And Then the World Exploded Ch.1
Yandere Heathers x Carrie!reader
Ch.2 Ch.3
The faint squeaking sound of your own worn canvas sneakers against the linoleum is the only thing anchoring you to the empty hallway. Shuffle. Squeak. Pause. You drag your feet, praying that the universe will bend just enough so that by the time you reach the end, Miss Desjardin will have already twisted the heavy key in the locker room lock, shutting you out. Shutting them out.
Gym is a weekly crucifixion, but today is the worst iteration of it. The administration's brilliant idea to combine the boys' and girls' classes once a week—some grand experiment in "social solidarity" championed by Miss Fleming—has felt less like solidarity and more like being thrown into a Roman colosseum. Mama had known it would be a sin. She had spent a week marching into the front office with her hand-inked petitions, her voice rising in a sharp, trembling vibrato about the proximity of flesh and the temptations of the wicked. But the world didn't listen to Mama. The world just looked at her, then looked at you, and laughed. Her crusade didn't save you; it just painted a giant, glowing target on your back.
It was a naive thought—a deeply stupid, fragile hope—that if you just missed the roll call, they would simply mark an 'F' next to your name and let you fade into the background. A zero is quiet. A zero doesn't have eyes. A zero doesn't whisper. But naivety is a sin, and like every other transgression your body seems to commit just by existing, it catches up to you the second your palm pushes against the heavy steel doors of the gymnasium.
The sharp, medicinal stench of bleach and old sweat hits me first, a violent wave that makes my throat tighten, followed immediately by the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of feet hitting the polished hardwood. Your heart drops directly into your stomach, heavy as a stone. They haven't even started the actual class. They’re just finishing the warm-up laps.
Miss Desjardin is standing like a sentinel right at the threshold of the wooden court. The tip of her pen makes a sharp, metallic tapping sound against her clipboard, counting down the agonizingly slow seconds of your approach.
“Anytime, Miss White. Looks like the only thing you managed to skip today were the warmups. Aren’t you lucky?”
Her voice doesn't have malice, just a tired, clipped impatience, but when she turns to the rest of the gym, her shout echoes off the high rafters, commanding total authority. “Everyone get dressed! We’re doing swim today.”
A terrible, suffocating silence hangs in the air for one long heartbeat. Swim. The word almost causes a feeling of sickness to rise in the back of your throat. Swim means taking off the layers of oversized, heavy fabrics you use to hide yourself from the world. Changing in the locker room was already unbearable, but swim class made the feeling of eyes and judgement suffocating and inescapable till the whistle blew.
The chaotic shuffle towards the locker rooms started—students shoving each other to the two separate doors while Miss Desjardin supervised to make sure no one went to the wrong one.
You tried to melt into the wall as the crowd moved, keeping to the back with your eyes pinned strictly to the floor, tracking the scuffed margins of the basketball court. But you can feel the shifts in the air as they approach.
The air grew heavy, making it feel like there was a physical weight pushing down on your back.
To your left, a heavy, athletic stride slows down. You don't have to look up to know the exact shade of the red-and-gold letterman jacket stopping a few feet away. It's Heath Chandler.
"Watch where you're drifting, freak," Heath muttered, his voice dropping into that strange, angry rasp he always used when you got too close. He looked furious that you had even come to school today—it wasn’t as though you wanted to be here either. His jaw clenched so tight the muscles in his cheek jumped, you can hear the sharp, agitated hitch in his breath.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see his knuckles whiten as he shoves his hands deep into his pockets. He’s staring at you with that familiar, burning intensity that always looks like he wants to tear you apart, or maybe like he's furious that you're breathing the same air. You brace yourself for the shove, the laugh, the loud insult that will set the rest of them off, but it doesn't come. He just turns on his heel with a harsh, aggressive swear and storms toward the boys' changing area, leaving a wake of tense, confusing energy behind him.
There is momentary ease at his departure, but not enough for you to relax when Heath Duke and McNamara pass by shortly after him. Duke’s eyes flitted right past you—like passing over air or even a ghost, he pretended not to see you. You couldn’t tell if that was better or worse, but it always created a heavy sinking feeling in your stomach. Disposable and forgettable.
McNamara followed the lead of the other two and pretended not to see you. Though when his eyes did catch on you before passing, first there was a visible confusion that was quickly replaced by that same disdain that Chandler had—but much distilled from the same hatred and coupled with genuine a lack of understanding.
Inside the locker room, the tile was freezing. The air was thick with the suffocating cloud of cheap vanilla body spray and Aqua Net. You hid in the furthest stall to change into the standard-issue, one piece, hands shaking so badly you could barely get your legs through the holes.
