Chapter Text
I walked through the halls, tapping my hand rhythmically to my music as people commuted to their next classes. I stopped by my locker, leaning against the metal cubicles, waiting for my bandmates. I pulled out my iPod, shuffling through the songs til only a second or two would play at a time. It’s about time I put new songs into this thing.
“Yana,” I felt hands pull my headphones back, leaking my music to the sea of students walking by. I paused my music, hooking my headphones around my neck with Pieck’s annoyed sigh filling my ears. “You’re going to go deaf if you keep playing your music so loud,” she scolded me as she sat back against the locker with me. She was in a cute outfit as always; her long black skirt topped with an XXL band shirt of our own merch, accenting her white sleeves, was a familiar outfit I’ve seen her wear, though colors may vary. She kicked her matching tennis shoes against the tile floor, sighing. “Where’s Annie?”
“Beats me,” I shrugged. “Maybe she’s staying after for tutoring again. I mean, technically, we should be going, too.” I mentioned, nudging her lightly. She pushed me back, a bit harder. I bent my knee, preparing to slam my shoulder right back into her, when I heard a girl screaming.
“It’s the football team!!!” A crowd of girls rushed past us, knocking me down to the ground. My headphones toppled off my neck from her assault. “Oh, oops,” she blurted, having no compassion to stop and help me up. Pieck picked my iPod off the ground, scooping my headphones out of the way before anyone could step on them.
“You okay?” She asked, helping me up. I glared out at the squealing crowd of girls. I took my iPod from Pieck’s hand, seeing that the screen was scratched from the girl’s haphazardness.
“Piece of shit…” I rubbed the screen, praying the scuff would magically erase, but the damage was already done. My brother gave me his old iPod before he moved away for college. This is all I had of him left at home. I looked up, searching the crowd for the girl who did this.
“Yana, wait,” Pieck tried to pull me back, but my temper took hold of me.
“You fucking bitch,” I called into the crowd. The girls fell quiet, muttering and whispering to each other at my cry. “Don’t you know how to apologize?” I stormed over, standing neck to neck with the preppy teen in front of me. She crossed her arms, trying to put distance between us.
“What’s your problem?” She asked, her pink button-up, purposefully unbuttoned at the breasts to show some cleavage, had a logo that was way too expensive for me to recognize. “I said sorry,” she scoffed.
“No, the fuck you didn’t. You scratched my iPod, fucker.” I raised the device to her face, shoving the stripes on the screen as if she gave a shit. She grinned, then bursted out laughing.
“No way,” she cackled, covering her mouth as she pointed at me. “People seriously still use these?” She cocked a snarky brow at me. I gritted my teeth, trying my hardest to keep my cool. “What are you, fucking 40?” A few girls around her laughed along with her, pointing and ridiculing me. I didn’t even realize what I did until it had already happened. With the iPod still in hand, I wrapped my hands around the mp3 player and shot my fist right into her nose. The cheerful screams turned to screams of horror. The girl stumbled back, holding her nose that spurted blood onto her precious pink shirt. “You… you…” Her eyes zeroed in on me, pure malice lacing her expression.
“And I’ll do it again, bitch,” I took a step forward, but arms pulled me back. I looked over. Seeing Pieck shaking her head as I tried to fight her off. “Let me go!”
“Yana, we’re fucked, bro,” she gasped, yanking me back. The girl stood her ground, grabbing me by the hair. I dug my nails into her hand, trying to claw her hand off of me.
“You ruined my shirt, you cunt,” she spat at me, both metaphorically and physically. She raised her glammed up nails pressing to a flat fist, swinging me right at— I peeked at her, feeling nothing even after I stiffened my muscles, expecting some sort of impact. A hand held hers, holding her back. Annie pushed the girl back, but I fell with her as she still had a fistful of my hair. I pushed my nail against her wrist, feeling her swiftly let go from pain. I scrambled away, watching Annie stand between us.
“Ann—”
“Let’s go,” Pieck rushed me to my feet, pulling me away. Before we turned the corner, I saw Annie raise her foot to kick the girl back down.
─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─
The assistant principal, Mr. Ackerman, was horrifying, throwing every known punishment onto me before even letting me speak. Maybe it’s true what they say about short people: they were full of fury and anger. Fortunately, the principal came in to set the record straight.
“So, you started the fight?” Our principal spoke to Annie and I, tapping his irritated finger on the desk. I read the name plate on top of his desk, the plaque reading in gold font “Dr. Erwin Smith”. I spun my fingers around, too scared to face the man in the eyes.
