by Sarwah Creed
Being alone while I ate reminded me that I was here alone. I tried to shake it off and laughed at the idea of what was waiting for me today.
I would be one step ahead of the fucking game.
I decided that, at lunchtime, I wouldn’t even get in the line. I wouldn’t wait. I wouldn’t torture myself with the idea that the food that was in front of me, would reach my lips and stay there. Just like my first day here, it went in and swiftly came out, at the same speed that I digested it after wearing clothes that were a few sizes too small, thanks to Claire.
Comical now, looking back.
Not really!
I’d eaten too much and nerves about another day in the academy started to settle in. It was like I was told at the funeral of Gran and even Mom, ´Time heals wounds´. I had to keep telling myself the same thing. I wasn’t hurting, I was just trying to get by, and it felt near enough impossible at the moment.
I had to be positive as I stood up and got ready for another day.
Positive thoughts were the only things that were going to get me through this week, and I had to have a fuckload of them to get me through the day.
“You ready?” Mr. Hawk said as he stood at the door.
How long was he standing there?
Too many questions were running through my mind and I felt like a trained puppy as I didn’t ask him any of the questions in my head but instead smiled as I said, “Yes, sir.”
He didn’t look convinced as he approached me. “How was yesterday?”
I nodded. “Good.”
He still didn’t look convinced, so I said, “Fine!”
He moved even closer and motioned for me to sit down.
“I think that we both know that’s not true.”
He cleared his throat and avoided eye contact. I wondered for a second, as he adjusted his jacket, if he was more nervous than I was.
“I don’t fit in.” I was surprised at my honesty, especially to someone like him. Someone of authority. Something that I’d never done in the past, because I had Mom or someone close to me to talk to. Now I just had no one. No one but him.
“They say that I’m an orphan. Even without that, my family’s not rich. Not like the kids here. I only speak one language and most of the kids switch between two or more languages. And I’m clearly not a size zero like the rest of the girls…”
I was telling him the list when he said.
“Someone commented on your size?”
Really? That was the only thing that he heard out of all the other things that I said or rather that was the only thing that bothered him. Me being called fat.
“Not exactly...” I whispered, upset that he didn’t hear anything else or care about anything else. Either way he was the only one that knew about my situation and for some reason talking to him made me feel a little better. Not a whole lot, because the man was as cold as ice. But just being able to say what was on my mind, really on my mind, made me feel better.
“Well every time I eat…” I was searching for the words. The right ones. “It’s like they stop me.”
He shook his head dismissing my claim. “It doesn’t mean that they are calling you names. They just want to get to you. That’s how bullies work.”
He sounded as if he was talking from experience and I wondered, was he a bully once upon a time or was he the victim like me?
“You need to let them know that they cannot get to you and in time, things will change.”
“I don’t know if I could be here that long for them to get bored. They’re pushing me out and the only thing I feel like doing is jumping…”
“I didn’t think that you were that type,” he said as he started to push his chair out as if he was ready to leave.
I knew that I shouldn’t ask, but I was curious about what he meant. Type?
“Type?” I asked scratching my head.
“Weak,” he spat out as if it was some type of disease. One that he had no intention of catching.
As he said it a cold shiver ran down my spine. I expected to fall, after all he’d just told me that I was weak. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I thought about what he’d just said, and I couldn’t deny it. He was fucking right.
Chapter Twenty Three
I went to classes, I went through the day, my head down and avoided lunch. The sad part about lunchtime was the idea of not eating, the good part about it, meant that half the day had gone by.
And I needed it to go by. For some crazy reason proving to Mr. Hawk that I wasn’t a coward seemed to be the only thing on my mind.
That and the twins, as much as I avoided staring at them or even breathing the same air as them, it was impossible.
They spoke like three or four languages. I watched them in Spanish class, and French class. God knows why I’d even said that I could speak it, when the closest I had to French was eating French toast. And they also spoke German. Or so that was what I thought that they were speaking but I knew nothing about Germany let alone the language.
All I knew was that when they came into the hallway it was as if the spotlight was on them. They made everyone turn to them. Even the damn janitor. No one did that back at my old high school. Sure, the jocks were the ones who had the girls. They needed to get good grades in order to stay on the football team, but even the teachers were killing themselves to help them. Just so that they could get that scholarship and the school could talk about them getting so many scholarships for kids to college. That was all they needed, to have more money pumped into the schools so that more kids would want to go there.
This place.
It was different.
Sure, they were rich, but part of me wondered if the twins had the teachers giving them the option of extra classes or whether Mr. Hawk was doing it himself. Was he really their dad? They looked nothing like him which made me wonder if they were adopted. Or maybe they took after their mom? It was kind of weird if their own dad was the principal. Then again it would have its benefits.
What was it about them?
