What the…
Oh.
Oh!
I finally get it. It’s a note.
She’s passing me a note and she wants me to open it.
Got it.
Immediately, I go to grab it but stop, my hand suspended in midair. I look up and see that the teacher, Mrs. Miller, is busy solving a weird-looking equation on the board. So I’m safe there.
But why is this girl writing me a note?
Doesn’t she know that I’m the most hated girl at St. Mary’s right now?
I’m the principal’s ward.
Yeah, the principal of St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers, Leah Carlisle, is my guardian. She’s been my guardian for eight years now, ever since I was ten.
And somehow because of that I’m enemy number one around campus.
So far in the week that I’ve been here, people have glared at me, tried to trip me in the cafeteria, accidentally-on-purpose bumped into me in the dorm hallways and locked me in the bathroom.
From what I can gather, the students think I’m a spy, and if they talk to me and reveal their secrets, I might go to Leah and rat them out. And teachers think that since I’m her ward, I’ll be given special treatment.
So it’s natural for me to debate whether or not I should open the note.
But then I hear my neighbor’s whispered words. “Open it.”
I swivel my gaze at her and she says those words again, or rather mouths them, open it, before giving me a big smile.
A big and brilliant smile.
It’s the smile that does it.
Someone is smiling at me.
A girl at St. Mary’s – my new reform/therapeutic school – is smiling at me and I didn’t even have to do anything to get that smile.
So fuck it.
My hand resumes its journey and practically snatches the note off the desk. I bring it down to my lap and open it.
It’s boring, huh? I get it. Miller is a snooze-fest. But don’t let her catch you falling asleep. She loves to take away student privileges.
Ah, the infamous privileges.
This whole reform/therapeutic school system runs on a little thing called student privileges, which you earn by following the rules.
So here’s the whole concept: when we’re sent to St. Mary’s, they take away everything that we’ve so far taken for granted in our old, corrupt and rebellious lives.
First of all, there is no personal technology allowed. Meaning no cell phones or laptops or iPads or whatever. Everything that we use has to be school-issued and it is heavily monitored. If you want to use the internet, you go to the computer lab and use the computer there, for an allotted number of hours. If you want to talk to someone on the phone, you do it using the school phone, again only during an allotted time period.
Second, if you want to go off campus, you need a permission slip from a teacher and you can only go out during an allotted time.
Now if you’re good – your grades are okay and you’ve been doing your homework and participating in activities – you get the privilege of using the computer longer than everyone else or you can go out twice a week and stay out longer and so on.
And who keeps track of things like this? The guidance counselor assigned to you that you meet with every week.
But all of this is useless to me.
Because I just started here and so I have a four-week ban on any privileges. Meaning I can’t go out no matter what. My computer usage is one hour per day and I can’t make any outgoing calls; I can only receive calls on Saturdays.
If at the end of the four-week period, my guidance counselor, who just happens to be Mrs. Miller, thinks I’m fit to be rewarded for my rule-following and hard-working ways, I might get to go out or use the computer for more than an hour.
So I write a little note of my own:
Thanks for the heads up. But since I’m on the four-week grace period, I basically have no privileges.
I hand over the note to the girl and she grabs it like I’m handing her a lifeline. I guess she’s as bored as me.
Quickly, she opens it and dives into writing a reply on a freshly torn piece of paper, which she hands me back a few minutes later:
Oh right! Sorry! I completely forgot that you’re a newb. But Miller has been known to deduct privileges in advance. She’s a biatch. Pardon my language.
I’m Calliope, by the way. But everyone calls me Callie. I’m sorry about all the stuff some of the girls are putting you through. I do gotta ask though: Is Principal Carlisle really your guardian? And are you really not a spy?
I have to smile at her note.
There’s no malice there. Not after the way I feel her looking at me with so much eagerness.