divine , cobra kai

01. science class

CHAPTER ONE
science class

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for all of diane's life (which was only fourteen years so far) she had always felt that things were missing. not in the way you forget where you put your keys or phone, but in a way something didn't feel right; parts of her being empty. it was like she was a puzzle with missing pieces, each one crucial to finishing the puzzle.

diane did understand she had only lived fourteen years, but when you're budding into a teenager you feel everything so deeply and those missing pieces of herself felt like cracks she needed so desperately to seal.

the only problem: she had no idea what they were or if this was even something she should care about. it was probably normal. nobody told her this feeling would suddenly appear after her thirteenth birthday and never go away, drowning her in a never ending pit of self-denial and confusion.

so here she was, walking down the cafeteria, lunch tray in hand, heading to the table full of nerds after a week-long suspension because of the first-day-of-school-school-fight. this day technically counted as her second day of highschool. great.

now diane wasn't that much of a rebel. yeah, she did sometimes enjoy borrowing a couple things from the aisles of a store and walking around the rules but it never cost her a week long school suspension. her brother was more of a troublemaker than she ever was. wonder where he was.

"your brother should be in jail," a random boy walking near her spat. diane gave him a scowl and flipped him off as she brushed past him. she slouched down onto the empty seat at the miyagi-do table, everybody there staring at her as if they had never seen her before.

the mood of the miyagi-do karate student friend group had definitely changed a lot since that first day.

she shot them a weird look back, then examining her lunch tray which she spent four dollars on. a dry hamburger, wet lettuce, and a small almost spoiled carton of milk. how she has missed this. living at a rich man's house for three months really seemed to make her entitled for growing up in a beat-down north hills apartment.

"so?" nate, the small korean boy with pin-straight black hair and small glasses said. he broke the silence between the group. he's a freshman like diane and sat parallel to her.

"how's, um, everybody's first day back at school?" demetri, the tall, lanky sixteen year-old boy asked. he was the awkward type, even more now that he's not sitting next to his best friend. eli, hawk, or whatever you called him, resided at a new lunch table now.

"i hate it here," diane muttered. "i wish i got two weeks like sam."

"don't treat it like a vacation! it's on my permanent record. forever. there goes ucla, harvard, and even yale," demetri whined dramatically like his usual self.

"hey... how's the robby situation holding up?" nate asked. it was clear he hesitated before asking, knowing it was sensitive.

"nothing's happened," diane replied quietly, using a fork to pick at her so-called salad. "no leads. he's still... gone."

"'least most of the crew's back together," chris said. he was bigger than the rest, with dark skin and the second tallest next to demetri. he was the oldest of the group, still just being a junior like demetri and sam.