"Oh no, god no." A half asleep voice murmured, a hand reaching out from the soft sea of duvet in search of an alarm on the side table next to the bed.
"I crashed my car into a bridge and watched it, let it burn. I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs-"
"Please, please, plea-"
A thump sounded throughout the room, and a sound that almost replicated that of a remote control car sounded throughout the room. Piper shot up, her hair falling messily around her pale face and her eyes widened impossibly.
"I crashed my car into the bridge. I DON'T CARE!"
"No-o!" Piper wailed, her hands rushing to her ears as she forced herself to stand up regardless of the fact that she was beginning to feel slightly dizzy from sitting up too quickly in her bed at the horror of hearing the little robotic alarm clock on wheels that would torture her relentlessly into getting out of bed.
Quickly, her dark brown eyes scanned the span of the floor, and to her dismay, there was no teasing expression in sight. The stupid little alarm clock, that Piper had thought was a fantastic idea at the time, had an increasingly annoying habit of hiding in dark spaces so that you absolutely had to get up to look for it. If she hadn't been so incredibly annoyed at the fact that she actually now had to look for it, Piper probably would have been far more impressed by the technology hidden behind the cheeky face of her moving clock.
Two minutes later, ears almost bleeding from the infuriating sound that was Icona Pop, Piper was on her hands and knees, arm reaching desperately under her bed for the little blue clock that was hiding in the far corner of the room. Being only five feet and two inches tall had it's disadvantages, sure, but Piper had never expected the retrieval of her alarm clock to fall into that category.
"Is this a bad time, or...?"
Piper raised her head in surprise and cursed as it came into contact with the underside of her bed before shuffling out and turning to face her younger brother, who was looking at her with an expression that told her that he was trying not to laugh.
Unfortunately, he wasn't succeeding.
"No." She scowled, huffing impatiently. "My cheeky little shit of an alarm clock decided to dive bomb under the bed."
"You what!?" Her brother seemingly couldn't hold back lung busting laughter any longer, and Piper's scowl widened with embarrassment.
"Connor, do me a favour? Shut up, yeah?"
Connor shook his head, surfer-long dirty blonde hair falling into his face as he continued to soundlessly laugh. After a few minutes, his shoulders stopped shaking quite so much, and he let out a cheerful sigh of relief.
"Oh man, that's great, really." He paused for a moment, wiping a fake tear away from his eye, "But seriously, go get changed in the bathroom - I'll dig out your stupidly loud clock. Why do you even like this song?"
"I don't!" Said Piper defensively, being thankful to her past-self for deciding what she was going to wear the night before, "It's a nostalgia thing- you wouldn't understand!"
"You wouldn't understand." Connor mimicked and Piper rolled her eyes, walking out of the room with her middle finger stuck up in his general direction.
Locking herself in the bathroom, Piper changed into a pair of dark jeans and a 'zombie killing tank top' before grabbing her black doc martens and slipping them on over a pair of socks. Her socks, of course, were the novelty kind - her best friend back in England had taught her that if you were going for a smart, or edgy ensemble, you should always have a contradicting piece of clothing- albeit an invisible one. Piper held that rule quite closely- her pink and white rabbit socks attested to that.
She peered into the mirror and looked at her hair forlornly. Clean? Yes. Messy? Oh yes, so very messy. She sighed heavily, looking at the mess that was beyond a hairbrush's repair and reached for the hairspray with resignation. The grunge, high volume hairstyle that she'd relied on all the way through High School back home was apparently going to keep it's reign. So much for the 'reinvention' she'd planned.
Hair as done as it was going to be, Piper moved onto the make-up she wore everyday; powder to make her translucently pale skin look as flawless as she could make it, warm gold eye-shadow and a heavy line of winged liner across the top of her eyelid, giving her eyes an almost cat-like shape.
Piper stepped away from the mirror, and instead of being irritated with the familiarity (as she had been with her hair), she felt surprisingly reassured by the fact that she looked the same as ever. Everything seemed like it had been changing around her, without her having a choice in the matter, and it was surprisingly reassuring that she, at least, could remain a constant.
"Piper!" Her brother bashed helpfully against the bathroom door with his fist. "We gotta go! It's half seven!"
Ripping the door open, Piper grinned when her brother almost fell through the doorway with the amount of weight that he'd been placing it.
"Oh yay!" She said mock-cheerfully, stepping past Connor and beginning her inevitable trip to hell. "An extra year of High School!"
The road to school was a surprisingly long one - about a half an hour journey, but Piper guessed that living in Florida must have it's disadvantages. With Ray-ban sunglasses resting on the bridge of her nose and the air conditioning turned up to full blast in her black vintage Mustang, she began to regret her decision to wear jeans. It was November - the weather wasn't supposed to be warm, and yet the temperature probably rivalled with the max temperature in July for England. She turned the volume of the music in her car to full volume, opening the windows in order to compete with the idiots that were blasting the 'Ting Tings' out of their disgustingly pink car and grinned.
