Right people, wrong time. Right people, right time.

First day of school

Ocean was FINALLY out of High school. Thank god. She had spent the last two years at a shitty public high school. For parents that said they "wanted her to get a better education and more opportunitys in a bigger city", that really wasn't the school you would expect. Dont get her wrong, Ocean didnt miss Uranium at all, no. Not at all. She missed Constance. Her best friend since the very first day of school.

Ocean was sitting alone on the playground. Two other kids had made fun of her and called her nerdy, and her motivation to try and make friends went as quick as it came. She started walking towards the swings. There were two swings next to eachother. One was empty, the other one had a little boy with a plastic magic wand in his left hand swinging on it. as soon as Ocean had made her way over to the swings and sat down on the empty swing next to him, he jumped off and walked away. Ocean just sat there alone for a couple of minutes, when all of a sudden, she saw someone coming up to her. A little girl with braids. There were little pink beads in them, Ocean thought it was very pretty. The girl sat down on the swing next to her. That's when Ocean noticed she had a lunchbox in her hand. It was light yellow and had a little drawing of a bumblebee on it. She watched her open it, and take a peanutbutter jelly sandwich out. She split it in two with her hands. Then Ocean suddenly snapped back to reality, because the girl had reached out her hand, holding the biggest part of the sandwich in it. "Hi, do you want this?" Ocean looked up at her, then down at her hand again, then back up at her. "Why?". The girl looked at her with a confused look on her face. "Because i wanna be your friend" she followed the sentence up with an even wider smile than she had before. after the girl said this, she leaned even more towards Ocean, so her hand, grabbing the sandwich a little too hard, was even closer to her. Ocean smiled in return, and took the sandwich out of the girls hand. She took a bite, and when she was done chewing, she said: "my name is Ocean O'connell Rosenberg, whats yours?" The girl looked at her in a way Ocean couldn't quite understand; she had no idea what she was thinking. "Im Constance, no problem!!" She was smiling so much, Ocean thought. It didn't even come off in a weird way, it seemed like she was made to smile all the time. They sat there for the rest of the lunch break, talking and eating Constance's entire lunchbox, which consisted of:

10 grapes
2 peanutbutter jelly sandwiches without the crusts
6 Apple slices
1 tiny piece of chocolate cake

They were together for rest of the day, and after school, Constance invited her to her house, and they were best friends from that day on.

This time it was first day of school again. Except this time, there was no Constance to come and give her a peanutbutter jelly sandwich from her lunchbox.

her parents didn't even care to drive her to the college, and she knew why. Ocean was the smartest kid in her class, she always had been. Until they moved. Her grades went down, nothing extreme, she just went from a straight A student, to more of a straight B student. that was enough for her to have an existential crisis, because if she wasn't the smartest most talented girl in town, what was she? It was also enough for her parents to completely neglegt her. Ocean was pretty sure they almost only talked at dinner, and even then the conversations were awkward, and more something to get through than something to enjoy. They didn't talk much before, but at least it felt like they kind of cared. Due to the drop in her grades, she couldn't get into one of the "Good colleges" that her parents wanted her to go to, like harvard or yale or god knows what. Oh well, she was happy with the college she was going to. They had a really good art program. Ocean had always loved drawing and making art, and people always said she was pretty good at it. After her grades dropped and she was dealing with an identity crisis, she found comfort in her art, and started putting alot more of her time and energy into it, and she really enjoyed it. of course, her parents tried to stop it the second they realized it wasn't just a hobby, but she just continued her projects at school. After she was done lifting all the boxes of her stuff from her car, up all the stairs and into the dorm room, she finally took her time to look a bit around. Her side of the room was empty, obviously. The other side of the room was much more interesting. Her new roommate had already moved in, and you could see that clearly. There were loads of posters from action and horror movies. some Ocean knew, some she didn't. The one she recognised first was a big poster of "back to the future". She remembered watching those movies with her dad when she was little. She looked at her new roomate's bed. There was a blanket spread over the bed, it had loads of stars and planets on it. She was so focused on her new roommates side of the room, that she didn't even notice them coming into the room.

"Hello?". Ocean turned around quickly, very surprised by her roomates sudden arrival. They were wearing a dark grey sweatshirt with some band on it Ocean didn't know, light blue baggy jeans and they had crutches with stickers all over them. They sat down on the chair next to their desk and asked: "Whats your name, new roommate?" Thats when Ocean noticed that he wasnt speaking, but his phone was. He was using one of those computer voices "Yes, hello!! Im Ocean O'connell Rosenberg" she tried to smile, but judging by the way he...wait, what was this new roommate? She couldnt quite tell if they were a boy or girl.
She saw them type on their phone for a quick second "My name's ricky", the voice read out. "Why aren't you talking?" As soon as she said it, Ocean felt it might have sounded a bit rude, but that was honestly a problem with alot of the things she said. They started typing, and after a couple of seconds the phone said: "Im mute, so i use this with people that dont know sign language" unlike a lot of other times in her life, Ocean knew exactly what she wanted to say without planning it. Well, not exactly say. She put her phone, that she had been holding tightly in her hand the entire time, In her pocket, and started signing: "Well, luckily for you, i do know sign language. I took a class on it when i was 15 for extra stuff to put on my College resume" Ocean looked at Ricky to see his reaction, and luckily they smiled, they seemed very happy that their new roommate knew sign language, but before they had a chance to sign back, Ocean asked: "not to be rude, but are you a boy or a girl? I cant really tell" Ocean looked at him or her or them or whatever, they looked a bit scared, but that might just have been her imagination. "Im non-binary, so neither" they signed and smiled, but you could tell they were just doing it to be polite. "Oh, okay, cool!! Is that why you're sharing a room with me?" She asked, trying to sound as sweet as possible without it being weird, she didn't wanna come off as rude or even transphobic. "Yeah, they didn't know if they should put me in a room with a boy or a girl, so they just asked what gender i was into. When i Said i was pansexual, i could literally see the panic in their eyes" they smiled in a joking way. Ocean laughed a bit, she was glad that this roommate seemed to be very nice, and not that messy, judging from their side of the room, which was very important to Ocean, as she can't stand messy people. "Yeah, they didn't ask me what gender i was into, so i guess they just assume with everyone except people that aren't a boy or a girl"
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Whoever read this, thank you so much :) english isnt my first language, and this is the first story im writing ever, so i hope Its okay, i at least did my best. if you have any critiques, feel free to comment them <3