#fsweek22 day 2 writing prompt

[cyanide-latte]

Breakup [A Fear Street drabble]

Written for Fear Street Appreciation Week 2022

Day 2 (June 27): Angst or “Light”

Originally posted to AO3 here (if you’re interested in my author’s notes, that’s where you’ll find them; please consider leaving a comment and kudos, even if you’re a guest!)

Rating: Teen

Word count: 2105

Characters: Sam Fraser, Deena Johnson

Warnings: Exactly What It Says On The Tin

    Leaving was never going to be easy, and it was something Sam refused to delude herself about.  Shadyside was home, and you didn’t just throw away seventeen years of home so easily, especially not for a place like Sunnyvale.

    Unless you were her mom, apparently.

    “Have you packed your clothes yet?”

    Speak of the devil.  Sam gritted her teeth, setting down the scrapbook she’d picked up and rolling her eyes as she called back, “I’m working on it!”

    It wasn’t entirely true.  She could really only pack so much before they actually moved, and as long as she had most of her other stuff packed, why bother about the clothes?  Furthermore, her mom had already been talking about buying new things for her wardrobe once they moved, so she could “fit in better” at Sunnyvale High.  If she was going to go on a clothes shopping spree shortly after they moved, what was the point of packing all of her clothes?

    “Feels stupid,” she murmured to herself.  She didn’t mean the clothes thing.  At least, not just the clothes thing.  And besides that, it didn’t matter what her mom wanted to try to do to make the change smoother: Sunnyvale high schoolers would single her out anyway.  She was going to be a pariah the moment they moved into their new place, just for being “Shadyside trash” existing in their bubble of perfect air.

    The rest of high school was going to be miserable, at this rate.

    Deena, she told herself.  Think about Deena.

    Her not-so-secret secret girlfriend, despite the fact she wasn’t taking the news about the Fraser parents’ divorce and the subsequent move well, was one of the only things getting Sam through the moving and packing process at that moment.  Right now, it felt like everything about her life was getting completely disordered, and Deena was one of her only grounding points that allowed her to sort things into facts she could live with.

    Fact one: her parents were getting a divorce, and nothing she could do would change that.  It wasn’t her fault, even if that hadn’t sunk in yet, and the more she thought back and wondered about how bad their relationship had started deteriorating, maybe it would be a good thing for them to have a divorce.  It still hurt and it was still hard to navigate, but it wasn’t her fault and she had no control over it.

    Fact two: in the wake of the divorce, her mom was getting a very nice, very hefty settlement, and decided that because of the settlement, they would be moving to perfect, pristine Sunnyvale.  Sam had had no say in the decision any more than she had a real say in which parent she stayed with.  She didn’t like it, but her mother didn’t care and she had no control over it.

    Fact three: she was going to be transferring to Sunnyvale High School.  If she managed to at least keep her grades afloat and make the cheerleading squad, maybe she could survive the remainder of high school.  Maybe.  She doubted it would be easy or that she would be accepted by the pedigree students, but she could make it through.  It wasn’t forever.

    Fact four: there was going to be half-an-hour’s worth of travel to see Deena and all of their friends now.  It felt like forever, but it would be worth the drive when they could make it to see each other.  This was one of the only things buoying her through this hectic week of packing and prepping.

    The first chance we get, we need to plan whenever I’m going to come visit, ASAP.  At least that way I’ll have something to look forward to after I make it through my first week.

    Something to cling to like a life raft, she didn’t want to admit to herself.

    She looked down at the scrapbook again, heart thumping a bit harder than usual, and gently opened it to a page at random.  Among the glitter and stickers, there were three separate pictures pasted to the page.  All three had been taken at the bowling alley, two of which featured her with both Deena and Kate.  Kate was absent from the last picture, and it was on this one that Sam focused, brushing her fingertips over the glossy surface.  Simon had told them both to strike a pose and make a face, and they’d gotten goofy with it.  But even then, back when they’d been in middle school, Sam could see the way Deena had turned her face inward in their pose, closer to her.  They hadn’t been together then, but they’d both felt the chemistry by then, she was sure of that.

    Sniffling a little, she brushed at her eyes to prevent any stray tears from getting ideas, and turned another page.  The images here kicked off a large chunk of pages just composed of a trip to the King’s Island amusement park.  That had been early summer, right before they started freshman year at Shadyside High.  None of their parents could really afford it themselves, but given it was still a big deal to go from middle school to high school, so all of them had chipped in together for a bunch of them to be able to go as a group, and they’d spent the entire day at the amusement park.  They’d not been able to buy much in the way of souvenirs—park food was ridiculously expensive and took up most of the cash the parents had given them—but Sam had thought ahead of time to bring a couple of disposable cameras so they could at least document some of the fun.

    She was glad she had; she had a feeling in the next few weeks she’d be thumbing through the scrapbook more than normal.

    A sudden knock at her bedroom window made her jump and the scrapbook fell out of her hands onto the the pile of other things in her current box, its cover falling shut.  Turning in herky-jerky motions, she looked at her window at first in wariness, then relaxed and smiled.  She should have guessed it was Deena; she had mentioned at some point that she would stop by.  She was staring in at Sam, her expression pained and her eyes bright with unshed tears as her lips drew down into the pout she insisted she never had.

    Sam got to her feet, moved to the window, and hauled it up and open, leaning on the sill with her hands as she smiled at her girlfriend.

