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Lenora wasn’t a particularly small town–like, nobody would ever try to call it a village. And it had a good amount of kids, enough that it had both a Catholic school and a public one.
Still, though, everybody knew--or at least knew of– everybody else.
That’s why the Maldonado twins (and their brother. Their mom too, if you were being honest) were so quickly recognised to be, well… strange.
— — —
Stacy blew a bubble with her gum, keeping it shielded from Mr. Hayes’ eagle eyes behind her textbook. God, the day hadn’t even started and she was bored already. She propped her chin up in one hand, watching students file into class. All of them looked just as miserable as she was to be there. (With a few exceptions–the nerds and teachers' pets and such.)
And… There was Mr. Hayes.
“Sorry, folks,” and literally, who said folks? “Just had to sort something out with the office.” He grinned and looked around the class, clearly waiting for somebody to ask what it was. Nobody did, though, and after a frankly embarrassing pause, he cleared his throat.
“Right! So, today, we have two new students!” Okay, nothing too unusual. They’d already had a few this year, and it was mid-October—the prime time for new kids. Stacy sat up a little more, subtly trying to crane her neck and peer out the door. She caught a glimpse of plaid, but it slipped out of view as Mr Hayes stepped out of the door.
The room started to buzz with muffled chatter, people talking about the new kids, or the fact that Matt G had a cheat sheet for the math quiz. Stacy had to get her hands on that—she could probably just say how their moms were friends and the implied threat would be enough.
Mr Hayes stepped back in, sending a smile to the class before beckoning the new students in.
The class was a lot more interested now–everybody liked it when there were new kids, especially if they were cute. It broke up the monotony. Stacy watched the door as the new students stepped in.
Her first impression was just ‘ hm.’
It was a boy and a girl–they looked similar, maybe twins? White with brown hair. The boy had an unfortunate bowl cut–he wasn’t so bad apart from that, though he was inexplicably wearing two plaid shirts, one over the other. It may be October, but it wasn’t that cold. It was California.
The girl was also wearing an oversized flannel, medium-length hair loose around her shoulders. Their moods were quite dissimilar, though–New Boy seemed to be trying to seem as small as he could without curling up in a ball, and New Girl was smiling. The smile was overwhelmingly big and bright.
“Want to tell us something about yourself?” Mr Hayes said, and after a beat where neither of them said anything, “Introduce yourselves!”
“My name is Jane!” Said New Girl, loudly, beaming out at the class. Awkward. Stacy laughed quietly, sharing a look with Jack. Yeah, she definitely didn’t have potential. New Boy hunched his shoulders lower where he stood, staring fixedly at the ground. “This is Will.” She paused again after she said it, smile falling slightly. “Um. We came from Ind-i-ana.” Oh, so they were hicks. Made sense why both of them were wearing flannel, then. Ugly, but understandable.
“Why did you move?” Mr Hayes asked, which was kind of a strange question, but it seemed he was doing anything to break the awkward bubble that had taken over the class.
Strangely enough, both Will and Jane’s faces dropped, and they exchanged a series of silent microexpressions before Will cleared his throat.
“It was, uh, for my– our mom’s job.” Then he went back to staring miserably. Stacy cocked her head. Huh. She liked to think she was good at reading people—and if she was correct, New Boy Will was lying. Which, weird thing to lie about? Maybe someone died, or something.
“Well! Welcome to Lenora. If you’ll look right over there, behind Michelle–Michelle, give us a wave–there’s where you two will be sitting!”
Silently, the twins went to sit down, chairs screeching against the floor when they were pulled out. Stacy watched–their seats were right in front of hers.
As Mr Hayes began to speak again, Will leaned forwards on his desk, hunching in on himself, and Jane sat up straight, seeming to pay rapt attention to the teachers every word. Great. Another nerd. Will was too timid to be anything important–Stacy guessed that they would both quickly blend into the background as soon as the ‘new student’ hype died down. Still, Angela would want to hear about them, so Stacy busied herself with creating a mental list about them both.
— — —
David would like to sit in any other seat. Literally any. He would even sit next to Angela, with her incessant gum-popping and gossipping, or Stanley, even though he smelled terrible. Anything would be better than being sandwiched between the Maldonado twins.
Right now, for example.
David stared straight ahead and tried to focus on whatever Mrs Mitchell was saying. Focusing was proving itself to be incredibly difficult when there were two twins who seemed to be staring directly through his head to make eye contact with each other and communicate with freaky twin ESP.
