The Re-Set

Frenemies

"We really don't need to wait for Beth, Auntie Caroline?" I pointed out, moodily, as we stood just outside the main gates at Redstone, or rather Deepdene, as the new sign bolted to the wall proclaimed for the whole damned world to see. I already knew that the changes were real, but seeing the new signage starting to go up made it hit home harder, somehow. And Caroline's insistence that we had to wait for Beth to take us into school had annoyed me as well, because it was so unnecessary. I think I had got the message the day before, after my private chats with her and dad, but they had both talked to me over our first family tea, with poor Felicity as a silent witness, to hammer home the terms of engagement for our new family. I had been read the riot act, again, and my parents had made it really very clear what they both expected of me in the future, which was not moaning about church, talking back to either of them, or generally being a pain in the backside. And I got that, even if I did not like it very much, so there was no need for Caroline to employ Beth, of all people, as my minder in school, whilst we were out of lessons. But she had, and I really did not like the idea. Not that it seemed to matter to anyone else. My general displeasure seemed to be taken as just another example of why I needed to be taken in hand, everywhere, in the first place.

"Yes, we do...I am still worried about you, my darling...with regards to possible meltdowns or just general insurrection...and I trust Beth to keep you out of trouble." She replied, only half joking as she rested a hand on my shoulder. It was the height of drop-off, just minutes before the first bell, and lots of people were streaming past us. Our suspicions of more new sign-ups for Deepdene certainly looked to be coming true, I noted, because there seemed to be a lot more than one in three girls wearing the new uniform at the start of the first full week of Deepdene School for girls. But although the strict and impossibly old-fashioned uniform made everyone who wore it look very similar indeed, when I looked rather more closely, I started to see some subtle differences. Felicity and I were both more or less ironed into our stiff and uncomfortable livery, coats zipped right up, chinstraps strangling us, blazers buttoned and our infantile Mary Jane's gleaming in the spring sunshine, and everyone who had joined us at church seemed to be much the same. Even Sarah Peters, the first year eleven to succumb as far as I knew, who got out of her mother's car with her sister, and walked past us with her hair in childish pigtails to top off the perfect, studious image. But others, whilst certainly obeying the stringent dress code, had their coats on but hanging rakishly open, and just seemed a little less enveloped by all of it somehow, as if they were almost normal. Different churches, different rules, I wondered to myself, cursing my terrible luck that my stepmother was so into the boring Church of Christ the Reformer and was dragging me down with her, like a lamb to the slaughter.

"I haven't been in any trouble at school...ever!" I protested, hating the desperate whine that I could hear in my voice. Being treated like an overgrown toddler was one thing, but it seemed to be making me behave like one. Mind you, I had largely managed to stay calm and talk with all the maturity I could muster the day before, and that had got me precisely nowhere. It was all driving me insane.

"Four detentions last term, a downward grades curve and a report that suggested you were a lot more focussed on making smart remarks than you were on your lessons?" Caroline sighed as she detailed my rap sheet, which did not exactly make me a master criminal, but did weaken my argument, of course. Dad had not been happy about the report, or the detentions, and grades seemed to bother everyone, from my teachers to dad and my grandparents. "As we said to you yesterday, Olivia...we want you to focus all of your considerable energy on your studies. I am not going to let you play up...in or out of lessons...and by asking Beth to look after you when there are no teachers around, we are just covering all of the bases. But she is your friend...I am sure she will not turn into a Gestapo guard overnight...so, whilst I do expect you to do exactly what she says, I do not expect her to boss you around or anything...she is far too mature to act like that with anyone, but especially with you."