by Bella King
If only I knew how hard that would be. Criminal activity at Ridgeview Boarding School begged for involvement. Whether you were bad or not, people wanted to pull you into their schemes. I experienced that on my first day at school, and perhaps I should have gone along with it. My life would have been a lot simpler if I had.
“Blonde girl, come here,” a woman’s voice barked in my direction.
I turned my head to look behind me, my silver-blonde hair flowing over my shoulder. I saw a woman standing a few yards away with two other women at either side of her, arms crossed and a scowl on her face.
I pointed to my chest and raising my eyebrows. “Me?” I asked, knowing that there was nobody else she would be calling out. I didn’t want trouble on my first day of school, but trouble had a way of finding me.
“Yes, you. Get over here,” the woman snapped, curling a finger to beckon me back toward her.
I looked around once more before walking slowly up to her. My simple black shoes clacked against the ancient stone floor of the hallway and echoed around the high ceiling. This place was as big as it was old, and sometimes the amount of space in the school seemed excessive. It was practically a castle.
I tried to keep my head up as I approached the woman and her posse. She was tall and slender, with high cheekbones and thin lips. There was an air of authority about her, and it wasn’t just from her snappy commands. She looked like someone who called the shots at this school.
I wasn’t much of a follower. I had learned not to follow people from the poor experiences I had with my ex-boyfriend, so if she expected me to start following her orders, she was sadly mistaken. I was nobody’s bitch these days.
“What’s your name?” She demanded to know when I had gotten close enough to her.
I came to a stop two feet from her, keeping a healthy distance. I wasn’t yet sure what she wanted, and it was always best not to get into someone’s personal space, especially at a school like this one.
I cleared my throat before speaking, trying to keep my voice from sounding weak. “Rose,” I said.
The woman and her two henchwomen snickered. “Rose?” She asked, smirking and shaking her head. “What kind of a stupid name is that?”
“It’s not stupid,” I countered, my temper already beginning to flare. It had gotten much worse since I was arrested and would probably only continue this way until I was in a better environment.
The woman’s smirk turned into a snarl. “It’s whatever I say it is. My name is Natasha, and you better remember it. You’d be a lot safer around here if you did.”
I assumed she was a dominant member of the local community, but I didn’t much care about that. I didn’t follow people whose first instinct was to insult me. I lodged her name in the back of my head anyway. It was always good to know who your enemies were.
I shrugged at Natasha’s threatening words. “Is there anything else you wanted to say to me?”
One of the women beside her lurched at me, but Natasha’s long arm shot out and blocked her path. “Relax, she’s new here,” Natasha said to the girl, her voice calm but serious.
I was surprised by the sudden movement, but my self-defense instincts were still there from having to defend myself from a man much larger than any of these women. I had my arms up to block my face in a second, and I was ready to bring a knee up to the gut of anyone who charged me.
Natasha chuckled. “I’m going to take it easy on you, but I suggest you fall in line here at Ridgeview. People disappear all the time,” she said, waving a hand in the air casually and turning to leave.
The girl that had lurched at me made a face at me before following Natasha. They all walked away from me, their strides arrogant and purposeful.
I let out the breath I had been holding in. I couldn’t believe that I had already been confronted by the school bitch during my first day here. She was diligent. I’ll give her that, but I wasn’t going to ‘step in line,’ as she had put it. I wasn’t that type of woman.
I turned on my heels and walked the direction I had been heading before. I needed to unpack my belongings in the dormitory where the other new arrivals would be doing the same. We had surprising mobility on the school grounds, but the administration kept a closer eye on the newcomers. I would have liked it if they kept an eye on people like Natasha instead.
I listened to the echoes of my own footsteps as I made my way to the dormitory, making a note of my bleak surroundings so that I wouldn’t get lost in this place. The school was huge, and this was only the beginning. I hadn’t even attempted to get to my classes yet. That would be another challenge entirely.
I passed by a broken wall, bricks literally laying in a pile on the floor as though someone had ripped them from the wall and tried to get inside of the school walls. I looked around for someone to acknowledge this mess, but there were very few students around. The ones that did pass seemed to ignore it completely, unphased by the obvious destruction of school property. I wondered if that was normal here.
I stared at the wall for a few more seconds, noticing how some of the bricks looked to be chipped away. It was a bit unsettling that someone had tried to smash through a wall, and nobody seemed to care.
I tried to put it out of my head as I continued to the dormitory. I was sure there would be plenty more for me to worry about at this school aside from the destruction around me. Natasha, for one, seemed like a bigger threat. I would try to keep my distance from her.
Chapter 2
“17 beds, but not a single fucking nail in them,” a girl exclaimed from beside me as I rolled my belonging out over my bed.
I looked up at her, noticing the deep frown on her face. She was pissed about the beds for some reason, but she didn’t look as threatening as Natasha had. I didn’t want to talk to her though. There was no telling what she was actually like, so I put my head back down.
“Do you have any sharp objects on you?” The girl asked, her question directed toward me.
