Work Text:
Stephanie Lauter is not going to have a panic attack in her third period Honors Calculus class. She’s not.
She’s fucking not because the last time she had a panic attack in a class she’d gotten so overwhelmed that she’d vomited all over her desk and lap and Vera Bradley backpack that had been very cool at the time and now, every couple of months, like clockwork, one of her friends will text their group chat ‘lmao remember when steph puked in the middle of class that one time??’ and everyone will make fun of her for it all over again like it’s the funniest thing in the whole entire world.
So, yeah. Yes. No. Steph is not going to have a panic attack. That is not what is happening here. It just… feels like it.
Because the numbers on the page don't make any goddamn sense.
This is why Steph hates pop quizzes. She hates them with a burning sort of passion that’s normally only reserved for cheerleading and getting drunk.
(Well, okay, Steph hates a lot of shit. But cheerleading, getting drunk, and pop quizzes tend to be things she has to do regularly. Which is, like, total bullshit.)
She’s got a very, very specific set of studying rules for classes like this. She plans her entire week around it, because unlike her AP Lang and Honors Lit classes she was able to fake her way through last year, math and science are stupid and incomprehensible and impossible to bullshit.
Steph is smart. She knows she is. She’s made very, very, very certain that she is. But she can’t be pop quiz smart.
She needs hours of studying, she needs flash cards and carefully highlighted note pages and reddit threads explaining derivatives for dummies, and she needs it all the night before because the second she stops thinking about it it’ll leave her brain permanently.
Which is exactly why pop quizzes are such horseshit.
She drums the eraser of her pencil carefully against her leg. Partial credit is better than no credit (is it, really, though?) she just has to get something on the page (partial credit might actually be more embarrassing, because it means you tried and failed). She just can’t even work out the formulas enough to get started.
She’s so fucked.
[Because, okay, here's the thing: Stephanie Lauter’s mother went missing when she was nine.
She sang ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac, and accompanied herself on her guitar, so beautifully that legend has it she made Roman Murray cry, won Honey Queen, and promptly disappeared.
And now Steph can’t listen to ‘Landslide’ without throwing up.
There were search teams out for a couple of weeks, trying to find her, but eventually, everyone gave up. People still talk about it, insist they should have dragged the lake, that she must be in the Witchwood, that Steph’s dad killed her, that her body is still out there somewhere.
Some people say she ran away, fucked off to Clivesdale, that the song choice was a secret message somehow.
‘This is Hatchetfield’, they’d said, ‘People go missing every day, but this is the Mayor’s wife and that makes it way more interesting, don’t you think?’
Steph, honestly, doesn’t care. Gossip doesn’t bring her mom back.
She learns very quickly that when the parent who cares about you goes missing, big houses get lonely. That her dad doesn’t start giving a shit just because he should.
So it becomes a challenge.
Steph is nothing if not spiteful and tenacious, and when she does well at things, when she’s impressive, her dad looks up. Her dad smiles at her, says good job.
And very soon after, doing well isn’t enough. Good grades are fine, great grades are better. Mayor Lauter is more likely to bring his daughter in six honors classes, student government, and junior cheer to campaign events than his daughter without those things, and if she learns the rules of how to smile and be sweet and clever and charming and make her dad look good sometimes, sometimes he’ll take her out for ice cream afterwards. Together!
It’s complicated, and it’s gotten even more so as she gets older, when social connections start to become just as important as educational ones, but she can handle it.
She’s brute forced her way into popularity with money and homework answers and the very nature of being a cheerleader, and it’s exhausting but it’s winning. She’s like a shark, basically. If she stops moving she’ll die. Student government meetings, to cheer practice, to football games, to tutoring sessions, to the back table at Beanie’s with noise canceling headphones on until they close because she can’t study or do homework at home because she always ends up half-asleep-scrolling-on-TikTok which is just a waste of time.
It’s what she’s supposed to do. It’s the rules of making her dad love her and she’s fine with it. She’s good at it.
Which is why she can’t fucking fail this quiz.]
…She’s going to fail this quiz.
She’s going to she’s going to she’s going to fail it and it’s going to be humiliating and awful and–
“You keep dropping limit notation.”
She blinks up from the floundering mess of a problem she’s manhandling her way through, and Peter is looking back at her, head tilted. She doesn’t know much about Peter, just that her friends think he’s a creep and he always smells like weed, which, if she’s being honest, doesn’t make her feel inclined to listen to his complex math advice.
