurens says, firmly, patience lost. He drags Alexander out of his seat and manhandles him to the front of the class. And sure enough, when the boys walk past the teacher and out the door, she doesn’t even bat an eye, even when Angelica shouts, “Have fun!” after them. Alexander isn’t certain what his life has come to, but he can honestly say that this is the worst day of his life.