Foster kid Emilia Pérez is placed in a shiny new family and will be starting at a new school, but always finds her way back to her only home after the tragic passing of her parents years ago - the wrestling ring.
Until a stranger falls through the c...
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A hand was presented to her early that morning as Emilia reeled from what she'd go on to call the taco incident. Midtown Science High School was one of the nicer schools she could remember, not that she remembered a whole lot about physicals going to school. The last public high school she attended was in Brooklyn and she only attended for three weeks, but first days were always the same.
She would go to the office, get her somehow always confusing schedule, and —if the school's middle class enough— she got a tour.
"My what?"
"First day buddy." The blue-eyed blonde in front of Emilia smiled, freckled nose scrunching, and it was offensively perfect. "You know, I show you around, present the school like it's not boring, we both pretend to be interested, etcetera."
Emilia grinned, and immediately tried at her best stoic expression. "Sounds awful. I'm in."
Which encompassed the first half of the day. Her name was Gwen and she was every bit the perfect student. She greeted every teacher in the hall like that was a totally normal thing to do, and even went over a question on the previous night's assignment with a random kid outside one classroom.
She even looked the part, like everything about her was an intentional step towards something.
Everything was intentional about Emilia too, for the record. Her consignment shop clothes, which she managed to fashion into something halfway trendy most days, and too many rings on her fingers and in her ears. Denim and hyper-saturated color, winged liner, and her hair regrettably bigger than she intended. Her new foster parents didn't know to buy anything but cheapo shampoo and conditioner, so she made do with the last remnants of her leave in products and oils — which she somehow made last until today.
Hopefully, Yza could help her with her hair tonight. Maybe they'd braid in some highlights. Maybe she'd feel the slightest bit normal by the end of the day.
Midtown Science was just was ordinary as the last five schools Em attended — sans the Long Island house, in which she was hulled away in a room with uber religious text as she attempted to complete online worksheets from a computer that could've been from 1995.
By the name, she made a lot of assumptions, the first being an under-appreciation for the arts. Her assumption became concrete fact when she came across the sign up sheet for Death of a Salesman outside the auditorium, accompanied by about five scribbled on names. In another life, her mother would guilt her into signing up and her father would pretend to be involved in the conversation. She stared hard, and kept moving.
On her way to lunch, she separated from her new buddy and sat at a crowded table of strangers like this was something she'd always done and she wasn't the dreaded new kid. She laughed at the right times and no one knew the wiser, but no one said anything directly to her, which was it's own problem. She thought to announce that she was leaving and realized just how weird that would be, and she couldn't count on them to play along to save face.