“What?”
“It’s a super easy mistake, and I mean, I know what you mean, but Miss Mulberry's a total hardass about it,” He huffs a quiet little laugh. Steph does not laugh back. Not for this weirdo who probably shouldn’t even be in this class who's going to get her in trouble.
“... I don’t need your help.”
“Yeah, sure,” He shrugs, and something in her chest piques, both at the perceived slight, and then, because he hadn’t said it like a slight. He’d said it completely casually, like he couldn’t give less of a shit, like it was a completely no-strings-attached nice gesture, and it… pisses her off a little bit. She goes back to the first question, trying to squint limit symbols where they’re supposed to go.
It’s not working. They’re all just numbers and letters and they don’t making fucking sense.
Out of the corner of her eye (not when she was looking aimlessly around the room trying to avoid looking down at the paper, obviously) she sees Peter’s hand scribbling almost manic across his test.
Which is… confusing. Peter never tries. He naps during class and has never once turned in his homework and always gets told off for not showing his work.
But there he is. Rapidfire slamming through formulas like it’s nothing.
He catches her staring then, and before she can snap her head away, pretends she wasn’t looking, because she knows what she’s doing, of course, he grins at her and winks. Honest to god winks.
He leans awkwardly to the side of his desk, and it takes her a second too long (she’s still getting over that fucking wink) to realize what he’s doing. Tilted perfectly on his desktop, now directly in her line of sight, is his test paper. He’s… he’s giving her the answers. Christ, not just answers, he’s giving her the steps and formulas to show how she got those answers.
… They’re probably all wrong, right? They have to be. Peter is a slacker, he doesn’t even take notes. Steph knows for a fact she’s smarter than him. (Miss Tessburger had very-not-allowed access to student records and rankings, and the only student above Stephanie Lauter is PJ Charles. And that’s only by a little bit. She’s got the whole top five memorized as competition, and he’s nowhere to be seen. Not even close to her equal…. which she’s aware sounds pretentious and shitty, but, like, it’s just facts.)
If she gets all the answers wrong in the same way Peter does that would be suspicious, wouldn’t it?
But, well, partial credit is better than no credit. And he’d had a point about her limit notation. And pop quizzes are fucking ridiculous anyway, so basically Miss Mulberry was asking her to do it.
If Peter’s offering, it’d be rude not to take him up on it, right?
He smiles when he notices her start writing again (quick, but not too quick, god, she’s really not practiced in casual cheating, she hopes this isn’t too obvious), and it’s a nice smile. Quiet and small. He scrawls something into the top corner of the paper, where his name is supposed to go: ‘Nighthawks stick together, right? :p’
Despite herself, she grins. Mouths ‘thank you’ because it seems easier to lip read than ‘you just totally saved my whole entire ass and I owe you my life’.
“CHEATERS!”
No. No no no no no.
Grace Chastity, number four on the HFHS Student Ranking, is annoying. Painfully, crushingly annoying in a way Steph isn’t allowed to complain about because her dad (who, to be fair, also really hates her and her whole family) is convinced that openly disliking the Chastitys will make his campaign look like it supports religious oppression. Or something else stupid like that.
Peter slams his head back, groaning, “Oh shit.”
And now Grace Chastity, number four on the HFHS Student Ranking, is going to ruin her life.
“Grace, come on, please don’t–” She pleads, instead of punching her. Because that would definitely look like some form of religious oppression. She cannot get caught cheating. Her dad would kill her.
“Stephanie, I cannot believe you would do something like this,” Grace hisses, but she’s glaring at Peter, which a very, incredibly small, optimistic part of Steph is clinging onto like a lifeline.
Because, well, Grace thinks the two of them are friends. Or, at least, Steph thinks she does. She’s always hounding her with condescending worldly advice or trying to force her way into Steph’s group projects. And she’s just hoping, desperately, that maybe she can play those unwanted cards right, get Grace to do her a favor as a ‘friend’. She severely doubts it, but she’s at least going to try, “Grace, please–”
“I’m sorry, Steph. This is for your own good,” She crosses her arms, looking very, very proud of herself, and the optimistic part of Steph curls up right there and dies, “Miss Mulberry! They’re cheating!”
