Good Girls Never Rise: A Dark Boarding School Romance

approve of, though.

“Well, anyway,” she started, shaking away the conversation. “Let’s get you settled. I’m glad to have a roommate again. My last one had to…”—Sloane averted her eyes—“leave pretty abruptly.”

“Why?” I asked curiously. “Did she break a rule or something?”

Sloane threw her head back and laughed as she pulled up my suitcase for me and placed it on the bed opposite of hers. “Oh, Gemma. We all break the rules here.”

My stomach fell. Then why would Richard send me here? Was it a test?

“Is this all you have?” Sloane asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. She glanced around my body and jutted her lip out.

“Um. Yes.” Seeing the confusion on her face, I quickly added, “I just wasn’t sure what to bring, so I only brought the essentials. I mean, we get uniforms here, right?”

She eyed me curiously, her hazel eyes showing a lot of depth behind them. “Yeah. We do. But we don’t have to wear them after classes end. You're welcome to borrow my things if you want. I have tons of clothes. My parents feel bad for sending me here, so they always send me new things.”

“They feel bad?” I asked, taking a step closer to my bed.

Sloane popped back onto hers with a whoosh, her legs dangling below. She was a tiny person. She hardly reached my 5’5” frame.

“Yeah.” She grabbed a small pink, sequined pillow and wrapped her arms around it. “They’re both in the military, and they both deploy a lot. My grandma used to take care of me, but she got Alzheimer’s, so she’s in a nursing home now. There was no one else I could stay with, so they sent me to the best boarding school in the nation.” She shrugged. “At least I’ll get into a good college, right?”

College. Such a wistful thought.

I began to turn around to empty out my suitcase that had nothing significant in it, except for one discolored Polaroid photo of me, my mom, and my brother, when Sloane asked, “What about you? Why are you here?”

Awkwardness hung in the air like the stench of spoiled meat as I tried to come up with something that wouldn’t raise too many questions and, again, something that wouldn’t make me seem…different. I had a serious battle of what was considered normal and what wasn’t.

“Are you one of the good ones? Or bad ones?”

My second pair of jeans were like dead weight in my hands as I pulled them out of my suitcase. “What do you mean?” I asked, looking for a place to put my clothes.

Sloane nodded to the chest of drawers pushed up against the wall next to a desk that had nothing on it but a pamphlet of some sort.

I get my own desk?

As I walked over to it, Sloane sat up a little taller. “Yeah. Are you an uber-smart student, and your parents sent you here for a better chance at a college? Or are you an orphan with a bad past?” Her last assumption was said jokingly, but it really wasn’t that far off from my real life.

Clearly seeing my confusion, Sloane chuckled while giving me an incredulous look. “You don’t know much about St. Mary’s, do you?”

Not a single thing. That actually wasn’t necessarily true. Richard had told me all about St. Mary’s, but I trusted him about as far as I could throw him, and spoiler alert: he was three times my size.

I shifted on my feet nervously. “Not really.” I glanced down. “My uncle sent me here. That’s who I lived with…before now.”

Pity was clear on her soft expression, but it was totally unneeded. Being sent here was an upgrade. “Oh. I’m...sorry?”

My heart had a slight dent as I pushed away any sad lingering thought that involved my mom and Tobias before I put my hand up. “It’s okay. But to answer your question…” I had to force the lie out. “I’m here for academics mostly. Plus, my aunt isn’t well, and my uncle works a lot, so it was better for all of us for me to come here.”

The lies were bitter on my tongue. Like I’d taken a mouthful of battery acid. That wasn’t true at all. Richard was forced to put me in Wellington Prep a few months ago because some of the girls at the group home, who had to relocate because of Auntie’s sudden debilitating stroke, talked to their social worker about the teen who lived in the house with Judge Stallard, thus raising too many questions. Then, I seemed to blow my chances for a normal life at a normal high school because I’d shared things with the wrong people.

I really could trust no one that Richard knew. In fact, I couldn’t trust anyone but the one social worker who was relentless in figuring out who I was and why I was living with Richard in the first place. And I didn’t even really trust her, either.

I quickly darted my eyes away as Sloane’s began to look suspicious. I rummaged through the rest of my things, shoving them all into the empty drawers as a distraction, when she finally spoke again.

“The headmaster will love you.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, slowly turning around.

She laughed lightly, tucking her shiny hair behind her ear again. Her other hand played with the glittery sequins on the pillow.