He could feel their hard stares boring into the side of his head. Maybe he should just…
Slowly, he leaned forwards, so that he wasn't in the way. Then that proved to be incredibly uncomfortable, so he leaned backwards instead. God, he hated this seating plan.
He sent a desperate look to Ben, who just sent a helpless shrug back. David missed the times when he’d sat with Ben, but apparently Will and Jane were just ‘too distracting for each other’ and ‘needed to be separated.’
He leaned back so far in his chair that his head was nearly on Emily’s desk. Maybe she would pet his hair– no. Bad David. That was a weird thought.
Instead of listening to Mrs Mitchell’s boring lecture on trigonometry, he let his eyes bounce between Will and Jane. They were staring at each other with an intensity that made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It almost looked like they were arguing, but without any words or gestures or anything involved.
Jane stared a little harder, flicking her eyes towards the teacher. Will glared slightly, and Jane rolled her eyes. Then–oh wow, they were pulling out the hand gestures now. Will hunched his shoulders slightly, spreading his fingers on the table. Jane made several pointed gestures.
David felt like he was getting strangely invested in this, it was like when his mom watched soap operas with the volume down really low. Except with more prolonged eye contact.
Finally, Jane stuck her hand straight up in the air. Will made a grab for her arm, almost smacking David in the face in the process, but Jane just leaned even farther away.
Mrs Mitchell sighed, turning around. David could feel the irritation emanating from every single person in the class, including himself. Why were they so weird?
“Yes, Jane?”
Will blushed bright red, sinking down into his seat until he was barely visible.
“Will needs to leave class,” she said loudly. That was another thing about Jane–she was always either too loud or strangely silent. She would go through long periods of time sitting completely still and staring blankly forwards, and then switch to chattering loudly and excitedly to anyone in her vicinity.
“Will? Is this true?” Mrs Mitchell raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t really a big fan of Will, probably because he was always talking to Jane during class. David had eavesdropped on their conversations a few times–usually they were just talking about their friends back home or saying the most insane shit he’d ever heard.
“Uh, yes,” he said quietly. “I have an appointment, um…” He awkwardly dug through his backpack, before producing a slip of paper and shuffling slowly to the front of the classroom. David felt bad for the kid, even though he was weird. That walk to the front of the class was causing him major secondhand embarrassment with just how awkward it looked.
Mrs Mitchell raised the slip to her face, so close it was touching her nose. she held it up to the light, squinting. Finally, she gave Will a single nod.
He slumped out of the classroom.
“Bye Will! Have fun at the psychiatrist’s!” Jane chirped.
Will went bright red, hunching his shoulders and quickly leaving with a half-hearted wave.
A round of titters went around the classroom. Huh. Maldonado was even weirder than he thought, if he was going to see a shrink.
— — —
Kimberly looked at herself in the mirror of her locker, reapplying her lip gloss one last time before smacking her lips together with a pop. Today was the day.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder, practically skipping off to art class. When she got in she slid into her seat and started fussing with her hair.
There was no way this could go wrong, right? Will was so nice, and they’d been sitting at the same table and talking during art for nearly two weeks. And he’d laughed at all her jokes, and smiled, and been so nice and cute.
No, he’d returned all her signals. Kim rehearsed what she was going to say in her head. ‘ Hey Will, I know it’s kind of forward, but would you like to go get ice cream with me sometime?’ Her sister had said it was good when she’d run it past her, and so had her friends. Eying the door, she smoothed down her hair a bit more, freezing in place when Will entered the classroom.
“Morning, Will!” She chirped, bubbling with excitement.
“It’s one-thirty,” he replied, smiling slightly, and Kimberly burst into laughter. He was just so funny!
“Afternoon, Will!” She said, mimicking her earlier tone, and Will laughed. Well, as close to laughing as Will did, which was kind of a huff and a smile. This was going to be a cinch.
“How’s your sculpture going?” He asked–oh my God, he remembered her sculpture–and pulled out his sketchbook, flipping through it to find his page, and Kimberly watched his drawings flash by. A dog, a fort, an apple, some boy, his sister, a… spider made of meat? Several more drawings of that boy, and a few sketches of a dragon being attacked by a couple guys. Yeah, Will was a nerd, but he was a cute nerd.
“Oh, you know.” Kimberly twirled a piece of hair around her finger. “It’s going.”
Will didn’t reply, because he was kind of quiet, but he smiled, encouraging her to go on. “Yeah, the head kinda looks like an ice cream cone, but.” She shrugged.