“No…” I lied. “She shoved me first,” I bit my lip, trying not to crack under the pressure of his interrogation. I glanced at Annie sitting beside me. She looked on blankly at our principal.
“And you broke up the fight?” He asked her. She didn’t say anything, just nodding. “Mhm…” he sat back in his chair, the office chair giving out a loud creak the further back he leaned. “Okay,” he started. “Annie, I’ll let you go without any punishment, alright?” He pulled on his desk’s drawer, folding out a paper and pen. “But Iliyana, I’m going to have to give you detention. And you’re very lucky I’m not suspending you or expelling you.” He wrote some things on the document, then turned it around for me to sign. I sighed, picking up the pen and scribbling a shitty signature onto the line to solidify my punishment for tomorrow. “Make sure to get your parents to sign this and bring it back to me before you head to ISS.” That last abbreviated word sliced like a dagger. ISS… In School Suspension… I shivered. I hated that classroom, and I hated all the usuals who were there.
I closed the door behind me, staring at my feet. Annie put her hand on my shoulder, patting me twice.
“At least he didn’t let Mr. Ackerman kill you as a punishment,” she joked, but her voice fell flat, making me think that maybe that was a better punishment than three consecutive days in that class. The bell rang, signaling the shift to our final class of the day. “Let’s take the long way, you know Dr. Zoë doesn’t really care about attendance.” She walked off toward the science hallway. I followed close behind, staring at the signed document with Principal Smith’s jotted notes of the situation written on paper. “Student retaliated to being pushed, causing an altercation during class transition period.” Yeah, whatever.
Pieck stood outside the class, talking to someone from the soccer team who seemed very familiar. I’ve seen the two talk all the time, but I haven’t spoken to him since elementary school.
“Oh, I gotta go, Pock,” Pieck waved at him, stepping aside. He brushed his hand through his highlighted slickback, seeing Annie and I approaching our band’s dumber.
“See you at prom,” Porco waved at her, stepping off to wherever class it was he was skipping.
“No way,” an acute frown formed on my lips. “I thought we were doing girls’ night for prom…” My heart shattered. Pieck gave me a pitiful smile, taking the paper from my hand.
“Well, I thought you’d be grounded because of this, so I made a plan B just in case.” She flapped the paper straight, reading the punishment. “Only 4 hours detention?” She was as surprised as I was when I read the sentence. “Lucky bastard,” she threw her arm over me, shaking me lightly.
“Lucky my ass, you traitor.” I ducked, watching Pieck stumble forward.
─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─
The next morning, I walked into Principal Smith’s office and handed him my signed paper, and Mr. Ackerman glared at me as he walked me down to detention. He opened the door, and a cold, chilled draft blew past me as the dimly lit study room was presented in front of me.
“Iliyana Petit?” Coach Zeke Yeager asked. He was our baseball coach, who also taught basic algebra for some reason, was our substitute detention teacher while Mr. Shadis took his vacation a week before Spring Break.
“Thank fucking god,” I muttered a relieved hum at Shadis’s absence. He ran a tight ship around here, meaning there was no music, no talking, not slouching, no resting your head, no sleeping, no passing notes, no tapping your feet, no sneezing, no coughing, etc, while under Shadis’s watchful eyes.
“She’s here til the end of the day,” Mr. Ackerman ordered, watching me walk into the classroom.
“Okie-dokie,” Coach Yeager picked up the clipboard while slouching in the office chair with his feet kicked up on Shadis’s clean desk. “You can sit wherever, Iliyana, or do you go by Yana? Or Ilie?” He asked, peaking past the clipboard.
“Just Iliyana,” I corrected him. The only seats open were one beside Eren, Coach Yeager’s evil younger brother, or beside Reiner, the school’s golden boy. Eren’s long hair shielded his eyes, hiding the headphones that he kept despite the rule of no phones in class. Next to Reiner was Bertholdt, whose face was unusually pale and sweaty. Seeing my options were emo kid Eren who I didn’t have a good history with, or the Jock and Nerd combo near the windows, I chose the ladder. Maybe if Eren hadn’t broken my guitar last year, we’d still be friends, but he just gave me a blank face as he handed me the 500 bucks to cover the cost and dropped out of our band out of nowhere.
