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I was going to do you the courtesy of taking you aside and making this little point to you, she continues after a deep breath. But since you have failed to show me
and your fellow students the courtesy of showing up to class on time, I think I should respond in kind. I see that you are the type of girl to think that she can get away
with anything she wants to because she has some sort of special status. Well, believe me, Miss Wakefield, that will not be the case at all for you. Your grandmother
wished you to transfer to Wakefield Hall in the sixth form to have the advantages of our superb educational system for your A levels, not because you were to be in any
way pampered while you were here.
That s the official story that I m back here because Wakefield Hall is second to none in its record of girls getting top marks in their exams. No mention of my being
effectively expelled from St. Tabby s for killing a boy. Grandmother thought that would put a bit of a damper on my ability to make friends. Goodness knows why.
You may find a desk and take your seat in the few minutes we have remaining before leaving for assembly, Miss Newman says, her voice icy enough to freeze hot
soup.
I ve been ducking my head to avoid her awful sneer. I manage to lift my head and look around me frantically for a spare desk. Oh God. The only one left is in the
second row, of course. I m sitting with the keen, swotty girls. Great.
I do the Walk of Shame across the room and slip behind the desk, the last one in the row, next to the window. Grandma s kept the old wooden desks from when she
first started the school: they re ancient and battered, scarred by girls incising them with the nibs of fountain pens that they would fill from the built-in inkwells at the back.
You can tell they were inkwells because they re stained from decades of leaks. Now they re just used for standing ballpoints in. I lift the lid of my desk and slide in my
books. That s all that gets left in the desks: there are lockers downstairs now, with combination locks, for serious stuff. You can t have just wooden desks that anyone
could open anymore, not when girls have iPods and cell phones and all kinds of expensive stuff that s highly nickable.
I look around. Hardly anyone meets my gaze. Great. They all hate me already. Miss Newman has managed to make everyone think I m trying to take the piss and get
away with murder because I m the headmistress s granddaughter. God, I hate my life.
There s one girl who does look back at me, though, and I m immediately curious about her. She s tall, with wide shoulders and well-built upper arms. (I m not being
weird, but I notice these things because of gymnastics, okay?) Her hair is short, dark, and shaggy, falling round her face in an artfully clipped style that makes me think
she s carefully arranged every lock, pieced it with wax or something, to seem so trendily disarranged. Her eyes are wide set and green, and the look she s giving me is
absolutely unreadable. I ve got no bloody idea what she thinks of me at all.
The nine o clock bell goes, and we all stand up and prepare to file into the Assembly Hall so Grandmother Lady Wakefield can lecture us all about Wakefield
Hall s core values, and why good character is the most important possession a woman can boast, and all that Edwardian Young Ladies Manual stuff she loves so
much. And still none of the other girls are making any effort to include me in their tiny circles. I wasn t expecting to make a best friend on the first day, but this is
definitely the worst-case scenario.
Stupid me. I should never say things like that. Because when the worst-case scenario really does turn up, I ll be left longing for the time when twenty girls in Lower
Sixth C put their noses in the air and wouldn t look at me, and the twenty-first, having given me a long look, seemed to have decided that it wasn t worth her while even
to make a point of ignoring me on principle. She s wearing a navy wool sweater with pieces of leather on the elbows, the kind of thing you only see on fishermen or
someone s granddad. It s very old; I can see how frayed the cuffs are. Her combat trousers look equally ancient, like someone might actually have worn them into
combat. They re clean she d never get away with wearing something stained at Wakefield Hall but they re definitely screaming hand-me-downs.
I look at the line of girls in front of me, and despite the noses in the air, I do see one reason to be cheerful: none of the aforesaid noses are bobbed or filed-down or
artificially sculpted. As well as being fashion, boy, drink, and drug free, Wakefield Hall is equally a plastic surgery free zone. It s such a world away from St. Tabby s
that I really doubt anyone here has any connections to the London, Teen Vogue, shiny happy people scene, which means they re very unlikely to be aware that Scarlett
Wakefield is known to the tabloid press by a much more lurid nickname.
If I m lucky, I ll manage to keep my secret. Girls won t be keen to make friends with the headmistress s granddaughter. But befriending the Kiss of Death girl? That
would be a whole different story.
nine
SHOWING OFF
Meena, nicely done, on the whole.
Mrs. Fisher, our Latin teacher, is passing between the desks, handing out our marked translation homework.
Meena, a stringy girl with droopy posture, looks very downcast at this verdict. I ve noticed this already in my first few days at Wakefield Hall the girls set incredibly
high standards for themselves. I thought St. Tabby s was competitive, but this is way beyond anything that went on at St. Tabby s.
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