Brooklyn Moore's world has been turned upside down after her parents divorce. Forced to leave her fancy Manhattan home, private school, and friends in the city, now Brook and her mom are scraping to get by in middle-of-nowhere town, Birch Hill.
Her...
The library is nothing short of depressing compared to my old school.
The academy boasted a series of diagonal white arches and sky lights. The library itself had been the size of a football field with plexiglass shelving lined with classic literature and academic papers.
There were seating areas decorated with colourful and bold printed cushions sat around mahogany tables with glass tops, each lined with study lamps.
I'd always loved it. I would read there for hours looking up at blindingly bright blue skies or watch as rain puttered down the glass and imagine I was up in the sky in some fortress above the clouds.
This library is, as all other places in the school, tinged in puke green fluorescence.
Right at the entrance are two short rows of wooden tables lined with benches. To either side of the tables is no more than three rows of bookshelves of the same cheap pine. The academy could have seated sixty to one hundred people. I would be surprised if this library can seat all of Mr. Piermont's history class.
I hadn't walked with Zoey when the class made their way to the library. She doesn't seem the type to like clingy people. But now that we're in the library she comes over to me.
She flares her dark eyes in the direction of the table where the blonde boy and his desk-mate are sitting.
"Yay for working with Stepford son and McAnnoying," Zoey says in hushed monotone, "Luckfully you're here now."
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I narrow my eyes but smile. Stepford son?
As we get to the table the blonde boy shoots up to stand and holds out a hand to me. He is wearing a ring engraved with a cross, silver on black. As I take his hand I feel his fingers are rough with callouses.
"I'm Tristan," he says with the same beaming politeness as before.
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I'm beginning to understand Zoey's take on him as 'Stepford'. His cordial ease is coming off as practiced, and I would know, it is the same 'I'm so mature please let me in' act I'd needed to get into my private schools.