I glanced up again, getting a better look at her. Her frown looked like more of a frustrated one than an angry one, and her black hair was all over her face, as though she had been running around frantically before I came. She probably had been looking for a nail.
“Excuse me?” I asked, not entirely understanding her question.
“I’m looking for a nail or something, and I can’t find any,” she said.
“Is your bed broken?” I asked, looking down at it.
Her bed looked like all the other ones in the dormitory. It was low to the ground, narrow, and short enough to have your feet hanging off the end if you were too tall. Thankfully, I wasn’t, but some of the other women here would have a problem.
The girl chuckled. “It’s not broken. I need a nail so I can stick it through this piece of wood,” she said, holding up a small plank of wood that resembled a thick ruler.
“What for?” I asked, wanting to know what she was up to before I tried to help.
“You put a nail near the top, having it sticking out the other side,” she explained, tracing a finger decorated with chipped black nail polish around the top of the wood. “Two simple ingredients, and you got yourself a weapon. Anyone who decides it’s a good idea to run up on me,” she said, suddenly smacking the stick down on her mattress with a loud thwap. “Bam! Nail through the stomach.”
I winced when she hit the mattress. That looked like a great way to put someone in the hospital.
“You’d probably go to jail for that,” I said.
She laughed as though I had made the funniest joke in the world, slapping her knee for emphasis. “Damn girl, you’re hilarious. We’re already in jail. Nobody gets out of this place unless they fucking die.”
“It’s a boarding school, though,” I said, holding my palms up.
“You try walking out the door then,” she replied, placing her hands on her hips and staring at me with her lips tightly pressed together.
She had a point. You weren’t allowed to leave the school,
unless it was for recess or afterschool sports. Even then, you wouldn’t be allowed off the school campus. They had fences up and everything.
I nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
“You’re damn right I’m right,” she said loudly. “I’m also Eden. What’s your name?”
“Eden,” I said, repeating her name under my breath. She would understand what it was like to have an unusual name. Eden probably got a fair amount of remarks on her name.
“Your name is also Eden?” she asked, crooning her head like a pelican toward me.
I hadn’t thought she had heard me. I shook my head. “No, it’s Rose. Nice to meet you,” I said, holding out a hand.
Eden reached across the bed and shook it firmly. “I like you, Rose. Which is good, because we sleep beside each other and this stick is long enough to put a nail through your forehead in your sleep if you piss me off,” she said, whacking it against the palm of her hand.
“Just do it quickly so I don’t have to suffer,” I joked.
Eden laughed. “It’s good to have a sense of humor in this place. Depression can hit you hard if you’re not on the lookout for it. Some guy already snapped and it’s only the first day.”
“He snapped?” I asked, perking up.
“Uh hu, like a twig. The man took a hammer to the wall and tried to escape, breaking through a whole layer of bricks before anyone stopped him. It would probably be easier to walk out the front door, to be honest, but crazy people don’t behave rationally, you know,” she explained.
A light went on in my head. “I think I saw that wall on the way here,” I said.
“Honey, everyone saw that wall. I don’t think they’ll fix it either. There’s too much other shit to deal with around here to bother with it,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. She seemed to be a fountain of valuable information, and I would continue asking her questions until she grew bothered by it. I thought it good to learn as much as I could to protect myself from the insanity that went on here. I was already hearing terrible things.
“The administration has, like, two janitors. Do you know how many students are here puking on homemade liquor and spraying blood around the bathroom on a daily basis?”
I shook my head.
“Over 3000 and growing by the day.”
“Wow, so how do you know all this?” I asked. She had only gotten here today, just like me, so I didn’t see how she had all this information packed in her pretty head.
Eden put the stick behind her on her bed, which was already neatly made and rubbed her small hands together. “Let me tell you a story about a girl named Maria. She used to go here, until a group of guys pushed her out of a window and broke her neck. Now, she’s paralyzed, but she can still talk.”
“That’s horrible,” I said.
“Maria is my sister, but she doesn’t go here anymore. She didn’t want me to end up in the same place, but here I am,” she said, an edge of bitterness in her otherwise cheerful voice. “Now all I have to do is survive.”
“Jesus, that’s really awful, but I bet she told you a lot of useful stuff,” I said.
“Oh yeah, she did. Like, don’t fuck with the guys here. Don’t fuck with any of them. They’ll break your heart if you’re lucky. If you’re not, well, maybe it’ll be your neck,” she said, crossing her arms over her flat chest.
Eden had a lot of personality, which made me want to believe that she was stretching the truth, but that was wishful thinking. I didn’t want it to be that bad here, but it was only my first day and I had witnessed some concerning things. It looked like it was only going to get worse, and that Eden was right about this school. It was a prison for psychopaths.
“I guess we have to stick together,” I said, turning my body back around my bed while keeping my head craned toward Eden.
She nodded, staring down the line of bed and refocusing her eyes. “That would be ideal,” she replied, the words dripping from her mouth.
I looked down the line at where she was looking and saw Natasha charging down with her two minions, looking just as pissed as could be. I wondered what got her panties in a twist, but then again, I was probably better off not knowing.
