Chapter Text
Here we go again.
Varian groaned and rolled over in his bed to stare at the ceiling, his hands skipping expertly over the careworn Rubik’s cube he was fiddling with.
Another new school, another skipped grade. Another year of trying to make friends. Another year of being ignored.
Another year of mistakes.
Usually the colorful stains on his ceiling from chemical experiments gone awry comforted him, but today they only served as a reminder of everything he’d ever done wrong. They seemed to be accusing him, Why can’t you just be normal?
Actually, if he tilted his head, one of the splatters almost looked like a hand with an accusatory pointing finger. That was kind of neat.
Varian shook his head and spun his cube around. Don’t get distracted. He should be getting ready for tomorrow. He still had to find all his books and pack his backpack and pick up his lab table so his cat wouldn’t get into it tomorrow while he was gone. He also had to dig his lunch box out of the depths of the garage, and find some clean clothes somewhere— preferably a shirt without acid burn holes in it— and skim his summer reading book so he knew what it was about. And he still hadn’t eaten anything yet this evening. There was too much he needed to do.
Despite the vague sense of guilt gnawing in his chest, Varian started looking for other shapes in the stains.
Then his bedroom door whined open, and he shot upright, fumbling the Rubik’s cube. “Dad! I told you, you can’t just— oh.”
Varian’s cat looked up at him and meowed loudly. He padded across the room and leapt up onto the bed.
“Hey, Ruddiger,” Varian said, a smile catching the corners of his mouth as the cat butted his head against Varian’s hand. As always, Ruddiger had come in at exactly the right time, and Varian was thankful for the distraction. Ruddiger meowed again, more insistently this time. “Oh, you’re hungry,” Varian realized. “Alright, let’s go.” He sat up and shoved the Rubik’s cube in his hoodie pocket, then followed Ruddiger as the cat raced excitedly downstairs and into the kitchen.
“Son,” Varian’s dad, Quirin, greeted him from the stove. “I have your supper. I’ve been keeping it warm for you.”
“Hi, Dad,” Varian said absently, scooping dry cat food into Ruddiger’s bowl. “Thanks.” As he caught the unmistakable smell of grilled cheese, he realized that he was starving. He turned around to see Quirin pushing a plate across the counter to him. Varian took it and turned to head back to his room.
“I haven’t seen you all evening,” Quirin said conversationally as he began picking up the kitchen. “What have you been doing up there by yourself?”
Varian stopped and slowly turned back around. “Um. Getting— getting ready for school,” he lied, giving Quirin what he hoped looked like a genuine smile.
“You have everything packed and ready to go?”
“Y-yeah, almost.” Varian picked at the crust of his sandwich with one hand. He really didn’t feel like discussing anything that had to do with school right now.
“Would you like to drive with me to go check up on the fields to take your mind off of tomorrow?” Quirin asked, a hopeful lilt in his tone, though he didn’t turn around to see his son’s expression. “I know you’re nervous.”
“Pfft— nervous?” Varian waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, I’m not— ‘m not nervous, heh. Ah!” The unattended grilled cheese sandwich had begun sliding off the plate. Varian slapped his free hand on top of it before it fell.
Now Quirin did turn to look at Varian, one eyebrow arched in disbelief. “Varian, are you sure you’re—”
“Yep, I’m fine, I just have a couple more things to pack,” Varian said quickly. “Which I am going to do right now, bye!” Freed from conversation obligations, he pivoted on his heel and ran back upstairs.
“That was close,” Varian muttered to himself as he leaned back on his door to close it.
He set the plate down on his desk and looked around his room. A voice in the back of his mind began pointing out every little detail of the mess piled up everywhere, but he shook his head to silence it; he had too much to do right now to bother with cleaning up his room.
Still, now that Varian had noticed it, he couldn't ignore the state of his room. And maybe he’d find his schoolbooks and binders while he picked up, he reasoned. He gathered the pile of worn t-shirts draped over his desk chair and put them in the laundry basket, then set to work cleaning up the papers and books and pieces of deconstructed Wii remote off the floor. In only fifteen minutes, Varian had picked everything up to the point that it looked tidy, and he was pleased that he’d managed to accomplish at least one thing that evening. And what was more, he had found most of the textbooks he would need for school tomorrow. He brought the books over to his desk and almost set them down on top of the grilled cheese sandwich.
Oh. He still hadn’t eaten. Varian muttered a curse and took a bite, disappointed but not surprised to discover that it had cooled off to room temperature. Of course he had forgotten something— he should’ve known his sense of accomplishment wouldn’t last.
Varian flopped down in his desk chair and stared sullenly at the wall, slowly eating his sandwich. How was he gonna do it this year? He couldn't even remember to eat food unless it was right in front of his face. What made him think he was going to survive junior year of high school? Especially at a new school… Frustrated, Varian ran a hand through his hair— raven black except for one dyed strip of teal.
And it wasn’t only the fact that he was going into a new high school that was making him nervous. He’d done enough research on himself to know that some kids who skipped grades "struggled to fit in," and his experiences at his last high school had confirmed that he was a member of the “some kids” group. The students in his own class saw him as a younger kid and wouldn’t treat him like an equal, and the kids his age thought he was aloof and too arrogant for them. Not to mention that Varian’s inclination to… experiment didn’t exactly put in a good word for him. The memories chased him almost constantly.
It wasn’t just the loss of his mom as a little kid that had landed him in therapy.
Of course, Quirin had assured Varian that he was just caught between two unfriendly groups of kids, and that the ones at his new school wouldn’t be so unkind. That was why he was switching schools.
Yeah, right.
He needed a distraction.
Without really thinking about it, Varian flipped open his old PC and booted up Minecraft. He’d recently been inspired by his favorite Minecraft YouTuber to take a stab at Survival Mode, and though the results of his previous attempts had displayed a low success rate, Varian wasn’t about to give up on it yet. He just needed more practice, probably.
Varian lost track of time, absorbed in trying to keep the game going for longer than twenty minutes. It wasn’t until his dad came upstairs and knocked on his door that Varian came back to the real world.
“Son, it’s ten thirty,” Quirin said, opening the door. “Are you headed to bed? You have to wake up early tomorrow morning.”
“Oh. Yeah, I-I’m going to bed,” Varian mumbled, stroking Ruddiger’s head— the cat had come back in at some point and had settled on Varian’s lap. Varian closed his laptop and pushed Ruddiger off.
Quirin nodded, a fond smile crossing his usually-stern countenance. “Alright. Good night, Varian. Six thirty tomorrow morning.”
Varian groaned, but nodded. “Night, Dad.”
Quirin left, and Varian scrambled to gather his school stuff and throw it all in his backpack before falling into bed. This was it. He was going into eleventh grade at a new school. It was a thirty minute drive from his house, way up in the city. No one would know who he was. He had a chance to start over.
That thought was encouraging. Varian smiled slightly and closed his eyes. No reputation tagging along after him, freezing him out. No old memories. New faces, blank slates. Corona High. He could start over.