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
- - -
sluts (non-derogatory)
Thurs, Sep 23 - 11:19 AM
Brenda 💙🤍
breaking news:
Brenda 💙🤍
stephie got detentionnnnnn
Stace 💖
😱😱😱
Stace 💖
NO WAY!!!!
Kyle
No shot
Brenda 💙🤍
u calling me a liar kyle?
Kyle
I ain’t calling u a truther 😝
Brenda 💙🤍
wanna bet?
Kyle
maybe😏
Max
kyle im gona fkucking kill u
Jason
@Steph confirm????
You
Guys please dont make this a big deal
You
It’s fine
Jason
oh shiittt thats such a yes lmao
Brenda 💙🤍
TOLD u
Stace 💖
NO!!!!
Stace 💖
WAY!!!!!
- - -
Pete probably shouldn’t be high for this.
Well, he’s… not, really. He’s only like… sort-of-kind-of high, a hazy, maintenance high to help get through the day. But, regardless, going to the principal's office with Stephanie Lauter (specifically a Stephanie Lauter who looks like someone is holding a gun to her head and, perhaps, also just shot her dog with it) feels like a should-be-clear-headed situation.
Unfortunately, that’s fully just a nonstarter at this point, and there's nothing he can do about it, so he’s devoting as much energy as he possibly can to pretending to be sober and normal (which, to be fair, is completely subjective and something he’s never been good at) and hoping for the best.
“This
cannot
be happening!” Stephanie frantic-mumbles for probably the fifteenth time, twisting one of the rings on her hand again and again and again. It’s a cool ring. A tiny little band of pearls with a gold bead of
something
in the middle he can’t make out at a distance.
He’s probably been staring at her hands too long, hasn’t he?
“Hey, don’t worry,” He offers, trying to sound as comforting as humanly possible. It’s not like he doesn’t get it, this shit used to always freak him out. Still does, just a little bit, he’s just generally numbed out to it by now, “This is your first academic misconduct, right?”
She scoffs, “Obviously.”
“Then you're totally fine, I promise. Two hours detention, if that.”
He’s honestly sort of shocked Miss Mulberry sent her at all. He’d kind of been expecting a one and done ‘Peter, how could you be such a bad influence’ lecture and for Stephanie ‘Mayor’s Kid’ Lauter to get off scot free.
“I can’t have detention! At all! My dad– my dad is going to kill me and… oh shit, I’ll have to cancel on the kids I tutor, and tell them why, and–” She slams her face into her hands, “Fuck. I have cheer practice.”
“Jesus christ, when do you… breathe?” he thinks, and then realizes very quickly he also said. He probably… shouldn’t have… said that out loud. Right?
“I don't need to breathe,” She says, almost like a joke but if Pete’s being honest, he’s genuinely not sure if he should laugh or not. He doesn’t. She keeps going, “And it’s not just that. I can’t be… my friends are never going to let me hear the end of this if they catch us walking together.”
That, however, startles the laugh right out of him, “God, all that political training never covered tact, huh?”
She takes a heavy sort of breath, like she’s resetting herself, and plasters on what Pete is sure is a specific Mayor-Lauter’s-daughter smile, “Look, I’m sorry. That was–”
He waves his hands at her to interrupt, probably bigger than he should, because she takes a tiny step back, “No, I’m fully kidding, it’s entirely understandable.”
Stephanie Lauter is a town wide golden child to… a weird degree. She’s smart and part of way too many clubs and fucking popular on top of it. It’s a full ass statistical improbability.
If Pete was a scientific high school anomaly of brains, brawn, and cool he wouldn’t risk it by hanging out with himself either.
“Actually,” She pauses, reaching up to yank the elastic of her ponytail tighter in sharp, nervous movements, again and again and again, “No. I take back my sorry! This is your fault!”
“Hey, you didn’t have to cheat off me,” He insists, raising both his hands in defeat. Because she didn’t.
He’d seen her freaking out, all panicky and wobbly and about-to-cry pale the way Ruth always gets when the world is too much for her and tried to extend an olive branch. It was a first semester pop quiz, it was basic and it didn’t fucking matter to his main grade so he honestly wasn’t even planning on trying; it wasn’t a huge deal.
But she didn’t have to copy off him. He didn’t make her.
“Yeah, but–” She deflates a bit, like she hadn’t really expected to have to argue her point, “Fuck you.”
He chokes on a laugh, “Sure.”