“It can be abstract.” He nodded solemnly, and Kimberly burst into giggles again. He was so funny.
“Yeah!” She said, then took a deep breath. “Um, so. Speaking of ice cream!” Will raised an eyebrow.
“Hey, Will, I know it’s kind of forward, but would you like to go get ice cream with me some time?” She burst out practically in one breath, face flushing bright red. Kimberly took a breath, glanced around the room, and then looked back at Will, smiling sweetly.
And Will… hadn’t reacted. In fact, he seemed kinda frozen. She held her breath–this was it, this was it–
And then his face sort of–fell, and his shoulders hunched higher. Maybe he was just nervous?
He shut his eyes for a long moment, and her heart sank to her stomach.
“Look, Kimberly, you’re–you’re really nice, and all, it’s just–”
“You like someone else?” She mumbled. She could barely believe it. She’d thought it was a sure thing! All of her visions of her and Will going on fun, cute dates and hanging out with each other popped like a balloon.
“What?” His voice went high and anxious, which was a little weird–maybe he didn’t want everybody to know? “I don’t–I mean, uh–it’s…” Then Will took a deep breath. “Yeah. There’s–there’s somebody else.” His voice dipped low at the end of the sentence, she could hardly hear it. But she’d heard it well enough.
“Oh,” she mumbled quietly.
“We can still be friends, though?” Will said, a hopeful lilt to his voice. Kimberly just shrugged. She’d just been rejected for the first time in… well, ever.
“Okay,” Will said quietly to her non-response. Then he turned slightly away from her and started scribbling furiously in his sketchbook, as if he thought as soon as he stopped she’d try to ask him out again. Which she wouldn’t. She’d definitely learned her lesson there.
Kimberly put her head on her arms and tried not to cry.
— — —
“For this project, you’ll be working in groups of three.” Ben raised his eyebrows and glanced over to his friends, nodding subtly. Around them, the buzz of people whispering to their preferred groupmates picked up.
“And I will be making those groups!” Mr Hanson yelled over the chatter, prompting a litany of groans as he pulled out the jar of popsicle sticks and started calling names.
Ben listened carefully for his name, fingers crossed under the desk in hope that Adam or Jeremy would be in his group. Hell, he’d even settle for Brian (thought that guy kinda had rocks for brains).
“Adam, Amy, and…” Please please please… “Jason.” Ben pinched his lips together, sharing a glance with his friend, who winced.
He crossed his arms and listened as all of the rest of his friends were called, then all the cute girls, then all of the smart people…
“Alright, last group. Ben,” Who hadn’t been called yet? He scanned the classroom, trying to find anybody that was still waiting for their name. “And it looks like this last one is going to be a group of two, so Ben, you’re going to be working with Jane.”
Jane? Ben slumped back in his seat, almost groaning. Mr Hanson sent him a look– and of course. He was deemed a good enough student to be the one to work with the hopeless case. Annoyed, he glanced over to where Jane was whispering to her twin, who seemed to be encouraging her. Will Maldonado accidentally made eye contact with him, and Ben looked away awkwardly. Everybody was talking about how he was a queer, and Ben didn’t want to risk it.
“Go pick up a handout and then get with your group, everybody!”
Ben slumped lower in his seat, not moving.
He watched as Jane nervously walked to the teacher, hanging back at the edge of the group instead of pushing in to grab a worksheet like everybody else. Excuse me, she said, over and over again. Yikes.
Byers whispered something in her ear, and she glanced over at Ben before nodding. So the boy passed a sheet to Jane.
She slowly walked over, and placed one on Ben’s desk.
“I got the paper.” She said in that stilted way. Ben just nodded, starting to scan the outline. Nothing too bad, they just had to pick a battle and then fill in the blanks. He could do it easily–which was good, because from what he’d seen Jane wouldn’t be too much help.
He pulled out his textbook, flipping through it. “Wanna do the battle of Gettysburg?”
Jane just nodded, struggling to find the page. “It’s page 186.” He said after a second.
“Thank you,” she said, and flashed him a smile.
Ben straightened out the sheet in front of them, reading over it.
“The date is July,” Jane started, furrowing her eyebrows and staring at the page. Ben took a slow breath. “One to three. In… one-eight-six-three.”
See? She was just weird. Who said numbers like that? Ben scribbled down what she had said.
“Where did it happen?” He asked absentmindedly, before remembering who he was talking to and leaning in to read it himself.
