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lexiewrites2008-02-26 08:54 pm
lexie-b.livejournal.com) wrote in lexiewrites2008-02-26 08:54 pm
Sailor Moon: Elephant (1/6) (Haruka, Michiru)
Title: Elephant (Part 1/6)
Author: Lexie
Feedback: If you feel so moved.
Characters: Haruka, Michiru
Theme: AU – Elephant
Word Count: 1,457
Rating: PG
Genre: Young Adult, Drama
Summary: Anyway, this isn’t about me and what I had or didn’t have, or even about my hair - it was about the elephant in the room.
Notes: I like to think of this Juno meets Sarah Dessen's Just Listen. I figured it was about time I combined the two things I love the most - fan fiction and the YA genre. I've got approximately six parts of this outlined, so this isn't the end :)
Disclaimer: Naoko Takeuchi owns the characters and scenarios of Sailor Moon. I am a humble fan and thus make no profit from this venture.
In a school in the middle of suburbia, we all blended together. With our brightly-coloured sneakers and our headphones hanging around our necks, the cell phones that trilled along to the radio, the carefully uneven hair cuts, we were a veritable sea of conforming unconformity. Some people were labeled, others skating the edge, but when it all came together, we were teenagers. A swirling sea of interchangeable faces.
I never flattered myself thinking I was different – I wore the sneakers, I knew the lines. Maybe there was a part of me that really believed because I could see that we were all the same, I was different; I was special.
I really wasn’t. Because when you are just another face in the crowd, every little thing that is different, unusual, becomes more noticeable. When a girl streaks her hair pink, or the computer geek comes back from summer holiday looking like he belongs on a Calvin Klein billboard, it’s more obvious – almost jarring - than anything else.
When I cut my hair off at the end of the summer, it was me that created that vortex, slouching into my sweatshirt, my bag over my shoulder. People stared, commented, whispered, pointed. I wasn’t Haruka or That Blonde Girl anymore, hiding behind a curtain of hair; I was Haruka Tenoh, Tenth Grader. The one in the blue sweatshirt and jeans, yeah, with the short hair.
Eventually, I once again assimilated into the sea. Everyone does.
Tenth grade was already proving to be interesting. A semester in, and maybe I was beginning to feel the camaraderie the Seniors always seemed to share by the time they graduated. Maybe I would have known had I had any real friends. I had people I could talk to, or discuss class work with, but no one to eat with, to copy homework off, to have laugh with. But it had been that way since Seventh Grade, and it was unlikely to change now. I didn’t actively want it to change.
Anyway, this isn’t about me and what I had or didn’t have, or what I think about the whole high school experience. Or even about my hair, which still proved a popular topic when classmates struggling for something to say to me.
It was about the elephant in the room, that wasn’t new hair or a better nose, or even the shiny new BMW in the car park. It was bigger than that. Almost ironic, considering what it was.
There are several things you need to know about our school. First, its claim to fame was that it was ‘proudly international’. I’m not sure how something can be proudly international when they only exist in one location, but since I always claimed to proudly never give a fuck, I can’t really comment. It was a mix of kids – all of us from well-to-do families, all of us with accents. It wasn’t offered in class, but by Eighth Grade, we were all pretty good mime artists. The school offered more language classes and interpreters than the average peace summit, and took its promise of making its students a community to the extremes.
How I ended up there - both my parents were half American, half Japanese, and hurled us between both countries as often as they could justify. My father was launching his media company’s second office, and my siblings and I got dumped in the middle of the Racial Love School to ‘broaden our horizons’. To date, I was the only one of the family who hadn’t fully embraced the ‘love and be loved’ creed of the school.
Point two: the school was an ‘arts’ school. Music, fine art, acting, dancing – we were encouraged, coddled and praised for our creativity. Don’t ask me whose idea it was to through a bunch of temperamental artist-types who don’t speak the same language in a school together and expect them to come out all smiles, because it clearly wasn’t their brightest moment. For a school built on understanding, there were more fist fights and slag fests there than at any other run of the mill school I had attended.
And the final point – despite the lovey-dovey acceptance crap about all beliefs, races and goals, that creativity needs freedom to prosper, this was a conservative school. The jeans might have been ripped, but it was sixty dollars a rip. The hair cut might look like they did it over the kitchen sink, but it was worth a few hundred. Kids got BMWs and nose jobs for sixteenth birthdays. In some ways, it was just like being back in Los Angeles. In other ways, it was worse.
So, there were things that just didn’t happen. Until they did. And then no one wanted to talk about them, but everyone had something to say.
I didn’t know her until day nine of semester two of tenth grade. We ran with different crowds. She was the daughter of a French diplomat, with a chauffeur; my mother picked all of us up in her old Jeep. She boasted a scholarship and the art studio bore her family’s surname; I had been hurled in on six separate academic incidents and two accounts of bad behavior – mostly teaching younger students how to cuss in various languages, but that was neither here nor there. We just weren’t the sort of people that were seen together.
I admit, I heard the whispers, the giggles, the damn jokes. I saw her sitting outside the headmaster’s office, with a book open, and tears running down her cheeks, but didn’t really pay attention. Even in the most protected of school environments, you learn to keep your head down and keep walking.
