“How could I forget,” Pres, the redhead fires back, pulling a face at her. “You’re shoved so far up her ass, it’s a miracle you haven’t earned your Sphincter Patrol badge yet, Damiana.”
Damiana’s a cool name. Shame the girl herself doesn’t seem that cool. She’s three shades blonder than me and wearing a full face of makeup even before she’s stepped foot inside the bathroom. Maybe all that eyeliner is tattooed on.
“Wow. Your comebacks are getting a little better, Satan Spawn. Still need work, though. Maybe you need to practice in the mirror some more.”
The bathroom door opens, and a beautiful girl with a mass of black curls and cinnamon colored skin steps out, dressed in a towel. She immediately rolls her eyes. “God, not even seven-thirty and you’re already sniping, Dami. Give it a rest.”
Damiana growls as she shoves her way into the bathroom, nearly knocking the other girl off her feet.
“Rashida, this is Elodie,” Carina says, nodding in my direction.
Hiking her towel up and pinning it under her arm, Rashida gives me a perfunctory shake of the hand, too. “We’ll talk once you hit the three-month mark,” she says, then hurries off down the hall, walking into room 410 and slamming the door closed behind her.
“Sorry about her,” Carina says, leaning back against the wall. “The last couple of girls who arrived mid-semester all transferred out again pretty quick. I s’pose making the effort to get to know people if you’re not sure they’re gonna stick around is more difficult for some of us than others.”
“Transferred out?” Pres says, her eyebrows rising up her forehead. She sounds as if she disagrees with the term Carina used, but the other girl shoots her a sharp look.
“Don’t,” she warns. “Not yet. Jesus, let the girl settle in a little first before you go dredging up that shit, yeah?”
Uh…this has me slightly worried. “Dredging up what shit?”
“Nothing.” Carina says this firmly, eyeing the other girls. She’s daring them to open their mouths and breathe another word, which none of them do. Apparently, they’re willing to defer to Carina, because everyone standing in the hallway, Pres included, looks down at their feet.
“Okaaaay.” If there’s one thing I hate, aside from my father, it’s secrets. There have been so many in my past, far too many things kept from me over the years, that I have a really low tolerance for this kind of shit. It’s my first day, though. I just met these girls ten minutes ago. I can’t go demanding one hundred percent candor from them before I’ve even properly learned their names. I do my best to shrug it off.
“Hey, knock on my door before you go down, okay?” Carina offers. “I’m student-teacher liaison. I can take you to the office and grab your paperwork with you. And then we can head to English together if you like? I think a lot of our classes are gonna match up.”
I might be small in stature, but I’m still a big girl. I’m perfectly capable of finding my own way to the office and onto class. I learned my lesson a long time ago, though. If someone offers you an olive branch in the cutthroat waters of international schooling, you grab hold of that fucker and you don’t let go.
“Sure. Thanks. That’d be cool.”
The excursion to the office is uneventful, which is to say that the world doesn’t end while I’m filling out my health questionnaire and grabbing all of the reading lists and mandatory textbook titles I’ll need to order for my classes. Carina acts as mediator between myself and the decrepit, mostly deaf octogenarian behind the desk, shouting when the poor old girl can’t hear my responses. The lenses on her glasses are so thick that they make her eyes look eight times their normal size. Despite the visual aid, she squints at me over the top of a stack of paperwork, like it might actually help her hear me better.
Once we’re done, Carina snatches the map the administrator gave me out of my hands and tosses it straight into the trash, dragging me down a long, crooked hallway, lined with bunches of flowers in vases. “Won’t be needing that,” she sing-songs. “You have me to be your personal Wolf Hall tour guide. I can tell we’re gonna get on just fine. I knew the moment I saw the fishnets.”
I glance down at the fishnet tights she’s referring to. I’m wearing them under my favorite pair of ripped jean shorts. The Doc Martin boots I picked out are potentially overkill, but my look wouldn’t be complete without them.
I know it’s cold, but my outrageous clothes were first in a long line of protests I have planned for my stay at Wolf Hall. Tragically, when I came out of my room and saw Carina’s clothes, it became apparent that the students here can wear whatever the hell they feel like and get away with it. Her bright yellow bomber jacket and red jeans clash so violently, there’s a risk I’ll develop a migraine soon just from looking at her.
The other students’ clothes are a confusion of different styles and colors, too. There are enough ripped jeans and band t-shirts kicking around to make it look like we’re all about to walk through the gates of a music festival.
Quickly adding two and two together, I realize that Carina’s taking me straight to class. “Shouldn’t I drop my stuff off at my locker first?”
“Psshhh. We don’t have lockers. If you don’t wanna carry a bag around with you, you’re gonna have to run up to your room between periods, and trust me, there is not enough time for that shit. Come on. You’ll be fine.”
The room falls silent when Carina coerces me into English. Heads whip around, conversations come to a grinding halt…and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. On a battered leather couch underneath a massive picture window, the guy from last night is laid out like he downed a bunch of Special K for breakfast and the drugs have just kicked in.
He’s the first thing I notice.
The second thing I notice? There aren’t any desks.
Well, not in the traditional sense anyway.
A little stunned, I gape at the room as I take it all in: the armoires, the ottomans, the over-stuffed arm chairs, and the worn old writing desks dotted around the vast space. Most surprisingly, there are book stacks toward the rear of the room, wooden benches, and, low and behold, there is a monster of a fire roaring in the open fireplace.
I’ve never seen anything like it before in my entire life. “What…our English class is in the library?”
A chorus of snickers go up, courtesy of the other students draped over the armchairs and leaning against the writing desks. Two guys, sitting on the floor by the other large window trade a droll look, as if this whole what-the-hell-is-going-on bit is really old to them. I feel like I’ve just walked into Doctor Who’s TARDIS and made the mistake of exclaiming, ‘Wait a second! It’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!’
Carina kicks the boot of one of the guys sitting on the floor as she leads me past them toward an empty floral print couch. He lunges forward, baring his teeth and snapping them at her, but she ignores his performance. “No, the library’s way bigger than this. This is Doc Fitzpatrick’s den, as he likes to call it. He’s basically a god around here. Gets away with murder. He’s supposed to take his classes in the room they assigned him in the English block, but he says it’s easier to inspire his students in a more relaxed setting.”