Red, White, and Black | Heathers [ JD x Reader ]

one

word count | 1,340
-tags; mentions of suicide (/murder)

sherwood ohio, huh? you had never pictured yourself as much of an ohio girl. normally you'd found every city in this buckeye state as terrible. you hadn't decided on what you thought about sherwood.

you had decided that their school buses were disgusting. it wasn't much of an issue to you because you would get your license before the school year was over and then not have to deal with the bus for the rest of high school.

westerberg high school was just like your old school, spare a few suicides you'd heard about from the neighbors. the school building was completely different, but the social hierarchy was exactly the same. popular jocks, loser geeks, stoners, and popular girls on top of it all. the only difference in social cliques was that there was no true leader. there was one girl you heard of who was the very top of the pyramid, but she was gone now. she was the first of three suicides. now, the rest of that clique ruled together. you didn't know anything about them, but you knew exactly who they were the moment you saw them in the hallway.

there were three—one blue, one green, and one yellow—color-coded and clean girls. the blue one wore a red scrunchie in her hair the one time you saw her. you'd only seen her once in the first week of school, but you'd seen the other two girls around many times. they were both seniors, and you assumed the blue one was too.

it was lunch on your first day. you sat outside on a bench by the back parking lot, eating your sandwich while scribbling down answers to your biology worksheet. halfway through the assignment, a hand held itself out in front of you. you looked up to see who stood by you. "heather duke," she introduced herself. she was one of the three girls: the green one.

you took her hand and reluctantly shook it, "y/n l/n."

"you're the actual new kid, aren't you?"

"is it obvious?" you put your things back in our bag. you had a feeling you wouldn't have time to work anymore; no conversation with a popular girl ended shortly.

"definitely. don't worry about it, most of the people at this school don't have a brain. hey, how old are you?"

"15."

"a sophomore... perfect."

"perfect for what?" she confused you, and you didn't know what she wanted from you yet.

"it's important that westerberg still has a strong lead clique next year. i'm going to make you the leader of it. veronica will understand,"

"what? so, you want me to become a popular girl? heather, i can't do that," you picked up your things and tried to walk away. heather was not having it.

"y/n, listen. westerberg isn't a beautiful place, if you want to have a peaceful high school, you have to become one of us." she grabbed your arm before you could get too far, "just ask veronica. she used to be a caterpillar too before we turned her into a butterfly."

you sighed. there was no way getting out of this one.

"fine." heather duke was very happy that you agreed to her plan. whatever that "plan" exactly was, you weren't sure yet.

you didn't meet veronica until friday afternoon when heather and heather picked you up to play croquet in her backyard. "heather, who the hell is this?" veronica was exhausted. you could tell by the look in her eyes and the bags underneath them. it was as if she hadn't slept for days (she hadn't, but that wasn't information you were aware of). the yard of veronica's house was impressive, to say the least. despite the girl's all-blue exterior fashion choice, the yard was covered in neat rows of red flowers that lined the edges of the fence; the grass was well kept and looked like it had been taken straight out of a movie.

heather glanced between you and veronica, "veronica, you know we can't be the most powerful clique in school forever."

"so you've went and recruited a freshman? you can't recruit freshman, they're all like 14!"

"i'm a sophomore," you said softly.

heather walked over to pick up her green mallet. "let's play," she twirled the handle between her two fingers. heather also walked over to pick up hers, and veronica picked up two. "veronica?" heather began, before veronica walked up to you and extended the red croquet mallet to you.

"here," you took it reluctantly, "if heather intends to have you take over, then... you should be red."

"what?" great. now you would become part of the color-coded madness. both heathers nodded in agreement to veronica. "is there a reason why all of you are color-coded? is it some weird superstitious thing?"

"heather said it establishes power. she was red."

"is there another heather...?"

veronica let out a sigh, "i'll explain it to you later. let's play some croquet right now, sound good?"

and explain it later she did indeed. around 5pm that same day, after heather and heather had left veronica's house, veronica took you upstairs to her room. as you expected, it was completely blue. would your room have to become red? veronica had deemed you to be red, after all. you watched the other girl as she walked to her desk and pulled a book out of one of the drawers, turning on a lamp and motioning for you to come to where she was. you walked over and looked at the photo laid out in front of the two of you. in it were four girls: heather duke, heather mcnamara, and veronica were the ones you recognized. she pointed to the girl in red, "that's heather chandler. she used to be the top of the school, the leader of the heathers. she was practically worshiped at westerberg."

you leaned in to look closer at her. she was pretty: the kind of girl that looked like she could be in a magazine with her curly blonde hair and model-like features. "what happened to her?"

"she committed suicide about 6 months ago," she shut the picture away in the book and left it closed, "drank a cup of liquid drainer."

"so she was the first one, huh?"

"you've heard about the other two? damn, you did your research."

kurt and ram were the other two suicides: killed each other in a suicide pack of repressed homosexuality. each one happened within the same month. the way veronica told you the stories of each dead high school student made you think there was a part of it she wasn't telling you. you dismissed it as you being paranoid. half an hour later, veronica offered to take you home in her car, and you accepted. just before you got out of the passenger seat to go inside your own home, she stopped you and reached into the backseat. "take this," she threw a red scrunchie into your hands, "heather said that the color scheme establishes power, but that damn hair accessory really establishes the power. it went through two heathers and a veronica. it's your turn to have it."

"what's so bad about the power it comes with?"

veronica stared sadly at the dashboard in front of her. "i can't save anyone with it. maybe you can."

she drove off once you got inside your house. you watched her through the small window on the front door, then stared down at the object in your hand. you squeezed it with your left hand before throwing it on the coffee table in the living room. "mom?" you called out, "i'm going to go on a walk," your mother yelled back to let you know she heard you.

7/11 was only 2 blocks away, right? maybe you would treat yourself to a slushie before dinner. nothing could go wrong, right? after all, it was only sherwood, ohio: not columbus or cincinnati.

it was only sherwood.