the orange tree grows in seattle

01

     fridays are the worst.
now, i understand that with many of you that won't go over well. i mean, cmon, friday's the best day of the week, right ?
      yeah, that's all wrong.

by the end of week, im so tired that i just want to sleep all of friday. it's kind of depressing.

      however, marian high school is not empathetic towards the needs of its over-worked, sleepy painter girl students who spent all of last night and much of the early morning painting one patch of flowers.

      though this is a great injustice, there's nothing i can do about it. shuffling my way out of my bed, i almost fall over from touching my metal closet hanger. why the fuck is it so cold?!

      i slip on a a pale, rose pink tank top and some baggy ripped jeans. i slip on my high-top black converse, which i call my miracle shoes (i know that sounds dumb, but they really are miracles; i've had the same pair since middle school, and i'm a sophmore now). i half-heartedly grab my binders and laptop and slide them into my backpack, which is also super old. its started off as plain canvas white, but since its been scuffed and thrown around and painted on. my mom begs me everyday to get a new one, but i kinda like it.

        realizing i wont be in a hibernative state all day, i grab some paints and brushes and a tiny canvas and put those in my bag, too. maybe i can finally convince oliver to start painting with me in the park.

                             ~~~~~~~~~~~

     up until last year, i rode the bus (on a side note, fuck the public transport system. that shit is a zoo), but once i started getting closer with my friends we decided to all carpool. sierra, our quietest friend, has a HUGE van. and she's willing to drive. sure, the entire thing is dark and painted with pentagrams, and she insists on blasting loud emo music everyday, but we make it work.

       so, like every other day, i stand on my street with the wind whipping violently through my long blonde hair, waiting patiently. well, okay, kind of patiently. and, like every other day, i hear loud screamo music coming from down the street and see a maybe-a-little-too-fast black van streaking down the road. like every other day, sierra comes to a halt right in front of me, barely stopping. yeah, shes not the best driver.

      still better than the bus.

in the car, elliot is telling us excitedly about his new rescue. elliot is our designated lady-killer. he's tall, has curly brown hair, bright blue eyes, and cares alot about animals. his mom even runs a rescue service. the girls are all over him.

      i probably would be too, if i wasn't, yknow... a raging lesbian.

      okay,  not a raging lesbian. i'm not like one of those girls who treats it like a personality trait and never shuts up about it. i'm not even out to most people, besides my 5 closest friends. not that i'm scared to come out... but it's not like i talk to a ton of people anyways. why bother going through a public ordeal ?

      anyways, the car. luna, being the absolute sweetheart and amazing baker she is, had made us all chocolate muffins for breakfast. she doles them out with a smile. i'll never understand how she's always happy.

      without me even noticing, the conversation has switched to oliver. being gay and black, he's a double minority. he has every right to complain about his life. however, somehow it still manages to get annoying. like when he whines every day about not being able to find a boyfriend. which is an issue he could easily solve. i mean, its not like seattle is low on gays. lgbtq+ people are abundant here, and those who aren't are generally pretty accepting. lucky us.

      i gnaw on my chocolate muffin as karien rattles off a list of all the gay guys at our school. i get that she's trying to show him he has options, but the point is lost on him. he has impossibly high standards.

     i interrupt karien, maybe a little more rudely than i intended, and point out she hasn't touched her muffin. she looks at my for a minute, her freckled face all scrunched up studying what i want, and then rolls her eyes and tosses me her uneaten muffin. i grin at her a devour it.

     for her first words of the day, sierra tells us to "fucking unbuckle, cocksuckers". i grin at her, look at her short black hair and pale skin through the front mirror. she's very pretty, really. at one point, i even had a teeny crush on her. but she's straight, i think. and a little too quiet for me anyways.

                               ~~~~~~~~

      advisory. unfortunately, the shitty algorithm of MHS did NOT grant me the ability to have advisory with all 5 of my friends. however, i have karien with me.

     of course, karien is the only popular one of our group. she prefers me and our core six, of course, but it can be kind of annoying when im trying to talk to her and five different football boys are trying to get her to suck their dicks.
     karien doesn't really date, anyways. we're all 100% sure she has a huge thing for elliot. all of us in the group know it, except for elliot and karien themselves.

     needless to say, advisory is pretty boring.

     that is, until the girl shows up that, little do i know, will change my entire fucking life.

     word count: 950

a/n: hi! if you're reading this, i love you. this is going to be a wlw story , if you haven't figured out, so if that's not something you wanna read i understand its okay <3 please vote for this maybe
- soph 👉🏻👈🏻