Some weird snippets that I won't write a whole fic for because reasons:
It feels like they’ve been in this room for ages.
According to Ava’s phone, it’s only been a couple of hours since they’ve entered the room, but she swears time has slowed down and that her phone is lying. The sun is already set outside, night is starting to come and the daytime’s heat is slowly but surely starting to drop. She can’t wait to drive back home with the windows down, fresh air in her hair and radio blasting something like No Diggity or All Too Well (probably not this one, it’s starting to hurt too much now).
She might be biased too, but that’s not the problem here. The other parents haven’t been on school grounds since at least a good twenty years, so they had all the time in the world to forget what it felt like to be sitting on one of those narrow and straight chairs with loose bolts. Meanwhile Ava left it before it was even over a little over ten years ago, so it feels like coming back to her interrupted last years of high school and it sucks.
It feels fucking weird to be in this room with all the other parents who came as couples, smiling and listening to the teachers as they explain shit Ava has heard already ten years ago — school rules can’t possibly have changed that much in a decade, can they? A few are alone, like her, but they’re still much older than her, like Mrs. Salvius over there who used to tell them to be careful on the road as she passed them in her shiny pristine-clean car while they biked on the cracked asphalt — And now they’re both in the same room because their kids are in the same class, life is fucking weird.
Ava doesn’t look like any of them, in her funky patterned button-up and her worn-out Converse, her cap left on the table — she might be a deviant but she still has manners. She doesn’t look or act or think like any of them and they all know it, looking away from her when she turns around and avoiding her like she has the devil on her shoulder. Ava Silva was never known for being the best example for kids in town, especially after the whole thing with JC. It was stupid to even hope that they would have forgotten about it during the decade she spent away, leaving this town behind before coming back a few weeks ago. This town never forgets, neither do its residents.
All the other kids have left to hang out on the playground — can it be called a playground in middle school when playing is already an activity for babies? —, sneaking away from their parents even though they were probably all supposed to stay. Nova didn’t, staying sitting next to Ava, face turned towards the window in silence, lost in her daydreaming. Ava asked her a few fifteen minutes ago if she wanted to join them, but Nova had shaken her head, saying that she was here to support Ava through this whole excruciating evening and that leaving was defeating that purpose — a part of Ava wondered if the other kids weren’t picking on her like they were already back in the city, because quiet kids are always the best targets and Nova is a word for word definition of that.
She looks so much like her father right now, little Nova, with her dark tousled hair falling over her shoulder, but the way she makes herself small, forgotten and guarded, that is entirely a Nova-thing, Ava sometimes can’t help but understand a little the stupid and baseless rumors about whether or not the kid is JC’s.
Her phone buzzes just as the math teacher stops his long litany that neither Ava nor Nova listened to, a picture from Camila. In the photo, Nina and Neves are both sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over their drawings and the stickers Camila bought them, apparently unaware that Camila is taking a picture of them with how they seem entranced in their own conversation, little fingers pointing at the stickers — there is a sticker on Nina’s hand and another on Neves’ forehead, no doubt they probably fought for a while before Camila took the photo. Ava shows the picture to Nova, who smiles at her sisters and nods politely, before sending a text back to Camila.
Its almost over theyre about to explain the language options and all
Camila sends a thumbs up back.
Nova has her paper open in front of her, keeping track of the subjects that have been presented. On the language options panel are the ones Ava remembers: Spanish and German (it’s a small town with an even smaller school, so small that basically all the levels are in the same campus — it’s helpful for Ava, that way she’ll just have to drop Nova off at her middle school, watch Nina make her way into the primary school and take Neves to her kindergarten classroom, although Nova has made it very clear that she will go on foot every morning, as she likes the quiet and the cold air on her face before an exhausting day of social interactions). But there are also a few new languages: French, Italian, Arabic. Damn, this is better than when Ava was here — she took Spanish even though she was already fluent, both because that way she could get good grades without moving a finger and because twelve-year old Ava really wanted to get close to the cool guy: JC (stupid twelve-year-old Ava, stupid stupid).
Lilith Villaumbrosia enters the room in all her brooming glory, like they’ve disturbed her slumber by entering her school and that she’s about to make it their problem. She really grew into her role of the librarian, Ava can tell — she knows Lilith is the librarian after Nova came home on that first day telling her about ‘Miss Villaumbrosia who works at the school library and hates everyone’. Ava is really tempted to wave at her just to fuck with her, but she doesn’t want to draw more attention onto poor Nova, and so she just settles for a grin when Lilith’s gaze sweeps the room and inevitably lands on her. Her jaw clenches, she looks towards poor Nova who closes her eyes and blows through her nose, like she just knows that Ava’s stupidity is about to make her teenage years a living Hell — Ava really is genuinely sorry about that, but she’s not too worried, they’re going to realize that the kid is nothing like her parents in about a month anyway (and they’re probably going to feel really relieved about that until they meet little Nina who tells marijuana jokes at school and whose greatest achievement is saying the whole alphabet while burping).
Finally, after a few seconds of really intense staring that Ava is definitely set on winning, Villaumbrosia looks away (Score!).
“The French teacher was held back by another parent, she’ll be here in just a mom— She’s here.”
The door opens to another woman who enters the room in a bit of a hurry, cheeks slightly red from running and a few strands of hair escaping from her bun. Ava feels her heart stop in her chest and her brain melting inside her skull all the way out of her nose.
“I apologise for making you wait,” the teacher says in her full British accent that is definitely not doing things to Ava’s single brain cell, walking towards the board in front of the whole classroom. “I’m Miss Young, a few of you already know me from the primary school where I teach 3rd grade, it’s a pleasure to meet the others.”
Ava buries her burning face in her hands, Nova’s confusion coming in waves from her left — “Ma, are you okay? What’s going on?”.
What is going on is that Mrs Young isn’t just the most beautiful and intriguing woman Ava has ever seen, no, she also has to be Nova’s soon to be (because the kid speaks Spanish already and thinks German is from the basement of Hell with how hard it is to learn) French teacher. And she also has to be Nina’s Teacher Beatrice ‘who didn’t laugh at my marijuana joke, mama’.
And Ava’s hot neighbor who she’s been watching go on her morning run every day from her kitchen window with her coffee in hand.
Jesus Christ. Whoever is up there really loves to fuck with her.