Then she came back to school after the break. And I found her sitting alone, listening to music, her hands resting on her protruding stomach.
Michiru Kaioh had been knocked up.
That was pretty much my thought as I caught sight of her. Nothing but the facts. I stopped outside the building, on my way to my usual lunch spot, underneath a tree, my legs hanging into the old drain ways, considering doing my homework, but mostly working out how many hours I’d have to put in at my uncle’s garage to afford a vehicle that went fast – motorcycle, car, truck, I didn’t care.
But I digress.
I remember I was holding my soda in one hand, my ice cream bar in the other, my crumpled money half hanging out of my jeans pocket, and I stopped short, just staring at Michiru Kaioh.
She was sitting on the low brick fence, her eyes closed. A pair of pink and blue flowered headphones sat on either side of her head, holding her long aqua hair off of her face, her lips moving along with the music.
If someone had mentioned her name to me, I had always conjured up the image of a girl in a pressed skirt, a feminine blouse, tights and sensible shoes, her school books in hand - the good student, the pretty girl, the accomplished daughter.
This was not that girl. A t shirt with a piece of French art work printed on the front, a white and blue hoodie bunched at the elbows. The t shirt stretched over her protruding abdomen, her skirt short and black, finishing in two long legs clad in black tights and bright green sneakers.
I stopped in front of her, for no particular reason. Her eyes opened.
“What are you listening to?” I asked, flicking my hair from my eyes.
She slid the headphones down, around her neck. “Prayers in St Petersburg.” Her voice was husky, low, not the high and feminine voice I had expected.
“Any good?” The heat was beating down upon us, and I wished I had forgone the jeans; wondered how she could sit there in a hoodie and tights.
“What sort of music do you like?” she asked, her hands still on her stomach.
I paused for a second. “Loud. I like loud music.”
“Loud isn’t a genre. Anything can be loud.” She looked at me, almost disapproving. Why had I approached her? The elephant in the room, to be skirted around, never directly looked at. My lunch was melting in my hand.
“Something, you know, that numbs you, hypnotizes you,” I said.
She nods, the disapproving expression disappearing at my explanation. She looked at me, and motioned beside her. “You look hot. Sit down.”
“Oh, uh, I…” I motioned to my spot underneath the tree, barely able to stand in the heat beside her a moment longer.
“Oh.” And her face closed up; it had been the wrong thing to say. She pulled her headphones back on, pressed play on the unseen music players, her hands protectively circling her stomach.
I had been dismissed, ice cream dripping down my hand.
Chapter Two
Author: Lexie
Feedback: If you feel so moved.
Characters: Haruka, Michiru
Theme: AU – Elephant
Word Count: 1,457
Rating: PG
Genre: Young Adult, Drama
Summary: Anyway, this isn’t about me and what I had or didn’t have, or even about my hair - it was about the elephant in the room.
Notes: I like to think of this Juno meets Sarah Dessen's Just Listen. I figured it was about time I combined the two things I love the most - fan fiction and the YA genre. I've got approximately six parts of this outlined, so this isn't the end :)
Disclaimer: Naoko Takeuchi owns the characters and scenarios of Sailor Moon. I am a humble fan and thus make no profit from this venture.
In a school in the middle of suburbia, we all blended together. With our brightly-coloured sneakers and our headphones hanging around our necks, the cell phones that trilled along to the radio, the carefully uneven hair cuts, we were a veritable sea of conforming unconformity. Some people were labeled, others skating the edge, but when it all came together, we were teenagers. A swirling sea of interchangeable faces.
I never flattered myself thinking I was different – I wore the sneakers, I knew the lines. Maybe there was a part of me that really believed because I could see that we were all the same, I was different; I was special.
I really wasn’t. Because when you are just another face in the crowd, every little thing that is different, unusual, becomes more noticeable. When a girl streaks her hair pink, or the computer geek comes back from summer holiday looking like he belongs on a Calvin Klein billboard, it’s more obvious – almost jarring - than anything else.
When I cut my hair off at the end of the summer, it was me that created that vortex, slouching into my sweatshirt, my bag over my shoulder. People stared, commented, whispered, pointed. I wasn’t Haruka or That Blonde Girl anymore, hiding behind a curtain of hair; I was Haruka Tenoh, Tenth Grader. The one in the blue sweatshirt and jeans, yeah, with the short hair.
Eventually, I once again assimilated into the sea. Everyone does.
Tenth grade was already proving to be interesting. A semester in, and maybe I was beginning to feel the camaraderie the Seniors always seemed to share by the time they graduated. Maybe I would have known had I had any real friends. I had people I could talk to, or discuss class work with, but no one to eat with, to copy homework off, to have laugh with. But it had been that way since Seventh Grade, and it was unlikely to change now. I didn’t actively want it to change.
Anyway, this isn’t about me and what I had or didn’t have, or what I think about the whole high school experience. Or even about my hair, which still proved a popular topic when classmates struggling for something to say to me.
It was about the elephant in the room, that wasn’t new hair or a better nose, or even the shiny new BMW in the car park. It was bigger than that. Almost ironic, considering what it was.
