Chapter Text
"I'm going insane." Chel sits at her usual table in the library right by the foreign language books that offend her sensibilities by exotifying the Latinx experience ("Sandra Cisneros is gonna catch these hands one day"). "I'm going fucking insane."
"Ok yeah." Erin squints at her, "But what is it this time?"
"Jeanette fucking McCurdy's book!!" She shakes her shoulders "It's so fucked. It's so fucked up. I love it. She's just like me for real."
"You're both traumitized child actors severely abused by their dead mothers?" Sophomore (whose name was Ray, but everyone at the table called her Sophomore) questions in a manner that makes it hard to decide if they're serious or teasing.
"You don't know my life." Chel insists, "But no, like girl. "
"Girl." Erin nods, the boys coming to join them on the other side of the table.
"Girls? Where?" Matt makes a theatrical show of turning his head, "Where the hos at?"
"You scared them." Chel smacks his arm, "Stop scaring the hos!"
"It's really rude that you keep saying that like I'm not right here." Erin tuts.
"If you're a ho…And I'm a ho…" Jackson gestures loosely with his hand, limp at the wrist.
"Then who's flying the plane, ahhhh!" Chel smacks into the side of him, domino-ing the teens down in a fit of laughter.
"This is what awaits my future." Sophomore nods with acceptance. "Aight."
-
Salma likes to take walks around the campus during lunch sometimes because she secretly really misses recess and playing on swings, and this kind of exercise is the only enrichment she gets during school hours. She uses a big stick to drag and bang against the metal fence separating the high school from the neighborhood and waves hi to people out for a jog or walking their dogs.
The Cullen kids take turns walking with her because Edward mentions to them how ridiculously lonely the preteen feels, and Esme immediately jumped on the opportunity to push them to treat her like family.
. It's weird, at first, especially because Salma isn't used to having teenagers pay attention to her outside of class or her little comedy routine (all of her yearbooks are signed You are so weird and funny!! ).
She doesn't feel pressured to seem super smart and mature or really funny to the Cullens, and for that, she's appreciative. It's exhausting, trying to be interesting. Especially to older kids. After a while, they sorta get bored with her. Or so she suspects. It's weird trying to be friends with someone five years younger than you. She, herself, can't imagine trying to tolerate a six-year-old for very long.
She talks about her vampire OC (named Yuuki) to Emmett, who suggests increasingly edgy ways to make them more violent or cool. Salma takes his suggestions seriously but keeps to her Yuuki’s theme of being dark and moody with a love of Evanesence. Bella suggests Muse and Neutral Milk Hotel as additions to the Yuuki Spotify playlist. Edward sulks about the idea of someone so young and full of life being so misguidingly obsessed with dark creatures.
“She’s dark but not evil.” Salma shows her sketchbook, full of delightfully ill-proportioned anime characters with big heads and hands hiding behind their back. “She’s just lonely. Misunderstood. You know? Like Blade.”
She goes on to explain the story of the dampyhr and how his mother was bitten by a vampire in the middle of labor, cursing him to the life of a half-vampire. “He hunts down vampires as a job, all popular dampyhrs in media are pretty much vampire hunters. I blame daddy issues.”
-
If another kid asks her if she knows who Tyler the Creator is, she might just pop a blood vessel. She was listening to him before they even knew they were alive! You know, that moment in kindergarten when you suddenly become self-aware? Fucking kids.
Her new batch of students weren’t annoying like that. Strangely mature, in their own way: approaching topics like adults but with the emotional reactions of teenagers. Peculiar. Especially because they looked like motherfucking models–No kid should look like that outside of Photoshop and Hollywood bullshit. Every high schooler, no matter how conventionally attractive, is supposed to look awkward. Scruffy. Like a newborn kitten with its little triangle tail. It’s weird. It’s weird right? Its really mean and really weird that she’s focusing so much on this. She should just push it away, right? They’re just kids, they’re just kids.
…Their mom is really hot. Really really hot. Like, just looking at her makes her blush. Which shouldn’t be possible, right? She’s brown, that stuff just doesn’t happen. It’s like, weird to think that your students’ mom is hot, right? Her weird OCD guilt is totally justified, right? Right?
“Mx. Prieto, cute top.” Alice cups her cute little face with her hands, “Totally retro.”
“Huh? Oh, thanks.” Sometimes she gets paranoid that students are Regina George-ing her, but something about Alice’s compliments are so…eager. And it makes her feel nice having a fashion-conscious student tell her that she’s doing something right. Makes her feel less like a fat dork and more like a cool fat dork.
“Where’d you get it?”
“I made it, actually–Yeah, I got the fabric at Goodwill, I think it was a bedsheet before?”
Alice raves, talks about how important it is to be eco-conscious and to reduce, reuse, and recycle. It’s really weird. Not because kids can’t be environmentally friendly, but because Alice wears designer clothes. Everyday. If it’s not her shoes it’s her purse, if it’s not her purse, it’s her jewelry. Maybe it’s a recent development?
“I make my own clothes too.” Her expression reminds Mx. Prieto of the ‘:3’ smiley that Chel keeps sending in the family group chat. “I want to be a designer.”
“That’s a lot of hard work.” Mx. Prieto doesn’t like to shoot down kids’ dreams, but she does want them to know that it takes a real effort to break into an industry like that. Even with the copious amounts of money that Alice’s family seems to have.
“I’m a hard-working little miss.” Alice lifts her chin, confident in her ability to succeed. “I get what I want.”