So yeah.
We’re the bad girls and we’ve been sent here for reformation.
Because this school is a reform school and it’s called St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers.
It was established years and years ago. Probably when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Okay, fine.
That’s an exaggeration.
It was established in 1939. All dinosaurs were long extinct by then, but still.
Anyway, if you stumble upon the website of this place or happen to pick up a glossy mustard-colored brochure at the principal’s office, you will see that this prestigious place has a history of excellent education and iron-clad discipline.
More than that, it has a history of producing some very well-behaved and socially adjusted girls who go on to do great things in their lives.
As opposed to the not-so-great things that they did which landed them here.
I, for one, love this place.
I love the fact that I live here now. That I’ve been living here for the past two years, ever since my sophomore year.
I love the rules. I love the restrictions.
I love that there’s a set time for everything.
Like, when to wake up, when to take a shower – every morning between 6 and 7AM. When to do your laundry – there’s a laundry room located in the basement of the dorm building and you go wash your clothes on a schedule so it doesn’t get overcrowded. When to do your homework or eat dinner or relax. And finally, when to go to bed: lights out at 9:30 every night.
They even tell you when you can or can’t leave campus.
You need a special little pink permission slip signed by a teacher – sometimes they can be white, but I always cheer up when I get the pink ones.
Oh, and in order to receive those signed permission slips, you need to have enough good girl points, more commonly referred to – by teachers – as privileges.
And who keeps track of your privileges? The guidance counselor assigned to you, whom you meet with every week and who has a thick file of all your sins and occasional good deeds.
There’s a girl here who hasn’t gotten a permission slip to go out in a year now, not even for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Because she keeps showing up late to her classes and rumor has it that she’s failing math and chemistry, hence her privileges have been revoked.
See? How wonderfully strict and suffocating.
On top of that, I absolutely adore the stern-faced teachers who hardly ever smile. But that’s okay because they only want good things for you.
I adore the cinderblock buildings and cement pathways and iron bars on the windows.
Oh, and the big tall gates in the front that are made of iron and are painted black? They are to die for.
Not only are they architecturally sound and capable of keeping all of us inside, they also boast the motto of St. Mary’s School at the top in large, wrought iron letters: Tradition. Education. Discipline. Rehabilitation.
Such a prison-like feel.
Who wouldn’t love that?
Who wouldn’t love the bench that I’m sitting on, all hard and of course made of concrete, out in the courtyard, which is also made of concrete I might add.
From here I can see the whole school: the buildings, the pathways and the iron gates keeping us caged and safe. The soccer fields. The woods in the back, just beyond the brick fence.
It’s a perfect spot to sit in, on a dreary, gray fall afternoon, to remind me this is my life now.
My life that I love.
Love.
Love, love, love.
So. Much. Love.
This is not working, Callie.
This is so totally not working.
Okay, no. Wait. This can work. This can totally work.
Um, what else do I love about this place? What else, what else?
What…
“Oh my God, are you listening?”
A high voice pierces my fog and I blink.
A face comes into focus. It’s pale and pretty with blue eyes and thick bangs. And glasses.
Poe Austen Blyton, or just Poe, my friend. One of my best friends at St. Mary’s, who makes living here, at this stupid reform school, bearable.
See?
Here’s a thing I love!
“I love you,” I tell her.
She draws back. “What?”
I grin. “I do, Poe. I love you. Don’t ever think otherwise.”
Then I turn to another girl who’s sitting right to opposite me, Bronwyn Littleton, my roommate and also one of my best friends.
I motion with my chin and declare, “And you. I love you, Wyn. You’re my favorite.”
Wyn is an artist so she usually — by that I mean all the time — carries a sketchpad. She is the calmest person I’ve ever encountered in my life. Looking at her, her light-colored eyes, her long, brown braid and perfectly innocent face, you’d be so surprised that she is at a reform school.
Her sketchpad is the reason she’s here, actually, or rather the fact that she loves to draw.
Her parents are rich, high-class types who don’t want their daughter to waste her life on something like art and have always been on her case to give it up. So one day she’d had enough and in retaliation, she painted graffiti on her dad’s car. And well, her dad sent her here as a punishment.
She looks up from her sketchpad and stares at me. “Uh, thank you. I appreciate that. I think.”
“You’re welcome,” I say before turning to the third and final member of our group, Salem Salinger.
She’s new at the school; she just started when we all came back from the summer for our senior year. She has huge curls and golden-brown eyes and she’s here because she stole some money and was running away but got caught.
By whom, you might ask?
By her guardian, who also happens to be the very scary principal of this reform school.
Yeah, poor Salem.
She chose to mess with the wrong person and well, now she’s here and I think I love her too. Even though I only met her for the first time when school started a week ago.
So I tell her, “And you. Don’t think I forgot you, Salem. I love you too.”
Her nose scrunches slightly. “I wasn’t thinking that. Although I was thinking that this is a little weird.”
Poe throws her arms at her. “Thank you. Yes. This is weird.” She turns to me. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.” I smile and sigh, trying to ignore the fact that this is our lunch hour and we specifically finished our very dismal-tasting lunch early so we could come out here and catch the sun, which was all bright and shining when we were inside.
The sun that suddenly disappeared the moment we stepped out of the cafeteria building, and by the time we got to this very hard and uncomfortable bench — as uncomfortable as our classroom desks — it was like there was never any sunshine whatsoever.
Wyn leans forward slightly. “Is it the First Week Blues?”
Okay, so we all have a term: First Week Blues.
It’s a term coined by Poe back in our sophomore year, when it was just the two of us. Wyn came later, in our junior year, and as I said, Salem was sent here for her senior year.