    “Hey!”

    “Hey,” Deena parroted back thickly, blinking hard.  Trust Deena Johnson to play tough at any opportunity.

    Except…Deena wasn’t supposed to play tough.  Not when it was just the two of them.

    “What- what’s up?” Sam asked, thrown off by Deena’s behavior.  “Sorry, I- I’d invite you in to help me pack but—”

    “Oh, right,” Deena said, her face still alive with hurt, but her voice slipping into the sarcastic tone she adopted when upset and unwilling to admit it.  “Because the thing I want more than anything else is to help you pack up and move away to Sunnyvale.”

    Sam blinked, shaking her head slowly.  “Wh- um… Sorry, uh,” she stammered, letting out a dry, shaky laugh with no joy behind it.  “We talked about this, Deena.  You know why we’re moving.”

    “Yeah, well I still think it’s bullshit.”

    Sam stared at her, took in the way Deena was crossing her arms angrily, the way she was looking at her without quite meeting her eyes.  Alarms started to ring in her head, and she tried to tell herself not to overreact.

    “I don’t have much of a choice, Deena,” she said carefully.  “I’m not eighteen, I have to go with one of my parents, and as much as the court likes to pretend I get some kind of a say in which one I go with, the fact is that Ohio law states my mom has the stronger claim to custody.”

    “Did you even try to fight for which parent you wanted to go with?”

    Sam blinked and shook her head again, baffled.  “What are you talking about, Deena?  I wanted to go with Mom so I could still stay as close as possible.  My dad’s moving out of state.  If I stay with Mom, at least I’ll still be close enough that visiting Shadyside will still be easy,” she explained.  When Deena didn’t say anything, but continued to glower and keep her arms crossed, making ice form in Sam’s stomach, Sam forced out a question that left an acidic taste on her tongue.

    “Deena…are you just mad that I’ve got to move at all, or is this because I’m moving to Sunnyvale?”

    Deena didn’t say anything at first, but her eyes narrowed and almost seemed to spark in the sun, and her nostrils flared as she started breathing harder.  Sam’s arms started to shake on the sill and she had to stop putting her weight on them.  That’s what this was about?  That they were relocating to Sunnyvale?

    “Just think it’s not like you,” Deena answered at last.  “Not like you to just throw away who you are for the sake of living with a bunch of rich, elitist trash.”

    What the hell?  Sam studied her, wishing that Deena would break it up with a laugh, with a playful shove, with some kind of reassurance she was just messing with her to hide the pain that they were going to be missing each other.  But no, she looked dead-serious.

    “You know that’s not what this is—” Sam started, feeling the beginnings of fury starting to grow in her chest.

    “It’s over, Sam.”

    She felt her arms drop down to her sides.  Had the sounds outside stopped completely?  The sunlight had gone cold.

    “What?” she breathed.

    “It’s over,” Deena repeated, her voice terrifyingly steady.  “I’m not doing this.  I’m done, okay?  You go, you move to Sunnyvale, party it up at your new school with your new friends, forget about home, forget about us, forget about me.  Have fun with your new, perfect life, okay?  I hope it’s everything you’ve ever wanted.  But I’m done.  We’re done.  It’s over.  We’re over.”

    The ice, the fire, the confusion and the anger fell away.  She was teetering on the edge of a yawning chasm, balance precarious.  The tears that had threatened earlier were starting to sting at her eyes in earnest now.

    “Are you…” she whispered, voice trembling and small, “breaking up with me?”

    Deena nodded, and not even the fact her eyes were starting to run over with tears could take away from the icy resolve in her expression or the way it dared Sam to protest or challenge it.  They stared at one another for what felt like a small eternity, neither bothering to hide their tears from the other, until Deena nodded to the cluster of boxes Sam had been working on.

    “Better get back to that,” she remarked.  “Wouldn’t want your Mom to have a cow because you wanted to act sentimental.”

    There was a knife in her gut, twisting deeper and deeper with each word, and with each bounce of Deena’s curls as she spun and stormed away from the window of Sam’s room.

    The chasm was right there, wide and waiting, like it was ready to welcome her.  She teetered on her feet, not wanting to fall, and stayed staring out the window for a long time, the world outside blurred as she wept in silence.

    All of the carefully ordered facts she’d been using pitched into the chasm one by one, no longer able or willing to try helping her make it through.  Deena had broken up with her.  No, Deena had dumped her.  Like she—no, like their relationship was nothing that couldn’t be discarded over some inconvenience.  She got that her girlfriend and their friends hated Sunnyvale outright.  Hell, she still wasn’t a big fan and wasn’t sure she ever would be!  But she didn’t have a single real choice in any of this any more.

    Deena seems to think I do, though.

    “What the hell…” she murmured, the words watery and broken.  “I don’t have a choice.”

    Her knees were getting shaky, and she forced herself to sit down on the floor next to the boxes, pulling her knees up to her chest, curling into a tight ball.  She buried her head, feeling the sobs hitch in her chest, and hugged herself tight.

    Maybe I just don’t get a choice in anything at all…

#fsweek22 #fear street appreciation week #Netflix Fear Street #Fear Street film trilogy #fsweek22 day 2 writing prompt #my writing and fics #crossposted from AO3 #oneshot fic #angst drabble #Sam Fraser #Deena Johnson #Cyanide speaks