Chapter Text
It’s one thing to move a few miles or just a city over, but it was another thing entirely to suddenly move to another state out of nowhere.
The town of Beacon Hills, California was weird. Scratch that, weirder than weird, and Stiles had no clue why. All he knew was that the moment he set foot in his new house, His dad up and transferring departments without even discussing the move with him, Stiles had a bad feeling settled in his gut.
Normally, one would put it off as anxiety towards moving, towards having to uproot their entire life and start over again, but ever since he was a kid Stiles knew not to ignore that feeling. It had all started out when he was about five and had dreams about people screaming, screaming so loud that he swore he could hear them even when awake. A few days later he was witness to a gunman holding up the Supermarket his mom and he was shopping at, and the screams of the customers echoed those of his dreams.
The next few times he ignored his dreams and the screaming, a lot more people got hurt.
Stiles wished the feeling was just anxiety, tomorrow would be his first day at Beacon Hills High School as a Sophomore and he wasn’t sure if he could handle something bad happening already. He made sure to have all of his school supplies in his bag and everything set up in the morning before he needed to get to bed.
He should’ve known he’d forget something important, such as setting his alarm clock, making him later for the first period where the teacher had already assigned seats and Stiles was left picking one of the empty desks in the back row. There was no one near him and already Stiles felt himself becoming isolated from the others, not just because he was different or cause he was a stranger in the close-knit population of Beacon Hills where everybody somehow knew everybody despite not being tiny at all.
Things started looking up, however, when some kid came running into the classroom a few minutes after Stiles had, with his hair messed up and breathing all sorts of wonky. Stiles watched as the kid checked in with their teacher before eyeing the class as a whole in a mixture of embarrassment and nervousness.
Stiles could see his eyes roaming around the room looking for an empty seat, and feeling bad for the kid, Stiles raised his hand as the kids’ eyes met his and waved him over to the empty seat to his left.
The kid positively beamed at him as he quickly made his way down the aisle to the desk Stiles had gestured to.
“Thanks,” The kid grinned widely as he held his hand out towards Stiles once he was seated, “I’m Scott. Scott McCall.”
Stiles shook Scott’s hand and introduced himself as he set about taking out his notebook to take the notes they apparently had on the first day of school, “Stiles.”
Scott’s head tilted to the side slightly, “You’re new here right? I’ve never seen you around before.”
“Er, yeah.” Stiles scratched the back of his neck, “My dad was recently transferred down here, so I ended up moving in sometime yesterday.”
“Oh! That’s cool,” Scott smiled, giving Stiles a distinct feeling that there was never a time when Scott was not smiling, “You can come to sit with my friends and me during lunch!”
Stiles smiled back in response. Maybe that feeling really was nerves and today wouldn’t be so bad after all.
He spoke too soon.
After realizing he had all but two classes with Scott (Spanish and English), the two of them quickly bonded, to the point Stiles felt he had found a long-lost brother. Everything was going fine, Stiles even found himself somehow enjoying his classes and being the new student, up until lunchtime.
Where Scott led him to a table full of kids he’d seen in some of his other classes or in the hall. The most prominent face is that of the jerk who tripped him in the hall and had laughed at him.
After introductions were made, Stiles realized the jerk’s name was Jackson. Lydia and Danny from his history class weren’t so bad, a bit intimidating really, but not bad people to be around. Erica was in his English class, Boyd in his Spanish class and Isaac was in his gym period just like Jackson was. The one girl, Alison, had a free period at the same time as Stiles but that was it. Stiles didn’t get any weird feelings from any of them, besides the small feeling of something not being right.
Stiles ignored it easily enough, he ignored Jackson too because he didn’t feel like starting a fight with one of Scott’s friends. All throughout lunch Stiles had to answer questions all of them seemed to have about where he was from, why he moved to Beacon Hills, how old was he, and ETC. It had felt a bit too much like an interrogation, something Scott apparently noticed because he told the others all to back off.
The rest of the school day passed by in a blur. He'd only gotten lost in the halls twice so he counted that as a win in his favor.
Scott asked him if he wanted to come over and hang out but Stiles had to decline, telling the others how he needed to finish unpacking. He purposely didn’t say how he really just wanted to go home, hide under his covers, and wait until the screams in his head stopped.
Instead, he went home, cleaned up a bit, unpacked a couple more of his boxes and made an early dinner for him and his dad when he got home from work.
Stiles would’ve loved to talk to his dad about the bad feeling he had, only the last time Stiles mentioned having a bad feeling like this was to his mom, and she constantly told him that it was because of his feelings that he jinxed it, that it was his fault she had gotten sick and was dying.
She wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but everything she said still haunted Stiles to this day.