It’s just forty-five minutes, you told myself, slowly approaching the doors to the pool, trailing behind classmates. Just forty-five minutes, and then you can go to English.
A hard surface caused you to stop and stumble back a few steps. Looking up, you realized too late that in your attempts to keep your eyes glued to the tiled floor, you had bumped into Veronica Sawyer. She made a noise of surprise, and turned around confused, at the sight of you, she gave a tightlipped smile before rushing the rest of the way inside.
You had frozen in your panic and after about a minute, started to enter the pool room. In the deep end floated the monsters. Shadowed under the bright lights, you could make out the whispering, snide comments and insults. Accidentally making eye contact with the watching gaze of Duke—though, the moment you met his eye, he looked away, nose crinkling.
Quickly, you turned your attention back downwards. Stepping into the cool pool water and waded out till your chest was a little beneath the water and near the cement walls. Cupping your hands into the water, you brought some to the surface and looked at the reflective surface of it.
The water doesn’t hide you. It never hides you. It just holds you in place like an insect trapped in resin, waiting for someone to notice how easily you can be broken.
The acoustics of the indoor pool turn every whisper into an accusation. You keep your chin submerged, the chlorinated water lapping against your lower lip, bitter and chemical. The occasional sharp whistle sound echoes through, piercing and shrill in volume. Miss Desjardin scans the room before leaving through the door to head to the restroom.
The moment she steps out the water shifts.
It isn't a gentle wave; it’s a heavy, deliberate displacement that travels across the pool and hits your chest like a physical blow. You feel the current before you see them. The laughter from the center of the pool dies down, replaced by a sudden, expectant silence that makes the hair on your arms stand up beneath the water.
You look up, your eyes stinging from the chlorine, and your heart stops.
They are coming toward you. Heath Chandler leads them, he isn't swimming, instead wading through the chest-high water, his broad shoulders breaking the surface like a prow, his wet blonde hair slicked back from his forehead. His face is set in that familiar, terrifying mask of absolute disgust, but his eyes are fixed on you with a strange, frantic intensity. To his left is Duke, his jaw set, his eyes fixed stubbornly on a point just above your head as if looking directly at you might stain him. To his right is McNamara, looking slightly smaller, his eyes darting toward Chandler for cues on how to breathe, how to look, how to hate you. And trailing just a step behind them, her expression an unreadable mask of discomfort, is Veronica Sawyer.
You press your spine harder into the abrasive concrete wall, wishing the rough stone would open up and swallow you whole. Please, you think, a frantic, silent prayer directed at a God who has never once answered you in a public place. Please, let them just be swimming past. Let me be invisible.
But Chandler stops five feet away. The water sloshes up around his ribs, and the sheer heat radiating from his anger seems to warm the cool pool around you. He doesn't look at the others. He looks down at you, his chest heaving with that same sharp, agitated hitch you heard in the hallway.
"Look at it," Chandler says, his voice dropping into that low, rasping growl that always makes your skin prickle. He doesn't raise his voice, but the acoustic tiles overhead carry it perfectly, echoing his disgust back down upon you. "Sitting in the corner like a drowned rat. Don't you know you're contaminating the water for everyone else, White?"
You don't answer. You never answer. You pull your arms tightly to your chest beneath the surface, trying to make yourself as small as humanly possible.
Duke shifts his weight in the water, his nose crinkling in that familiar, clinical disdain. He looks at you for a fraction of a second—actually looks at you—and for a heartbeat, you think you see a flicker of something ancient in his eyes. A memory of a porch swing, of library books, of a time before he learned how to look through you. But the look vanishes as quickly as it came, replaced by a cold, performative sneer. "Seriously, Heath, it’s creepy," Duke murmurs, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of the childhood warmth you used to rely on. "She looks like she’s waiting to drag someone under."
The words cut deeper than Chandler’s insults ever could. Disposable. Forgettable. A ghost who used to be a friend.
"I—I'm just staying out of the way," you whisper, the words slipping out before you can stop them. Your voice sounds pathetic, a wet, trembling thing that bounces off the concrete walls and makes McNamara let out a sharp, mocking laugh.
"Oh, it speaks," McNamara says, though his eyes are wide, darting from Chandler to you with a bizarre, tense confusion. He’s mimicking Chandler's posture, trying to force his face into an expression of pure disgust, but there’s a strange, erratic energy in the way he watches you. It’s the same look he had in the hallway—as if he’s trying to solve a puzzle he hates. "Maybe we should help it sink. See if it knows how to swim or if it just floats like garbage."