I was watching them glide down the halls and I was wondering about their problems as if they had any, unlike me. I should be relieved I’d managed minutes watching them without being noticed. That was when she came up to me. Claire stared at me and her eyes were locked on mine with her face so close that I had nowhere to look. I guess it was clear that I’d been staring at them and she wanted to make me suffer for it.
“So,” she shouted as she headed straight for the books that were in my hand and she pushed them to the floor. They landed on my feet like a ton of bricks. I screamed out in pain and now no one was looking at the twins, but at me.
“If you want your life here to go better, then you need to wise up!” she yelled at me.
I thought that she would get tired of humiliating me if I ignored her and let things go, especially because I was staying out of her way, but apparently not. Then a crazy thing happened, something that I didn’t expect. As I looked up, I saw one of the twins. They were standing next to me, smiling and I didn’t know whether that was a good or bad thing.
“Leave her alone!” he commanded.
She huffed as she crossed her arms. She didn’t try to retaliate or even argue with him. She cut her eye at me as if she was going to make me pay one way or another and I didn’t like it one bit.
“We’ll see about if she needs to be treated this way or not on Friday.”
She smiled.
I raised my eyebrow, scared to speak as I whispered, “Friday?”
He moved closer to me and I could smell his strong cologne, that sent me into a trance and for some crazy reason, I smiled. It was as if I was a magnet being drawn to him and I knew that the closer I got, the more I would regret it.
“Yes,” he roared in my ear.
It should have scared me, but instead it sent shivers down my spine and made me even more excited at the same time.
Were the Hawk twins hypnotists too? I knew that I shouldn’t want to know what was ha
ppening on Friday, my sixth sense which had been dragged out of the window and fell and had no intention of returning ever since I started at this place, made a surprise visit and said, ´Don’t wanna know. Please!´
“That’s when we choose the girl.” Trent sneered down at me, as if he knew I wasn’t in my right mind at all.
“Girl?” My voice squeaked out weakly.
I’d lost my damn mind too.
What the fuck?
“All new girls need to compete in the ritual to avoid….” He paused, as if to put some weight behind his next words.
“Being treated like shit?” I asked, my eyes glued to his. Wow, where did this new wave of confidence come from? Maybe because his hand was slowly moving down my back and his eyes, damn those sky-blue eyes were driving me wild.
“Not quite. You can be in or you can be out. You can stand out like a sore thumb or you can simply be moved up a stage. Think of it as a graduation.”
Trent wasn’t speaking, his lips weren’t moving but they sounded so alike that it felt as if the words were coming from his mouth.
“So, it’s some sort of game? Like an initiation ceremony?” I asked because it sounded like something that would happen to get into a sorority.
“We’re not in college,” one of them sneered.
What difference did it make? He’d already made it clear that this was something that I had to be a part of to make the bullying go away and so I wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.
“It’s a way to make this kind of treatment go away,” he offered.
All I could think was, Why do I have to do this thing and why can’t it all just go away?
Trent smirked as his finger traced under my chin.
“Wouldn’t life be boring if everything was so simple?”
I met his smirk and said, “In that case let the games begin.”
Chapter Twenty Four
At last, a friend. Someone who spoke to me and it wasn’t Mr. Hawk and it wasn’t someone trying to bully me. I found out that I wasn’t the only new girl who started last week. There were two more of us.
“You see. We’ve all been invited to this game,” she whispered as the rest of them left and we were alone at my lockers. The rest meaning both the Hawk twins and the girl that was enjoying making my life a living hell. It was as if the two new girls wanted to make sure that the coast was clear before they came to me.
“What game?” I asked, totally lost after the way they ran up to me like a swarm of bees, telling me about being brave and telling me about Friday.
“We can talk about that later.” She brushed my question aside. “So, I’m Goldie. This is Ruby and you’re Vicki, right? But it ends with an I and not a y.”
A strange observation, but I nodded in response to her question.
“We’ve been dying to talk to you. But we were worried about making our lives even worse than they already are.”
My eyes traced Goldie from head-to-toe, but it made no sense. The bullied kids in Rock Hill were always the ones that stuck out. Not perfection. The only thing wrong with Goldie was her name, even if it was clear why her parents named her that. It was as if every part of her was made out of gold, her eyes, hair and even her skin gleamed slightly.
As for Ruby, well she was a lot shorter than me. And we were, give or take, around the same waist size. She had dark hair and blue eyes a lighter shade than mine. So, she was a shorter version of me and that must have made her a target.
But as Goldie carried on talking, I started to see why she was being bullied.
“It’s just that I never had this trouble in my old school.”
“We should be in class,” Ruby said nervously.
“It’s like I’m not the popular one and I’m just not used to that. I mean back in Denver everyone loved me. I’m funny. Pretty. Great company…”
She was struggling to think of something else to say about herself, but I was thinking of one. One that she should have started with, vain!
“So, imagine my shock when I came here, and all this drama started. Drama. Me. I mean I nearly called Daddy to tell him to get me the hell out of here. But then I heard about Friday.”