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s kinda funny.”
She glares at him.
“Come on! It is! Grace Chastity is fucking ridiculous!”
“God, I know right!” She bursts, and it’s real in a way Pete’s not entirely sure she was being before, “She’s just– she’s so obnoxious.”
“Exactly! So… really, it’s Grace’s fault, right?”
“Yeah,” And then, after a long second, “Fuck Grace Chastity.”
“Yeah! Fuck Grace Chastity!”
She tosses her head back, ponytail swinging, and giggles, before sticking out a hand, “You can… I mean, my friends call me Steph.”
“Alright, Steph,” He reaches out and shakes it, “Mine call me Pete.”
She snorts and it feels a little like he’s won something, “Alright, Pete.”
They start back down the hallway again, but this time they’re side to side close enough that their shoulders keep bumping. Pete’s not entirely sure of how he got here, but he’s not about to ask questions and fuck it up.
“Hey,” She tilts her head into his line of sight, “How the hell are you so good at Calculus anyway?”
Jesus, is that a loaded question. It certainly shouldn’t be, but it is, and Pete, whose trying not to fuck this up and pretending to be normal, has no goddamn clue how to approach it without sounding like a freak, “I… just am? It’s pretty straightforward as long as you can figure out the basics.”
“Calculus is pretty straight forward?”
He shrugs, and it takes a second for him to clock that she’s smiling again. Huh, “Kinda.”
“No offense, but you don’t strike me as that kind of dude.”
He supposes that’s fair, and she hadn’t said it meanly, so he just teases, “You don't know me, Miss Lauter.”
Steph snorts, settling her hands on her hips in what Pete is, sort-of-kind-of, clocking as teasing, too, which is nice, “That’s so not my fault. In like the couple years you’ve been here I don’t think you’ve turned in a homework assignment once.”
He can’t tell if she’s still joking, “...We’ve been in class together since, like, first grade.”
“What?” Her face crumples up, tight and confused, “No. Didn’t you transfer here freshman year?”
“No…? What the fuck?”
“Really?”
“Peter Spankoffski?” He tries, but she just shrugs, helplessly.
And then it clicks.
Oh. Oh. Of course. Freshman year. Sure.
“Brad Callaghan pantsed me in the seventh grade…?” He prompts, wishing, desperately, that he didn’t have to elaborate, “... in front of Sarah Zimmerman? There was this whole rumor–
“Oh my god,” he watches as it dawns on her face, the realization, the delight, the awe. It’s the biggest smile he’s gotten from her since they got snitched on and a probably-sarcastic part of his brain is glad that she’s at least getting something out of it, “Oh my god, you’re Micropeter!”
“Yeah,” He gives her a horrible approximation of a bow, trying to tie it off with a smile that absolutely comes out way more like a wince, “Please don’t fuckin’ tell anyone.”
“That’s… that’s crazy. What happened?”
“What?”
“I mean you were… did you…” She laughs, bemused and wide eyed, “Did you get one of those traumatic brain injuries that permanently changes your personality?”
“Oh shit, like that one guy at Pizza Pete’s a couple years ago?”
She nods, making the exact kind of face Pete is also making, and anyone who thinks about that one guy at Pizza Pete’s also makes. The very specific yeesh kind of face that most of Hatchetfield has perfected for multiple reasons, “Yeah.”
“I mean… no. Also that’s just a wild thing to say.”
She smirks, crossing her arms, “I think it’s a valid question.”
He just laughs, rolls his eyes, and doesn’t elaborate. He can tell she wants him to, that she has more questions, and he doesn’t necessarily blame her. It’s not like he isn’t used to everyone asking ‘what the fuck happened’. His parents, Ruth and Richie, a whole barrage of guidance counselors; it’s parr for the course when you turn fourteen and your priorities change so dramatically that people, apparently, thought you were a new transfer student. But that doesn’t mean he’s about to get into that shit with Stephanie Lauter.
[What happened was this: Peter Spankoffski’s brother went missing the summer before his freshman year.
He’d gone to his coworker’s wedding, and hadn’t come home.
No one noticed at first, not for a good long while. Ted was a grown ass adult with his own apartment, no one called their parents when he didn’t show up for work that Monday.
Ted was flaky, when Pete texted him following up on plans to drag him to a midnight showing of the newest Spiderman movie and he didn’t get an answer he didn’t realize anything was wrong.
