From sheer boredom she found herself clicking on porn spam on her phone that night, and fell asleep dreaming she was riding a wave in a swimming pool.
Her bikini spun away from her like a small doll’s outfit toward a candle burning at the other side of the pool. She tried to reach it, but it grew to the size of the sun. There was a huge Bang! as her eyes jolted open to the light blaring through the window.
Her mum rapped again on her door.
‘Natalia! You not up for school yet?’
She chewed slowly on her toast at the breakfast table.
‘Quarter past eight,’ hissed her mum’s liquor-scented breath. ‘You’ll have missed the bus. You got done for skiving last week and now you’re late?’
Natalia fingered the report card in her pocket.
‘I’m going now.’
The dim October morning would have made the walk down the school driveway abysmal beyond measure, were it not for the cheer of Lady Gaga in her earphones, and the thought that she had only eight months left in Thornwood High. This was the last winter she would have to watch the grey sky outlined against the pale orange, geometric ugliness of its building like a monstrous ship looming closer as her size-five feet carried her like automatons into its rectangular mouth.
Everyone else was already in class as she headed to sign in at Reception. Deafened by the rah-ah-ah, Gaga-ooh-la-la! she crossed the driveway oblivious to the huge moving shape coming from her left. Love, love, love! I want your— just as she turned in surprise, one earphone dropping to her shoulder, frozen wide-eyed at a black Mercedes halting with a shrill screech of its brakes a metre away.
She leapt back, quickly turning away out of embarrassment and scrambling to the Reception doors before whoever driving the car would have chance to call:
‘You need to look out, young lady!’
Delivered in a lively shout from a face sticking out of a rolled-down window, she squinted to discern which teacher it was. She didn’t recognise him: a flash of blonde-ish hair and an arm of suited grey didn’t fit the description of anyone here. Must be a visitor.
Walk, walk, fashion baby… or rather shuffle, red-faced into Reception. Pushing the late book back to the frowning receptionist, she sighed as she headed to her first lesson, which was French, handing the conspicuous green rectangle of shame to Mrs Williams.
‘The spoff is late!’
‘And she’s on a report card!’
‘Where’ve you been, skiver?’
She felt the grinning faces of Luke, Bernard and Tom trained on her as though she were a bad performer who’d done them some wrong in a previous life show. A fourth boy Ryan would be sitting staring - he ‘fancied her’ - which apparently meant no more than blushing in her direction and slightly flinching at the insults his friends threw her way.
‘It’s what you get when you skive,’ Laura whispered next to her. ‘Just ignore ‘em.’
Natalia turned her face away. ‘You mean like Mrs Williams, and everyone else does,’ she murmured back.
CZYTASZ
The Headmaster's Flame
RomansA virgin schoolgirl is about to have a rude awakening! Almost everyone at Thornwood High is charmed by the boisterous alpha Neill, one of the youngest Headmasters in the country at the age of 37. But as he sets about revamping the school, there's on...