Her car was her pride and joy, and had come with her all the way from England. Her window being rolled down allowed her to surprise the drivers in other cars, her steering wheel obviously on the other side to that which was expected.
As one of her louder rock songs faded off, Piper heard jeering coming from the pink-mobile sat next to her at a set of particularly annoying set of lights. Turning her head to the side a little, Piper saw a
Piper raised her hands in mock surrender, turning back to her phone - the source of the music - with a small smile.
"You're not seriously going to listen to that bitch, are you?" Connor asked, looking particularly disappointed with the silence that had befallen their car.
"Of course not!" Piper's grin widened, "If I did that, my name wouldn't be 'Piper Adams' would it?"
"Fuck yeah!" Connor raised his fist in victory, eyes widening as he recognised the song that Piper hovered over.
"Too hardcore?" She asked, looking at Connor with a spark in her almost-black eyes. He simply chuckled in reply.
"Nope."
With that, Piper pressed the name of the song nonchalantly with a finger and swivelled her attentions back to the irate looking girl - and her suddenly present friends - in the barbie-buggy.
"Don't wanna be an American Idiot."
Piper's finger tapped against the steering wheel, lips forming the words in a nonchalant manner while her brother thrashed his head around to the beat of the music, restraining himself from sticking his head out of the window and shouting the words at oncoming traffic.
Lights turning green, Piper's mustang lurched forwards onto the wonderfully empty and large roads that screamed 'AMERICA', a healthy portion of self-satisfaction in tow.
---
"Oh shit."
Piper's teeth caught her lip in a hold as she saw the pink-beast of a car in the car-park as she reached the new school that would be the bane of her life for the inevitable future. The driver must have been in Year 12, if not in Year 13, which meant that she'd already made an enemy.
"It's 'ight." Said Connor, and Piper turned to face him disbelievingly. He simply shrugged. "It's not like you would have wanted to be friends with people like that anyway."
Pipers lips stretched into a smile and she lifted a delicate hand to mess up the birds nest of hair that sat on top of her brother's head.
"True."
She turned to leave, but stopped as her brother spoke again.
"Thanks Piper."
Piper blinked in surprise at her brother's surprisingly serious tone as she turned back around, eyebrow raised in surprise.
"For being here, y'know? I mean, you didn't have to drop out of university for me, but you did, and now you have to go back to school for a year and... Yeah. Just... Thanks."
Smiling at her brother's blurted confession, Piper's heart clenched. It was a difficult decision, dropping out of university after only two weeks of being there in favour of coming back to High School in America to learn for and pass the SATs. At the end of the day, though, Connor was the most important thing in Piper's life, and she'd do exactly the same thing again if she had to. If it meant that she'd be a little older than most of the students in this stupid school, then so be it - pride was not more important than family; even though her parents were barely ever around, they'd managed to enforce that philosophy into both of the Adams children.
"Any-time buddy." She said, punching his shoulder lightly, "Now, let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
---
There was a general flaw in novels and movies, Piper thought, that whenever a new student arrives at a new school, everyone stops to stare.
Of course, that never happened at the school Piper had attended previously. In fact, one of the people in her group of friends - his name was Peter, to be precise - had blended in so very smoothly that no-one had noticed that he had existed. If the head of year hadn't directed him towards her group of friends, it was very likely that Peter could have made it all the way through school as a wall-flower.
Unfortunately, with the supposed gossip queens of the pink-palace, (Piper couldn't yet decide what her favourite term for the monstrosity of a car was), along with her stunning model of a motor vehicle with a British number plate, it seemed that Piper had been able to attract quite a bit of curious attention without even stepping out of the car.
So when she and her brother eventually managed to step foot outside of the cool haven that was her Mustang, the whispers began.
Although her brother was quite a lot taller than her - being sixteen and quite close to sixteen, Piper felt an insane urge to protect him. She managed to restrain himself, knowing full well that her brother was a good lad, albeit a little eccentric, and would find it very easy to make friends. After all, the gossip group hadn't necessarily associated him with the attack against their heritage.
Throwing her backpack over her shoulder and locking her car, Piper shot an 'are-you-good-from-here' look at her brother. He smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up in response, so Piper simply nodded, thrusting her hands into her jeans pockets and began a swift exit from the car-park inquisition.
Almost home and away, Piper's path was blocked by someone obviously taller than her - a shadow falling onto her face told her that much. Raising her head from the ground, Piper's solemn expression converted itself into a grin - black hair and an angry expression told her that this was the operator of the fushia fuck-mobile.
"Are you like, stupid or something?"