Ted was missing and it took two weeks for anyone to even fucking notice he was gone enough to call in a wellness check.
And then, when they did, when they’d found his apartment empty and the food in his fridge spoiling and his mail piled up out of his apartment’s mailroom, no one looked.
‘This is Hatchetfield’, they’d said, ‘People go missing every day.’
Correction: Not no one looked. Pete looked.
Because Ted went missing; they declared Pete’s big brother missing and no one gave a shit and they were acting as though Pete giving a shit was some crazy conspiracy instead of him just trying to find his brother.
Pete looked for months, spent his whole summer tramping through Witchwood with a flashlight like this was a stupid Hardy Boys mystery, well past when it was cute, well past when Ruth and Richie were willing to humor him, well past when his parents thought it was a reasonable grieving process.
He’d drove himself fucking insane, until one day, alone in a forest he wasn’t supposed be alone in, trying to track foot prints that weren’t going to be there, it hit him.
Nothing mattered.
All the things he thought were important, his grades and his extracurriculars and his pre-pre-pre-pre college planning, didn’t fucking matter, because one day he could go missing, vanish off the face of the Earth just like Teddy did, and everyone would act like he was another random casualty of their town being weird.
His parents were pissed, sure. They were livid. They kept saying ‘Ted wouldn’t want you to throw away your entire future like this’ which Pete, personally, thinks is fucking bullshit.
If anyone would have gotten it, it was Ted.
But Ted’s not here. That’s sort of the whole problem.
And once he’d gotten started on the not-caring-train it was just so much easier to stay on it. Everything felt so fucking pointless. Detention doesn’t matter when nothing matters. Parents being disappointed doesn’t matter when his parents wouldn’t look for him.
Ruth thinks it’s hot. Richie still doesn’t seem to understand why the fuck he’s doing it, but Pete’ll still watch anime with him, so he’s mostly given up trying to over-explain him into making an effort. He’s an unofficial member of the smoke club, and he still knows enough of his shit to not entirely flunk out, he’s fine.
Well. No. He knows he’s not fine but who gives a shit, right?
Nothing matters.]
And that’s when the bells rings.
“Oh shit,” He’d lost track of time (not that he’d been holding on to track of time particularly hard in the first place), “I gotta clear out.”
“What? Why?” Steph asks with big eyes, “I was being a total jerk earlier about my friends–”
“Nah, don’t worry. I’m just not trying to get my ass kicked.”
“What?”
He smirks and pivots down the hall, giving Steph a little two-fingered salute that he, personally, thinks was kind of cool, but definitely comes off as lame as shit, “Bye, Steph.”
He can hear her calling after him, just enough that it makes him feel sort of like a dick, “Wait, no, Pete, what do you mean?”
He keeps walking anyway.
Stephanie Lauter’s cool and nice and… admittedly very pretty, and sure, okay, maybe he feels sort of bad about getting her in trouble, but none of those things will do anything to negate that Pete is definitively not cool, he’s not trying to be, and both of those things spell Trouble-with-a-capital-T once passing periods start. Steph will get over it, and, unlike meetings with the principal, he’s not nearly high enough to deal with Max Jägerman right now.
Luckily, that is a problem he can abso-fucking-loutley fix.
- - -
straw hat pirates
Thurs, Sep 23 - 11:42 AM
Ruth
DID YOU AND STEPH FUCK???
Ruth
PETE
Ruth
PEEEEETTTEEEEE
Ruth
PETE
Ruth
PETE
Ruth
PETEPETEPETEPETEPETE
Ruth
BAD BOY SCHOOL GIRL PORN PLAYBYPLAY WHEN???
You
Ew???
You
Like no but also im gonna skip 4th in the light booth if u wanna hang outanyway :-)
Richie
Peter, please don't get another detention
Richie
(＞﹏＜)
Richie
We still have to work on our project after school!!!
You
nah itll be fine if i do ill just skip it lkmao
Richie
Or, crazy concept… you could attend class?
You
booo hiss no thx it’s gym im super good
Richie
Actually never mind, that is understandable
Richie
(っ´ω`)ﾉ(╥ω╥)
Richie
Statement retracted
Ruth
WAIT DO U HAVE MY LIGHT BOOTH KEY I THOUGHT I LOST THAT??
You
Lololololol
Ruth
PETER