I sat beside Reiner, mainly interested in Bertholdt. Reiner looked up from his Physics exam, sweating balls. He counted on his fingers, then scribbled whatever he thought was the right answer. There was no way he was going to pass. Bertholdt stared on into the air, his mouth hung ajar as he took occasional glances at Reiner. His eyes finally caught mine, making me raise my brows with curiosity.
“What happened?” I whispered. Bertholdt gulped, closing his eyes to gather himself.
“We… got caught cheating…” he explained. “I gave Reiner my test, and this ass-hat copied me word-for-word.” He gritted his teeth, shaking his head. I see, his nervousness made sense now. I’ve never seen Bertholdt in detention, and now I learned it was over something that could actually affect his academic record.
“Shhh!” Reiner waved his hand around his head, trying to finish his test in peace. I glanced down; he was on question 4, out of 25. How long have they been in here? It would be embarrassing if they got here earlier than lunch and he still didn’t make it halfway through the exam.
“For god’s sake,” I sighed, snatching his test off his desk. I ripped the pencil out of his hand, examining the question he was on. “What is the speed of acceleration— are you serious?” I lowered the paper, snorting before I laughed at him. Reiner furrowed his brows, grabbing the paper back.
“It’s infinite,” he blurted, circling the incorrect answer again. “You know, because gravity is everywhere…?” He asked Bertholdt, watching his tablemate shake his head with horrified eyes.
“Dude, we literally learned this at the beginning of the year…” Bertholdt planted his palm to his face, groaning with defeat. “You must be tired, there’s no other explanation.” I turned back to my desk, looking forward to Coach Yeager tossing a baseball in his hand over and over as he clicked through the school computer. I thought he was doing work, but the chatter of an action movie echoed from the PC. “Just give it to me, I’ll get you an 85.” Bertholdt took Reiner’s paper from him, being so irritated from second-hand embarrassment that he would rather risk his record again than let Reiner continue to ruin his own life.
Reiner turned to me, and I swiftly ignored him. He was by far the most annoying person in this whole school. He was friends with everyone, even people I hated, and all the girls flocked to him like seagulls to an Everything bagel. We weren’t meant to interact outside of a few group work assignments, and I made sure of that. I was just a quiet kid who kept to herself, and he was the star of this show. I bet all he does is work out or play sports. His physique visually told everyone he’d rather pound back protein shakes than worry about whatever the hell Bromine or Barium was.
“Yana,” he called my name. I looked at him without turning my head, digging my eyes to the side to glare at him.
“Mhm?” I crossed my arms over my desk, waiting for him to continue. He hesitated a while, confusing me. He itched his head, nervously grinning as he looked on at me. What a creep…
“Are you going to prom?” He asked. Taken aback, I answered truthfully, forgetting I hated him.
“Yes,” I covered my mouth. Fuck… “No,” I corrected myself. “I-I don’t know,” I shrugged. My ears felt hot, my embarrassment rising.
“If you’re going, I wanted to ask if you’d like to go with me…” he muttered. My eyes widened. Never in a million years would I go with Reiner Braun to prom. I’d be ripped apart by all of his fan girls just for speaking to him… But Pieck had a date, and Annie said she wasn’t going. I already bought the tickets early because I thought Pieck and I were having girls’ night. Plus, it would be funny if I showed up with Reiner in front of that motherfucking useless piece of shit that was that party pink button-up bitch that pushed me. Reiner’s smile faded, being replaced with a regretful frown. “I mean, I get it if you’ve already got a date, I know Marco was talking about you yesterday.” I sat up higher, shocked to hear Marco was talking about me relating to prom. I liked him, but not really as anything more than classroom acquaintances.
“I’ll go with you,” I said, making both Reiner and Bertholdt look over with surprised open eyes.
“Really!?” Reiner asked, brushing back his thick blond hair to ground himself.
“Yeah,” I grinned, a hidden lick of malice puppeteering behind it. I’d make that bitch pay for scratching my iPod.
“Let me go, asshole.” The door swung open. Ymir was thrown into detention by Mr. Ackerman, as usual. How was someone so short so powerful? Beats me.
“Let me add another 2 days to your record for swearing at an administrator,” he eyed Coach Yeager sitting with his feet up on the table, eating a sandwich. “I’ll report you too, Zeke,” he laced his name with malice. Coach rolled his eyes, removing his feet off the desk to sit upright. Mr. Ackerman stared at us all as he closed the door. Ymir threw her bag at Eren, sitting in the seat beside him with a loud grunt.