Briar was dying. She was sure of it.
That could be the only explanation to what felt like a power drill making several hundred holes in her skull while her brain was being trampled upon by a herd of elephants. She attempted to open her eyes, which took a lot more effort than she'd remembered, and immediately found that an extremely bright light kept her from being successful in her endeavor. Was she in heaven? That couldn't be. She was pretty sure if there was an afterlife, she already had a throne set up for her in hell.
"Hey," a booming voice pierced her eardrums next, "wake up. Your sister is here."
Oh. She was definitely in hell. Briar groaned, which only proved to make her headache worse, but she forced her eyes open. She stretched her limbs and allowed her eyes to focus on the room again, thankful that the light had been turned off. As the burning of her eyelids lessened, memories from the night prior began to rise up to the forefront of her mind again.
"You were pretty smashed last night, bro."
Briar waved her hand dismissively at Hans, a heavily-muscled brute that Briar discovered really had a heart of gold. He'd been her right-hand man since she entered high school. Briar turned to the bedside table and grabbed the glass of water set there. After she took it along with some advil, she extended her hand for Hans to help her up. The 'last-day-of-vacation' party the night before had been particularly wild, and Briar understood why. Most of the people there were seniors, and they hadn't seemed prepared to handle a world outside of their high school kingdom.
"You're going to be late."
Briar shrugged as she entered Hans' bathroom. "Don't really care," she replied, which got her a light-hearted chuckle from Hans.
Briar showered and got her things ready, which didn't really take more than half an hour. She donned her usual attire - a band shirt and ripped jeans paired with her converse - and put on a pair of sunglasses. She walked out of Hans' apartment, with the man handing her a stick of cigarette on her way out, and entered her sister's car, ignoring Aster's stern glare. She rolled down the window and lit the cigarette, much to Aster's dismay, and watched as the scenery passed them by.
The car soon came to a halt outside the high school's gate. "Make this year different, Briar," Aster pleaded with her.
Briar scoffed and took a final drag of her cigarette as she got out. "Gotcha, Herr Fuhrer." She added a salute to that before turning on her heel and walking away from her sister. She flicked the cigarette in the direction of a random freshman, and made her way inside. She looked for her locker, knowing that with the administration's hate for her, it'd probably be placed near the bathrooms or the AV club room. To her surprise, her locker was placed along with the other juniors' lockers and she grinned. She stepped beside another junior - Isabella or whatever, Briar didn't really remember. She seemed to be having a bit of trouble opening up her locker, and the noise was making Briar's headache act up again. "Here," she offered, not waiting for a reply before she hit the edge of Isabella's locker with her fist. When she saw that it opened, she moved to open her locker with ease.