Veronica doesn't say anything. She stands a half-step behind McNamara, her fingers twisting together beneath the water. When you look at her, her eyes drop instantly to the surface, her lips pressing into a thin, tight line. She won't help you. No one ever helps you.
"Shut up, Heath," Chandler snaps suddenly, his head whipping around to glare at his friend with an intensity that seems entirely disproportionate. McNamara blinks, startled, stepping back a half-inch into the deeper water.
Chandler turns his burning, furious gaze back to you. His knuckles are white, his hands clenched into fists beneath the surface. He looks terrified of you—or terrified of the fact that he’s standing this close to you. His jaw is clenched so hard a small muscle in his cheek jumps rhythmically. "You think hiding makes it better?" he rasps, stepping a single inch closer. His eyes darted back towards the others, the anger combined with a mocking smirk. “I wonder, did your mother bless the water before you came in? But if that was the case, wouldn’t it have burned you by now?”
You force your eyes up to meet his, your whole body trembling. His eyes are a violent, stormy blue, and they are tracking the line of your collarbone, the wet hair plastered to your forehead, with a predatory, suffocating focus. It’s a look that feels like a physical hand gripping your throat, squeezing the breath right out of you. He hates you. He wants to destroy you. You can feel the sheer, rolling waves of his animosity washing over you in the water.
And then, a sharp, white-hot needle of pain strikes deep within your abdomen.
The pain is sudden and agonizing, a violent cramping sensation that twists your insides into a tight, agonizing knot. It feels like something is tearing loose inside you, something heavy and violating in its intensity.
"What’s the matter, White?" Duke asks, his voice sharp, a sudden edge of genuine alertness cutting through his cold facade as he notices you flinch. "You gonna throw up?"
"No," you choke out, the pain taking a second, deeper bite upward into your ribs. Your breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps. You try to push yourself further up against the concrete wall, but your legs feel weak, like water themselves.
"Get away from her, Heath," Veronica’s voice cuts through the tension, sudden and sharp. She takes a step forward, her hand reaching out as if to pull Chandler back by the shoulder, her eyes wide with a sudden, dawning horror. "Something’s wrong."
But Chandler doesn't move. He’s staring down at the water between you.
The pain in your stomach eases for one fraction of a second, replaced by a strange, heavy warmth that begins to bloom between your thighs. It feels thick. It feels wrong.
You look down through the clear, chlorinated water, tracking the sudden, dark shadow that is beginning to curl outward from beneath the hem of your navy-blue swimsuit.
It isn't a shadow.
It’s a bright, horrific plume of deep crimson. It blossoms in the pristine blue water like an exotic, terrifying flower, unfurling in slow-motion tendrils that rise toward the surface. It catches the harsh, vibrating glare of the stadium lights, turning the clear pool into a swirling, smoky cloud of blood. Your blood.
The color hits Chandler’s skin first, a dark trail of red washing over his pale ribs as the current carries it outward.
A terrible, breathless silence falls over the small circle. McNamara makes a choking sound in the back of his throat, his eyes bulging as he takes a violent step backward, splashing water into the air. Duke freezes, his face draining of all color, his eyes locked onto the expanding red cloud with a look of absolute, paralyzed revulsion.
Chandler is still frozen in place, looking down at his own chest, where a thin film of your blood is lazily drifting across his skin, before his eyes snap back up to yours. The rage in his face is suddenly replaced by something feral, something frantic and violently unhinged. His breath hitches, a sharp, whistling sound in the quiet of the room.
"You're bleeding," Veronica whispers, her voice cracking as she finally breaks through the circle, her face twisted in immediate, agonizing confusion. "Oh my god, you're bleeding—"
The first distant note of a laugh echoes from the deep end of the pool before it descends just as piercingly as the whistle.
The water below was red. Bloody ink blotches that stretched out from your legs and faded into the artificially blue water. Digging your nails into your arms tightly, your face felt cold with a sick sweat. You screamed, and clawed your way out of the water and onto the tiled floor, collapsing in a heap, before clumsily getting to your feet and running towards the entrance.
Streaks of red stained a river down your legs, looking like veins, and mixing with the poolwater that still clung to you. Everything behind you, the taunting calls, and insults fell like static over your ears—muffled, but still audible no matter how far you got. Miss Desjardin, who had just come back from her break in the bathroom, yelled out as you were passing her. “Miss White. Where do you think you’re going? MISS WHITE!”
You ignored her, running to the showers. You needed to get it off, whatever this was. Blood. Were you dying? That had to be it.