The nasal high pitched american drawl that befell Piper's ears almost made her keel over in laughter from the outset. With a bite to the lip, Piper was somehow able to restrain herself from becoming even more of a target and to her somewhat relief, the
"What nothing to say? Are you like, foreign? Why would you put on a shit song bashing Americans if you're like, American?"
Piper noted that she may be hearing quite a lot of the word 'like' over the next few months, although she hoped to high heaven that she was wrong.
"Yes." Piper replied, coolly. "I am foreign. But I think you'll find that the really 'shit' music is the rubbish that you were blasting out your disgusting car in the middle of the highway. I like to think that my Greenday influence saved a few ear-drums."
Lie. Piper grinned internally. She knew that all she'd probably done was irritate a few Americans.
"Oh my god, you're like, hilarious." The girl said, in a horrific attempt of a sarcastic tone. "Putting on a posh accent to sound better than the populars, like, O.M.G what a retard!"
"I think you'll find that I'm not trying to impress anyone." Said Piper, amazed that someone could be both so foul and vain as the girl before her. "This, shockingly enough, is how actual English people speak."
"You're, like, British?"
Piper sighed, resisting the urge to massage her temple with her fingers.
"Yeah. Well done, Captain Obvious."
Sidestepping out of the way of the obviously incredibly stupid girl standing in front of her, Piper finally managed to find her way into school. Piper couldn't help but wonder if they were all that stupid; too dumb to even know when they'd been burned, or when someone was clearly from another country other than America.
"Talk about close minded." Piper muttered as she opened the door to the office.
---
About half an hour later, Piper had received one of the most boring introductions from reception that she'd ever had, been giving a whole truck-full of confusing documents and had been sent on her merry way to her inevitable doom. Piper had, of course, played into that doom wholeheartedly, finding herself hopelessly lost in the now empty corridors of the school. The bell had gone ten minutes earlier, and Piper, not having had a bell in school ever, had thought it was a fire alarm and was surprised when the receptionist lady had just kept talking - as though Piper were listening to every word she was saying. Yeah, right.
Finally finding the room 'J1', whatever that was supposed to mean, Piper knocked lightly before swinging the door open to find a lab.
'Wait,' Piper though, practically jumping for joy, 'not just any lab- a Chemistry lab!'
"Ah, a latecomer." A slightly older than middle-aged man approached her, large hooked nose instantly reminding her of Professor Snape from the Harry Potter series. Oh how much Piper wished she could have been in a fantasy novel instead. "Miss Adams, I presume?"
"Yes, sir." Said Piper, relieved that she'd remembered to take off her sunglasses before sitting down to talk to the receptionist lady. After all, this man looked like he was going to take no prisoners.
"Your record is... A particularly interesting one." He continued and Piper's eyes widened in surprise.
Uh oh.
"Says here you've already graduated High School, is that right?"
"Yes Sir," Piper repeated, feeling incredibly awkward, and more and more aware of the stares of her fellow classmates, although she refused to look at them. "In July this year."
"Registered here for regular classes... SAT prep, correct?"
"Yes, Sir."
"So tell me, then, Miss Adams." The teacher, Piper remembered that she'd seen him written down on her paper as 'Mr. Roberts', said, "Why didn't you pass the SATs the first time? Enlighten your fellows."
Piper quickly realised that Mr. Roberts was not a nice man. Whether trying to show her up for being late, or just because he was bored, she wasn't entirely sure, but Mr. Roberts was definitely nothing of what her favourite Chemistry professor of all time (Mr. Smith) had been.
"I didn't take the SATs before." Said Piper, cutting off Mr. Roberts before he could lead the rest of her classmates to believe any other foul lies about her. "I'm from England- just moved, in fact. I took A-Levels, passed them, and was in my first year of university when my parents decided to abandon ship and move here. They wouldn't let my brother stay with me, so I moved with him because I'm an amazing older sister. Is that enough information for you?"
Mr. Roberts looked uncomfortable, face red with the lack of ability to find any holes or discrepancies in her truthful story. Piper smirked, pleased that she'd been able to throw off the first two people to sink their teeth into her, and realised, in the same moment- with a rather sinking feeling - that the irritating receptionist lady was the only one out of the three people she'd met who had been kind to her.
God damn it.
"What, may I ask, were you studying?" Said Mr. Roberts, and as Piper raised her head to face him again, she realised that he had grit his teeth, clearly hoping that she was going to say something like 'Drama' or 'Art'.
"Chemistry." She smirked, watching as the man practically had steam coming out of his ears at the realisation that Piper might, in fact, know some things better than he did.
"Take a seat, Miss Adams." Mr. Roberts spat out, shortly, "Before I change my mind."
"Yes, sir." Said Piper, smirk still on her face as she found an empty seat and dumped herself into it.
Maybe this will be more fun than I thought.
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