“Gettysburg,” she said before he could read it, and he glanced up at her. Jane was smiling slightly, and–was that a joke? Ben huffed out a quiet laugh, and watched the expression on her face grow more pleased.
“Penn-syl-vania.” The word was said slowly, precisely.
“Thanks,” he muttered, jotting it down. They fell into a rhythm after that, Jane telling him the information and Ben copying it down. She wasn’t a particularly fast reader, and she tripped over her words often, but Ben was surprised to realize it was better than working with Brian would have been.
Jane didn’t seem as stupid as everyone acted like, mostly just… awkward. She didn’t seem to know how to talk to people well, a little but too loud and unsure of herself.
It actually kind of reminded him of his little brother, which was probably why he was being nice.
He wrote that last word on the page with a flourish, before leaning back in his chair.
“Good job, dude,” Ben said, raising his hand for a high-five.
After a second of Jane just staring, he started to lower his hand. But then her expression cleared, and she reached out and pressed her hand to his for a second. It was a very odd high five.
“Lucas taught me about high fives,” she started, checking his expression.
“Who’s Lucas?” Ben stared at the ceiling, leaning so far back he almost fell out of his chair. Luckily, Jane didn’t comment as he scrambled back into a normal seated position.
“My friend.” She said, blinking.
“Cool,” Ben said. He did not say what came to mind, which was does Lucas call you his friend or is it one sided? “From… uh…”
“Hawkins.” She said, and oh yeah, they were country kids. Small town America.
“What’s it like there?” Wow. This conversation was just… so awkward.
Jane froze, emotions flashing over her face quickly. Ben started to regret asking. She hunched her shoulders and glanced over to where her brother was sitting a few times. Will, the only one doing the worksheet in his group, immediately caught her eye and walked over.
Ben tried not to feel incredibly out of place as the twins whispered together, and then slipped out of the classroom.
Yeah, Jane was pretty weird.
— — —
Susan was absolutely done with hearing about Will Maldonado. That's right, she never again wanted to hear another word about his ‘dreamy hazel eyes’ or ‘adorable bowl cut’ or the fact that he was ‘such a good artist, really!’ In fact, she would be happy if none of her friends ever talked about him again.
Unfortunately for her, Jen, Alice and Andrea all had gigantic crushes on him. Gigantic, annoying crushes that they never stopped talking about. Susan remembered a time where they would talk about tv shows, or what they got on their latest science test, but now it was all day, every day Will Will Will.
And she was done with it!
Sure, Will and Jane seemed nice enough (if a little odd) but just the fact that all her friends had talked about him so much kind of soured them for her.
With that in mind, she pillowed her face on her arms as Will got up to give his presentation. Jane had already given hers–and it had been a disaster, sometimes Susan just wanted to punch Angela in her stupid shiny face–so there wasn’t really a way Will could go worse. Great. She was focusing on Will again. It wasn’t really her fault, she just heard about him so much that he had become a permanent fixture in the back of her brain.
“Um.” Will shuffled around as he placed his poster on the table at the front. “So, for my project I chose Alan Turing as my hero.” There was a second where he just stood there tensely, as if he was afraid someone was going to burst out of the shadows and start yelling at him or something. (Alan Turing… now where had Susan heard that name before?)
“So, he helped develop the first computers, and…” Susan zoned out as he spoke. She hated listening to presentations, it was always just so mind-numbingly boring she could hardly stand it. Alan Turing… She knew she’d heard of Alan Turing before. And not for computer stuff. She almost felt like he was connected to… you know. The stuff that she never talked to anyone about.
The class started clapping half-heartedly, and she startled, before starting to clap too. Accidentally, she made eye contact with Will as he made his way back to his seat. She wasn’t sure what she accidentally communicated to him using only her eyes, but she did know that it was enough to make his eyes widen and cheeks pink. It also made him trip over his shoe and sprawl to the ground, which… yikes. Just yikes.
After three more–incredibly boring–presentations, class was finally over. Susan slowly gathered up her stuff, sending glances over to Will the whole time. One of the times he was looking back at her, which was a little awkward, and they both stopped glancing at each other after that.
After the class was mostly empty, she slipped between the desks and over to Will. Then she paused. What exactly was she doing here?
“So.” She said, “Alan Turing.” God, her friends would be so jealous of this. They had all been pining from afar, but she didn’t even have a crush on Will and she was talking to him.
“Yes,” Will replied. they both stood, steeped in completely, horribly awkward silence.