There are several things you need to know about our school. First, its claim to fame was that it was ‘proudly international’. I’m not sure how something can be proudly international when they only exist in one location, but since I always claimed to proudly never give a fuck, I can’t really comment. It was a mix of kids – all of us from well-to-do families, all of us with accents. It wasn’t offered in class, but by Eighth Grade, we were all pretty good mime artists. The school offered more language classes and interpreters than the average peace summit, and took its promise of making its students a community to the extremes.
How I ended up there - both my parents were half American, half Japanese, and hurled us between both countries as often as they could justify. My father was launching his media company’s second office, and my siblings and I got dumped in the middle of the Racial Love School to ‘broaden our horizons’. To date, I was the only one of the family who hadn’t fully embraced the ‘love and be loved’ creed of the school.
Point two: the school was an ‘arts’ school. Music, fine art, acting, dancing – we were encouraged, coddled and praised for our creativity. Don’t ask me whose idea it was to through a bunch of temperamental artist-types who don’t speak the same language in a school together and expect them to come out all smiles, because it clearly wasn’t their brightest moment. For a school built on understanding, there were more fist fights and slag fests there than at any other run of the mill school I had attended.
And the final point – despite the lovey-dovey acceptance crap about all beliefs, races and goals, that creativity needs freedom to prosper, this was a conservative school. The jeans might have been ripped, but it was sixty dollars a rip. The hair cut might look like they did it over the kitchen sink, but it was worth a few hundred. Kids got BMWs and nose jobs for sixteenth birthdays. In some ways, it was just like being back in Los Angeles. In other ways, it was worse.
So, there were things that just didn’t happen. Until they did. And then no one wanted to talk about them, but everyone had something to say.
I didn’t know her until day nine of semester two of tenth grade. We ran with different crowds. She was the daughter of a French diplomat, with a chauffeur; my mother picked all of us up in her old Jeep. She boasted a scholarship and the art studio bore her family’s surname; I had been hurled in on six separate academic incidents and two accounts of bad behavior – mostly teaching younger students how to cuss in various languages, but that was neither here nor there. We just weren’t the sort of people that were seen together.
I admit, I heard the whispers, the giggles, the damn jokes. I saw her sitting outside the headmaster’s office, with a book open, and tears running down her cheeks, but didn’t really pay attention. Even in the most protected of school environments, you learn to keep your head down and keep walking.
Then she came back to school after the break. And I found her sitting alone, listening to music, her hands resting on her protruding stomach.
Michiru Kaioh had been knocked up.
That was pretty much my thought as I caught sight of her. Nothing but the facts. I stopped outside the building, on my way to my usual lunch spot, underneath a tree, my legs hanging into the old drain ways, considering doing my homework, but mostly working out how many hours I’d have to put in at my uncle’s garage to afford a vehicle that went fast – motorcycle, car, truck, I didn’t care.
But I digress.
I remember I was holding my soda in one hand, my ice cream bar in the other, my crumpled money half hanging out of my jeans pocket, and I stopped short, just staring at Michiru Kaioh.
She was sitting on the low brick fence, her eyes closed. A pair of pink and blue flowered headphones sat on either side of her head, holding her long aqua hair off of her face, her lips moving along with the music.
If someone had mentioned her name to me, I had always conjured up the image of a girl in a pressed skirt, a feminine blouse, tights and sensible shoes, her school books in hand - the good student, the pretty girl, the accomplished daughter.
This was not that girl. A t shirt with a piece of French art work printed on the front, a white and blue hoodie bunched at the elbows. The t shirt stretched over her protruding abdomen, her skirt short and black, finishing in two long legs clad in black tights and bright green sneakers.
I stopped in front of her, for no particular reason. Her eyes opened.
“What are you listening to?” I asked, flicking my hair from my eyes.
She slid the headphones down, around her neck. “Prayers in St Petersburg.” Her voice was husky, low, not the high and feminine voice I had expected.
“Any good?” The heat was beating down upon us, and I wished I had forgone the jeans; wondered how she could sit there in a hoodie and tights.
“What sort of music do you like?” she asked, her hands still on her stomach.
I paused for a second. “Loud. I like loud music.”
“Loud isn’t a genre. Anything can be loud.” She looked at me, almost disapproving. Why had I approached her? The elephant in the room, to be skirted around, never directly looked at. My lunch was melting in my hand.
“Something, you know, that numbs you, hypnotizes you,” I said.
She nods, the disapproving expression disappearing at my explanation. She looked at me, and motioned beside her. “You look hot. Sit down.”
“Oh, uh, I…” I motioned to my spot underneath the tree, barely able to stand in the heat beside her a moment longer.
“Oh.” And her face closed up; it had been the wrong thing to say. She pulled her headphones back on, pressed play on the unseen music players, her hands protectively circling her stomach.
I had been dismissed, ice cream dripping down my hand.
Chapter Two
no subject
“Loud isn’t a genre. Anything can be loud.”
That line was pretty much perfect. Just saying. I can totally see Michiru saying that. Anyway, I love it so far and I'm looking forward to the coming chapters. <3
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