We Killed the Dinosaurs

by Distaff Pope

07.1 I Wear the Red

At school that day, everyone breathed easier with Hoops and Score gone. The students didn’t know why they were breathing easier yet, but they were, and that was what mattered. No one got concerned until that night, when their dads noticed their kids hadn’t come home. By lunch of the next day, they’d found the car, and the news caught the cafeteria on fire. Having a school assembly about it that afternoon was the next logical step. Obviously.

“I thought it was terrible how Hoops and Score went after you,” the girl sitting next to me who wasn’t Starlight said. “But I guess it makes sense if they were trying to hide their own relationship.” She looked past me to Starlight, the real person she wanted to talk with. “Deflection, right?”

Starlight smiled, her old, black making a comeback with my duster tying it all together. “That’s what I think. It’s terrible they didn’t feel like they could be themselves and they took it out on us.” She twined her fingers around mine. “But I think it’s important we look at what caused them to feel that way. Isn’t that right, Sunny?”

What was her game? “That’s right,” I agreed, trying to figure out Starlight’s plan. She’d been quiet ever since the photo.

“Alright, everybody,” that one busybody teacher said. “We’re going to talk about why you shouldn’t run away from home. Your problems might seem insurmountable, and I know running away can seem enticing, but that just won’t fix anything. Do you want to be homeless on the streets of some big city, not knowing where your next meal is? Is that better than just dealing with your problems?”

“Ms. Fleming,” Starlight said, her voice cutting through the auditorium and catching everyone’s attention. “Rose and I were friends, and in a way, I feel responsible for Hoops and Score running away.” Damn. I checked her expression: completely sincere. “Not that I did anything wrong, but my relationship with Sunset feels like it served as a catalyst for them leaving.” That was a way to put it, certainly. And if you twisted the words enough, it was an honest one “Please, can I say a few words?”

But Starlight was already standing when she asked the question, making her way to the mic, not that she needed it. “Of course, Starlight,” Fleming capitulated, making way for the new order. “This should be a place where we all feel free to share what’s on our minds.”

“Thank you,” Starlight said, finally reaching the microphone. She turned to face the school. “I wake up every morning thinking about Rose. About all this pain she held bottled up inside her for years that she never felt she could express. I think about Hoops and Score, two passionate, gay lovers who closeted themselves for years and lashed out at anyone who reminded them of their own buried shame. And I think: Why were they like that?” She paused, letting the question hang over the audience. “Why were these three beautiful, compassionate souls so monstrous to everyone else?” She looked me in the eyes. “To find the answer, we have to look within ourselves. And who do we see? People who are cruel, who will turn on you the second you step out of line, people who are just itching to dear down their peers.”

More than a few students fidgeted at that. “Why did they keep so much from us? Because we would have eaten them alive if they hadn’t.” She smiled. “But there’s good news. Our friends aren’t gone forever. We aren’t cursed to be like this forever. We can grow and learn to be generous, be kind to each other, to make our friends laugh instead of just laughing at them, we can turn the school into a place no one’s afraid to tell the truth, and most importantly, we can be there for each other. If we do that, if we dig deep and put in the hard work, we can transform Westercolt.”

“And that transformation?” she asked. Most students were leaning forward now. “It starts with us. I’m done trying to fit in. I’m done hiding what I’m feeling. And let me tell you, it feels so much better to just be me than shove myself into the ‘popular student’ mold however I can.”

A few students murmured at that. Mostly the ones in the periphery, who were watching a popular girl defect and join their cause, but still. “It’s time to take back Westercolt and make it a school we can be ourselves. It’s time to make Colt Lake our town!”

Students applauded. No standing up and cheering, but they still clapping. At least a little onboard. Lily stood up from the front row and walked next to Starlight. “May I?” she asked when the applause finished, reaching for the microphone.

“Of course,” Starlight said, relinquishing her grip.

“Thank you so much for that speech,” Lily said. “I know if she were here today, Rose would have loved hearing you say that, and I’m pretty sure Hoops and Score would have as well.” Starlight kept her smile frozen on her face. “And I promise, no matter what, I’ll be right by best friend’s side.” She looked at Starlight before turning back to her audience. “So come on, Westercolt. Let’s change the world!”

And the crowd went wild.

***

“Lily’s such a sad little poser, isn’t she?” Starlight asked hunched over her desk, working on plans for some school event or doing homework or something. “Two days ago, she’s telling everyone I had a threeway with Hoops and Score, and today, she’s standing next to me and saying how we’re best friends. If she thinks it will keep her at the top of the social pyramid, she’ll do it.”

I leaned back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah, a little bit,” I said. “So, you want to put her on the board?” I pointed at the cork board she’d pinned the photos of our missing classmates.

“Obviously. It’s just a question of when do we get rid of her? And what’s the pretense?” Pretense? “We can’t say she’s tired of pretending to be something she’s not, when she’s ‘being herself.’” She gave a long sigh. “We’ll have to discredit her first. Or fix it so something else makes her disappear. Maybe she goes missing hiking? Lots of reasons a person could disappear that’s not them running away.” She never took her eyes off her work to look back at me..

“Wow, you’re really going all out on this, huh?” I asked.

Starlight clucked her tongue. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, Sunset. I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore and do nothing while the worst sorts of assholes make life worse for everybody else. Hoops and Score taught me that.” A second later, she was climbing on top of me. “No one’s ever going to hurt you ever again.” She pressed her lips against mine, breathing fire into me, stroking my hair. “We can’t finish until every asshole is gone. Are you with me?”

I looked up at her, held under her power. “Yeah, that works for me.”

Author's Note:

So, now that I kind of have the story mapped out firmly in my head, I can firmly say I lied in the last chapter when I said I'd stop using song titles. Technically, "I Wear the Red" is a line from "Never Shut Up Again!" (The song that replaces "Blue (Reprise)" for those of you not up to date on all your Heathers: The Musical knowledge), but I sincerely thought "I Wear the Red" was the name of the song.

But from here on, I think it's song titles until the end. We're going to have four or five more chapters plus a little coda story that's going to focus on a completely different character. Don't know if it will be published independently or just be a very weird epilogue. Time will tell. Either way, I'll see you in the comments.

Comments

[Jane_Shadow]

I don't think Lily is so bad. Without the Big Dogs, she might even become her own person. Of course, Starlight is a Magic Solves Everything person in Canon, so I suppose throwing magic at her to snip the potential further problems from growing is regrettably in character. At least, regrettable to me. And yes, I know this is a crossover, and so has to plots to follow.

[Distaff Pope]

Oh, I'm making some pretty big divergences from the sources at this point. Like, in Heathers, Veronica's either broken up with or thinking about breaking up with JD depending on if it's the movie or musical, and there wouldn't be anymore victims. That's clearly not the case here.

[Peachy Keen]

I don't know if it was your intention, but I'm definitely getting season 5 Starlight vibes here. The need to control people (rather than brainwashing, it's weeding out assholes), the speeches... all in the name of wanting to be herself. That's not to say she wasn't being looked down upon for being herself, but she's taken that reason and twisted it into a reason to 'kill'. Interesting!

[Distaff Pope]

9418140
I had her say we can make this "Our town," so I wasn't trying to be subtle about drawing parallels to her season five version.