“How did he die again?” If she was right…
“Uh, suicide.” Oh. Maybe she was wrong then. And if she was, that was humiliating. Had she really just walked up to Will Maldonado and annoyed him strangely?
“So, he didn’t get arrested and killed from being gay?” She said. Then she paused, because she had meant to whisper that to herself but had ended up saying it at a fairly normal volume.
“Um. Well, he was going to be…” Will looked pale and horrified, eyeing her like she was going to leap at him and murder him immediately.
Susan grinned, then realized that made her look creepy, so she stopped grinning. Will smiled back in a hesitant and also terrified way. There were a few seconds where they just stood there, Susan leaning against a desk, Will awkwardly holding his (impressively well drawn) poster.
“You’re good at drawing,” she smiled. He flushed slightly, fidgeting with the corner of his poster. Susan supposed he was cute enough, if you went for… Guys. Because she didn’t. Funny that some quiet kid’s presentation on a gay computer guy who killed himself in the 50’s was what was making her realize that.
Oh, fuck. Oh God. She was queer. she really, truly was.
Susan barely noticed as she slowly sank to the floor, pressing her face into her hands. Her breathing started to come faster and faster. What was she going to do, oh God, her mom–her parents would kick her out!! And her friends would never talk to her again, even Alice– fuck!
No, no no no. This was bad. This was awful. Susan shoved the heels of her palms so hard into her eyes she saw black and white triangles dancing along the insides of her eyelids.
“Susan?” Will sounded vaguely panicked now, his voice sounding from a lot closer. For a second, Susan pulled down her hands, and found that the boy was crouching in front of her, looking concerned. Then she promptly covered her eyes again.
“Are you okay?”
“No!” Susan slammed her hands into the ground beside her, staring up at him with a blotchy red face. ”No, I’m not okay!”
Will blinked, eyes big and wide and hazel. “Uh,” he said, and then he said nothing else.
Susan sniffled, and a hand suddenly rested on her shoulder. It didn’t really move, it just stayed there, and she could feel Will’s awkwardness radiating through it, but for some reason it was helping quite a lot.
She raised her head. “I’m queer,” she said. And then she burst into tears.
Will patted her shoulder a few more times, it took nearly five minutes before she had finally stopped gasping out ugly sobs. She pulled back, wiping her hands against her face, which was flushed red from a mixture of tears and embarrassment.
“Sorry,” she muttered, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“Oh, no problem,” Will said, although a random classmate crying all over him was definitely a problem, he was just lying to her.
There were a few seconds where Susan tried to catch her breath, and Will just tapped his fingers against the ground.
“I–” he said, before cutting himself off. He looked incredibly pale, worryingly so. Susan almost asked him if he was okay, but… he looked like he was trying to say something, and she didn’t want to interrupt him. “I’m. Me, too.”
Susan just blinked. Then– “Ohhhhhhh.” She said, nodding. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
Both of them burst into–kind of teary–giggles. Susan’s head knocked against the leg of a desk, which was painful but only served to make both of them laugh even more. Will reached a hand to the side, probably to prop himself up, but instead knocked over a chair. The clatter echoing through the classroom silenced them for a few seconds, before their laughter became even more uncontrollable.
“What are you two doing in here?” Mrs Laurier asked, and both of them jumped, spinning towards her. The teacher leaned forwards, squinting as she took in their hysterical expressions and tear-stained faces, before sighing. “Look, school’s over, go home.” She waved them off, pressing one of her hands to the bridge of her nose.
Quickly, Will and Susan gathered their stuff–Susan dropped her pen, but didn’t bother turning back for it–and scrambled out of the classroom.
In the hallway, Susan leaned against a wall, shoulders still shaking. Will grinned. “So, this was fun,” she said.
“Yeah, we should do it again sometime.” What exactly ‘it’ was referring to, Susan had no idea, but she still nodded. Suddenly, Will’s smile slipped off his face. “Oh, crap, I gotta go find El!” He started down the hall, before pausing mid-step. “I mean Jane!” He called, which–that was weird. “Bye, Susan!”
“Seeya Will!”
Susan hiked her backpack up on her shoulders. She couldn’t wait to talk to Will again. (And wasn’t that a big change from an hour ago.)
— — —
Everybody had known the Maldonados were weird. However, nobody had expected their house to literally get
shot up
by some suspicious guys in vans. Or for them to just–disappear after that. It was crazy. It was insane. And nobody ever found out what the hell had happened.