Venom and Vengeance

chapter three

Gwendolyn didn't come to collect me after class. I wandered aimlessly through the halls. After a quarter passed and my next class had already begun, I asked a passing student for directions to Occult Studies.

The occult studies classroom was up a flight of stairs, the room itself overlooking the city peeking over the rolling hills.

Upon reaching the doorway, I heard Gwendolyn speaking to a student. She whispered harshly, a stern look contorting her face.

The student was a girl who could have come from a runway in Sweden. Glossy blonde hair fell past her waist and when she turned with folded arms I saw her light eyes and arched nose. Her most prominent feature was a beauty mark on her upper lip like that of an old movie star.

"The council will hear about this," I heard the girl mutter threateningly. Her gaze flitted toward the doorway. She sashayed in my direction, brushing past me with a scowl.

Gwendolyn rubbed her brow, leaning against her desk. Her classroom had three gigantic windows, grey light filtering through. Huge maps hung from the walls. If Gwendolyn had many books at home, her classroom served as a library with stacks filling all of the available space not reserved for desks.

"Sorry about that," Gwendolyn sighed, "How was your first class?" She forced a smile, but it didn't hide that the confrontation had upset her.

"Who was that?" I asked. It was strange to see a teacher so visibly shaken by a student.

"Just someone unhappy with a grade," Gwendolyn said with a shake of her head.

"She said something about the council. Is that a staff board?" I pondered. Gwendolyn had begun to erase the chalk writing on her blackboard. She paused as though she wanted to say something, but then continued erasing. When she finished, she dusted her hands and then grabbed me gently by the arm in a guiding motion, "Let's get you to your next class."

-

The week passed and I grew accustomed to my new surroundings. Classes in Scotland were not dissimilar to the US. I was learning the layout of the castle and beginning to recognise familiar faces.

Exploring the castle proved to be a risky activity. The dorm mother, Melina Marsh, was a harsh and brooding old woman with fading pink hair and a stern face. She wore large glasses that looked like the style from the fifties. With these, she was able to see every student wandering where they weren't meant to be. Students at Blackmuir Hall, the dormitories facing the forest, called Melina the 'marsh monster'. She was always lurking, waiting to catch disobedient pupils.

The library had become my favourite escape. It was smaller than I would have suspected in a school this large. The size, however, made the space comforting. There weren't any new titles amongst the many shelves of books. A layer of dust coated most of the velvet spines. It was effortless to slip away within the bookcases.

The library was a place of safety and solace where the loud chatter of adolescence faded. I didn't see my peers there often. The exception was a group of students with whom I shared no classes.

Amongst the group, whose members sometimes interchanged, was the girl who'd been arguing with Gwendolyn. She and her friends huddled together at a corner table, their noses buried in books. I hadn't dared speak to them. They were obviously unapproachable.

In the US, it was common for high schools to have a clique of popular people who exuded an aura suggesting the air in their vicinity was exclusive to them. If Shambles was a chess board, the students in the library and the few they associated with were the first row of pieces. These students were the King, the Queen, the rooks and knights. The rest of us were pawns in comparison to their importance. It was clear that these pupils did not intend to associate themselves with those outside of their class.