Some girls are born perfect.
They have perfect hair, perfect eyes, perfect skin.
They have perfect grades and high ambitions. They’re popular and admired. They’re adored and revered. And loved.
I’m not one of them.
That’s the first thing to know about me: I’m not perfect.
I have flaws. Many, many flaws.
I don’t have perfect grades. I don’t have high ambitions.
I don’t get why the sum of all the angles of a triangle has to be one hundred and eighty or the world will collapse. Or why when we talk about the heart, we reduce it to a muscular organ with four chambers that’s sole purpose is to pump blood through the body.
I’m far from being popular and I’ve got something called witchy eyes.
Or at least, I call them that.
They’re golden in color and they arch up at the corners, making them look sort of catty, witchy. Which is super poetic because I’ve got a witchy name too.
Salem.
Salem Salinger, and the second thing to know about me is that along with witchy eyes and a witchy name, I’ve got a witchy heart as well.
Meaning, my heart has secrets.
In fact, my heart is swollen with secrets. Many, many secrets like my many, many flaws. And that is why I did what I did.
The thing that landed me here.
The little, inconsequential crime that got me sent to St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers – an all-girls reform school.
Only they don’t call it a reform school anymore.
It’s not the 50s or the 60s. These days, schools like this are called therapeutic school. Because they believe in therapy. And restoration and reformation. They believe in teaching us to be productive members of society.
Who’s us?
We’re the bad and hopeless girls.
We’re the girls who break rules and love rebellion. We don’t like school or classes. So we keep getting into trouble with our classmates and teachers. Sometimes we get expelled multiple times from multiple schools until our parents or guardians are forced to take drastic actions.
Some of us break the law too, which technically I did.
I mean, there were a couple of cops involved. They didn’t handcuff me or anything but I had to ride in their squad car and go to the police station. But there were no charges pressed. Instead, I was sent to St. Mary’s.
I’ve been here almost a week and I’m already behind. In assignments, I mean.
God, the assignments and homework.
They’re very strict about that here.
So I really shouldn’t be falling asleep in class if I want to catch up.
But it’s Friday afternoon and it’s trigonometry and it’s not as if I’m magically going to understand everything to do with triangles and tangents by paying attention in the last fifteen minutes of the class anyway.
Honestly, I don’t think anyone is paying attention even though everyone is quiet and facing the blackboard.
There are probably fifteen other girls besides me in this small beige-painted concrete and cement classroom where I sit in the back.
We’re all slumped over the hard, wooden desks, with our chins in our hands.
We all have tight braids either flowing down our backs or draped over our shoulders, tied at the end with a mustard-colored ribbon. We all wear a starched white blouse and a mustard-yellow skirt that touches the tops of our knees. Except I have a black chunky sweater on because I’m a sunshine girl and the inside of St. Mary’s feels like winter.
We pair our uniforms with knee-length white socks and polished black Mary Janes.
Our notebooks are lying open in front of us and our butts are planted in chairs as hard and wooden as the desks.
From time to time, we squirm and adjust ourselves in our seats because I’m guessing the wood is digging into our asses.
At least, it’s digging into mine.
So it should be really hard to fall asleep, right? Or daydream.
But I’m doing both until I hear a sound.
Psst…
It’s coming from my right. Slowly I turn to find my neighbor, over in the adjacent row, trying to get my attention.
It’s a girl I’ve seen before.
Around campus, in the cafeteria and in the dorm building where every student who goes to St. Mary’s stays, but I’ve never talked to her.
Because no one talks to me here.
I’ve actually tried very hard to get them to talk to me or even smile at me or just wave their hand at me by waving mine but I haven’t been successful. I can’t even get my roommate, Elanor, to say hi to me.
So I don’t know what this girl, my neighbor with blonde hair, wants from me. But as soon as our eyes meet, she motions her head toward something.
Biting my lip, I look at what she’s pointing at.
It’s a piece of paper.
It’s sitting at the edge of my desk, folded over twice to make a little square.
For a second, I can’t comprehend what a piece of paper is doing on my desk. Confused, I look up from it and focus back on the girl. She widens her eyes at me and gestures at it with her chin again.