Not bothering to change, you ducked into the one at the further end, and turned on both taps. Watching the blots of red disappear down the drain, but more came. Why was this happening? Did you do something wrong? Face scrunching, you closed your eyes tightly to try and stop the salt of tears from spilling over. Though your attempts were futile.
The water suddenly stopped. Gasping, your eyes flew open and saw Veronica standing close, slightly wet from having had the spray of the shower hit her while she had turned it off. Her face was flushed with guilt, eyes downcast as she hesitantly started to ask, “Hey… are you okay?”
The door to the showers opened and Miss Desjardin entered, not out of breath, but definitively out of the specific energy required to deal with wild packs of high schoolers. “I hope you have a good explanation for storming out like that—”
“I think she got her period,” Veronica interrupted, moving to shield you from view.
“Well, that’s hardly something to cry wolf about.” The teacher said, not unsympathetically, but confused and tired.
“Her first.”
Miss Desjardin blinked, peering behind Veronica’s form at you—soggy, crying, and visibly very confused. “Is that true?”
Looking up, eyes bloodshot and snot starting to dribble down, words caught in your throat when you opened your mouth. Swallowing back, you tried again, “I think I’m dying.”
A fresh wave of tears started. You didn’t want to die. Not like this. Miss Desjardin grabbed one of the nearby clean towels and rushed forward, past Veronica. She wrapped the soft fabric of it around your shoulders, slightly overtop your head. Taking the corner of it, she wiped your face and said, much softer. “You’re not dying. It’s—hasn’t your mother ever told you about periods?”
You didn’t answer, instead pulling the towel closer to you. Her lips thinned, nodding her head in thought, she started to move you slowly towards a brace bench to sit down. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before starting to speak, “It’s um—” Looking over at Veronica—who had backed up against one of the lockers, eyes wide and frozen with that same guilty expression. “Sawyer, go get some supplies from the dispensary.”
Veronica’s expression turned hesitant, eyes glued to you—shivering, downcast and trying your hardest to become invisible in the towel. “But I—is she gonna be okay?”
“I have this handled. Now unless you want me to think of something worse for you and your little buddies to do to make up for this, I would suggest you go.”
Veronica started to head towards the dispensary, but paused in the doorway, “I—I’m sorry.”
She disappeared behind the swinging door and Miss Desjardin rubbed a crease between her eyes before starting to speak again, voice hushed. “Periods are completely normal. They happen to every girl—in fact, I’m more surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. But, I can assure you that you’re not dying.”
She pulled the towel down from your face slightly, looking you in the eyes. “I have some books on it in my office if you want to look at them, okay?”
A small smile formed, reassuring and it caused you to relax a little, the towel falling looser around your shoulders. The door opened with a wide swinging that caused you to turn, frozen in fear. Veronica panted, out of breath and holding what looked like a small package or a piece of mail. Miss Desjardin stood and walked towards her, taking it from her grip and started speaking in a low-toned voice that was inaudible to your ears.
“What the hell was that, Sawyer?”
“I’m so sorry, is she okay?” Veronica looked back at you, you ducked your head down.
“No thanks to you and your friends.” The teacher scoffed and called back to you while holding the packaged period product up a little, “Get dried off and start getting dressed. I’ll be there in a moment to help you with this.”
You got up wordlessly, walking stiffly and slowly towards your locker. It clicked open, the door swinging open precariously, the corner of it almost hitting you square in the nose. Despite the lack of injury, you rubbed your nose and started to pull your clothes out.
Miss Desjardin turned back towards Veronica, “I’ll be talking to the principal about deciding a reasonable punishment for this. And don’t think I haven’t heard about all your other antics. I don’t know what your issue is with her, but if you or your friends even breathe near her…”
She didn’t continue instead turning away sharply and approaching you with slowness, but somehow that made the threat of her words hit Veronica more. Veronica’s eyes felt stuck on you, catching sight of the top of your head from behind the lockers. She didn’t want to do that? Why did she do that? What was wrong with her to make her think in that second that it was fine?
She didn’t hate you. In fact, she didn’t hate most of her classmates. But somewhere along the line of becoming friends with Chandler, Duke, and McNamara, something inside of her rotted. It was like she had lost touch with reality.
Pulling her arms close to her chest, she nodded to try and reassure herself. She would find some way to make it up to you. She just needed some time to think about it.
Pinterest for the header
@andromeda-graphics for the divider <3
I think I’m pretty happy with how this chapter turned out for the most part. There are some clunky parts in the dialogue that I’m hoping I’ll have time to sort out soon, but I’m pretty excited for this!
I’ve never wrote genderbent before, so I’m sorry if it’s not the best.
Hope everyone has a great night!!
