A/N: Hi wow sorry this is so short but I don't want to get into the habit of not updating this story so I'm trying to force updates out, even if they're short, every few weeks. Ok enjoy!

The first day of school goes about as well as can be expected, which is to say, horribly. As if it wasn't bad enough starting at a new school midway through the second semester, it becomes clear as they walk in that Peter is very, very Not Popular. He's pointed her towards her locker and is absorbed in reading the color-coded schedule she'd been handed at the front office when a huge boy with a buzz cut slams his books to the ground and pushes him up against the locker. Before Jubilee can blink, a crowd has formed. She tries to shoulder her way to the front, but it's congested and claustrophobic and she can't get close enough to see what's happening. By the time the bell rings and the crowd disperses, Peter is being helped up by a pretty blond girl and the buzz cut boy is nowhere to be seen. Books are strewn about the floor, and Peter is bright red and stammering as blondie helps him collect them.

Jubilee goes to class.

Her first class is history, which is worse than English but not as bad as math. The teacher, predictably, has her do the introduction song and dance, and she forces out a few sentences about moving from California before sitting in a spare seat at the back. She spends the class staring resolutely at her (blank) notebook and not listening to the lecture on the defining characteristics of city-states in ancient Greece. This, at least, is familiar. Head down, shoulders hunched, hands gripping the warm metal of the seat. She's spent the last few years perfecting the art of shutting up, and it seems as applicable here as it was in Cali.

Jubilee decides right away that Spanish is her favorite class. She's grown up around the warm, smooth rhythm of the language, known people who let the words roll of their tongue like her sparks roll from her fingers. She likes deconstructing it and putting it back together again in her own way, new sentences and stories. Chica. She likes that too.

She eats lunch with Peter. They sit alone.

Math is horrendous. The numbers blur together and swap around and no matter how many times she reworks the equations, the numbers don't come out as they're meant to. It's frustrating and humiliating, and her palms burn with the familiar restless energy. Her teacher gives her a diagnostic test to take home.

Then the day is over and she's waiting just inside the front doors for Peter, looking over the bulletin board disinterestedly. Her eye catches on a hot pink flyer advertising a gymnastics showcase coming up in May. Her hands itch. She stuffs the flyer in her bag and turns to look for Peter.