No more was Ruby nervous about leaving. She seemed to be in a trance as she repeated, “Friday.”
Which left me wanting to find out what was the deal with fucking Friday?
“Fri..”
Before I could even finish the word, or the question that had been rolling around in my mind, Mr. Hawk appeared out of nowhere obviously pacing the halls and asked, “Ladies, shouldn’t you be in class?”
We nodded.
But at least I had friends, sort off. Even if they weren’t real friends. At least they were someone I could talk to as I started the countdown to Friday and whatever was supposed to happen on this day.
I was brave and stupid as I said, “Let the games begin!”
As if I knew what I was talking about, I didn’t have a clue.
Chapter Twenty Five
“So?” Ruby asked, “What’s the deal with you staying with Mr. Hawk?”
We were in the cafeteria after hours. It was quiet, and it made a change from finishing classes and heading to my room and catching up on work. I didn’t think that I was behind in final year, but I had loads of work to do all the time. Some part of me felt as if I needed a couple of more years at the school just to be up to date.
“He said that with the way things went with my roommate that it made sense.”
Goldie nodded. “Special treatment, huh?”
Then she winked at me. I didn’t know what she meant, but I met her smile. Special treatment wasn’t the word that I would use, but I suppose in a way it was.
“Yeah. I’m at the house. But for how long, I don’t know.”
“That sucks.” Ruby sighed as she slouched down on a bench and dropped her bag which made a big thumping sound that startled me.
“Well. Yeah in a way. I don’t know if that’s why they’re treating me this way. Because they think that I’m in with the principal.”
Ruby laughed. “Girl, you need to loosen up and get with the program.”
Goldie agreed. “They’re treating you this way cause you’re new. Like us.”
I replied, “That’s just stupid.”
Ruby smiled. “Yep. The rich and the privileged run this school and that’s the problem. Especially the Hawk twins.”
“They’re his sons?”
They both shook their heads. “Not sons. Stepsons. Girl how can you be in the house and not know that? Apparently, their mom is some kind of socialite. She spends more time flying all around the place and not enough at home.”
“Wow. Never knew that a principal got paid that much.”
My next question was going to be how Ruby knew all this if she was one of the new girls.
“You really need to get with the program.”
That phrase again. It kind of irritated me.
Goldie motioned for me to sit closer and I didn’t hesitate, seeing as this was a golden opportunity. I couldn’t help it. Her hair was like damn gold!
“Hawk and his stepsons don’t get on. There’s all kind of rumors about why, but they sure the hell don’t. That’s for sure. So, they all stay out of each other’s way. They act like jerks.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hot jerks and as long as they don’t meddle with him, then he lets them do pretty much whatever they want to do.”
“That sounds so fucked up.”
They both nodded in agreement. “Uh-huh.”
“There’s all kind of crazy rumors about the reasons. Some say that their mom’s some kind of drunk or coke head and Mr. Hawk drove her to it.”
“What, people think he takes drugs? Or is an alcoholic?”
I hated to burst their bubble, but Mr. Hawk was clean.
“No, not really. Just that he’s such a dick to her that it drove her to drink,” Goldie answered, her eyes narrowed as she leaned in to whisper to me dramatically. She pulled awa
y when she was finished and waited for my response.
“He seems kind of…cold, sometimes, but I don’t know if he’s a dick.” I shrugged and looked away. “Maybe he’s different with his family, but he’s been sort of nice to me. Even if he does scare the shit out of me.”
We all laughed at that, and they nodded in agreement.
“So, how do you two know all of this if you’re new?” I watched them as they gave each other a knowing grin.
“We listen! Everyone ignores us, right? It’s like we’re invisible apart from when they’re putting laxatives in our food, dying my clothes pink or finding some way to torture us. So we decided that if that’s the case, then we’ll listen to what everyone says and pull the pieces together.” Ruby was the one that shrugged this time, her eyes full of wicked delight. “You’d be surprised what you can find out.”
Goldie nodded in agreement and put her elbows on the table to rest her head in her hands. “We don’t exist to them unless they want to treat us like shit. As if they’re bored or something, the rest of the time they forget that we can still hear and see perfectly fine, whether they acknowledge us or not.”
“I see.” I leaned back in my chair and looked at them. What they said made sense. Up to now, the only attention I’d been given by any of them was negative, but eventually, once they got tired of playing with me, I’d become invisible too, just like Goldie and Ruby. That sounded like pure bliss to me.
“How long?” I demanded to know, my eyes going between them.
“How long for what?” Goldie asked, at a loss as to what I meant.
“How long before I reach the ignored phase?” I saw them both smile with understanding, but they burst my fragile bubble of hope when they shook their heads.
“If you don’t win the ritual then the bullying can go on for the rest of the year. If you do, well, you’ll join the cream of the crop and all of it stops. As for when do you reach ignore phase? I think you’re past that now. You’re in their sights.”