She breezed past Eden and me, refusing even to acknowledge our existence, and disappeared down the end of the dorm into the next unit. There was a hell of a lot of units, which made me feel a bit safer. With so many students, she probably wouldn’t make it a point to single me out. At least, that’s what I hoped.
As it turned out, Natasha wasn’t nearly as much of a problem as some of the guys were here. She sucked up to them pretty fast if they were attractive and dominant enough, which made her more of a second hand than the true leader at the school.
I only discovered this after seeing her interact with more people throughout the week and seeing who she yelled at, and who she sucked up to. She wasn’t the one at the top of the food chain at Ridgeview Boarding School, but neither was I. She still had considerably more authority than I did.
Chapter 3
Eden never did find that nail she was looking for, but she did end up getting a few paperclips from another student, which she unbent and sharpened the ends of, making them look more like needles than something you would use to hold papers together. Her weapon looked even more intimidating than if she would have used a nail.
I felt safer around her than many of the other women, but she still struck me as being a tad over-aggressive. She talked a lot about how she would put her weapon through the eye of any guy that dared touch her, but so far, I had seen nothing to suggest that the guys here were dangerous at all. Sure, many of them were over six feet tall and appeared to have little else on their enormous frames but muscle, but they didn’t say a word to me during my first week.
Well, that was until I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Then, everything changed.
My eyes popped open, quickly adjusting to my surroundings. My face was covered in cold sweat, and my body ached under the covers as though I had been twisting it around all night. I probably had been.
The past was chasing after me in my dreams, injection my brain with lies and riddles that had spawned from the twisted heart of my ex-boyfriend. All the games, all the abuse, and all the trauma came back to me in my dreams, gripping my stomach like icy death, refusing to let me rest in peace.
My heart began to return to a normal speed, but I was too afraid to fall back asleep and return to the dream world again. It was a torturous place, and I hated to sleep because of it. It was why I was often tired and struggled to go to bed at night, but also why I woke up so early in the morning despite having been a night owl my whole life. I was afraid.
I rose in my bed, kicking the tangled covers off my legs. They were twisted so tight around one of my feet that I had to bend over and peel them off to get my foot free. After that, I looked around the room. The people that normally ran around the school shrieking at teachers and throwing fits in the hallways were resting so peacefully that they almost seemed innocent. I knew better than to believe that, though. Waking them up by accident would likely result in bodily harm.
My bladder told me that I had no choice but to risk it though. I wasn’t going to make it until daylight, and there was a bathroom in a room adjacent to the dormitory that I could use. I rotated my body and hung my feet over the side of the bed, scoping out the room one last time before leaving the bed. Nobody was awake but me.
I gently lowered myself onto the floor, landing softly on the stone floor in my pale blue pajamas. There wasn’t an inch of this school that wasn’t made of stone or brick. It occurred to me that if there had been wood in this place, then it would have perished in a ball of flames long ago. Stone was probably for the best.
I crept out from between Eden’s and my beds, glancing once more at her small chest rising and falling beneath the covers of her bed. She was so energetic during the day that she slept like the devil had plugged her ears at night. I was thankful for thi
s because, despite our new friendship, I was still scared of that stick with the sharpened paperclips in it that she kept tucked beside her all the time.
My bladder got more excited as I walked toward the end of the room, approaching the bathroom. Unfortunately, this dorm only had a single bathroom instead of a group one, so if you wanted to use it in the dorm, you would have to wait your turn. I was met with this unpleasant reality when I got there. Someone was already using it, and I had to go badly.
I watched the strip of glowing light under the door for some kind of movement or shadow, but there was none. Whoever was in there wasn’t close to finishing. I waited a few seconds before deciding to make the trip out into the hallway to use the public bathroom. We weren’t allowed out there at night, but I heard that the night security did a piss poor job of monitoring students after dark. It was worth the risk so that I didn’t wet myself waiting.
I stormed down the hallway and out of the dormitory. It connected to the rest of the school via a long staircase with steps that were too tall and thin to be up to building code. One wrong step and you were likely to twist your ankle if you didn’t go tumbling down them altogether. I was careful to take them slowly, especially in this darkness.
As I descended the staircase, I felt like I had left the dormitory much further behind than I actually had. Maybe it was the darkness, or perhaps the height of the steps that caused this effect, but it was strong and unyielding as I finally reached the bottom of the staircase. I was worlds away from my warm bed, and I was starting to get uneasy at being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be at night.
My bladder overrode the urge to venture back up the stairs, and I pressed on through the cold darkness of the school halls. It was a solid five-minute walk to get to the bathroom. It had felt so much closer during the day when I wasn’t concerned about making too much noise, but now that I was in stealth mode, it seemed to take forever.
The men’s dormitory connected on the other side of the hall as a mirror image of the women’s dorm. The bathroom was located in the center between the two. I looked up at the signs and noticed that the men’s bathroom was closer to the women’s dorm, and the women’s was closer to the men’s. That was odd, but not the only thing strange about this place.