Break the Bad Girl

Devil in Disguise

I walked down to the farthest end of the corridor to the principal's office. I haven't even met the woman yet, and I was already sulking. Why is it that every time I do something wrong, I get sent to see her? I mean why not someone else? That woman just sucked the life out of me, and she doesn't even have to try. All she has to do was yell at me a little, shake her head at me in disappointment – just what she always does – and I want the ground to open up and swallow me completely.

Don't even get me started on her weird 'punishments'. She has made me clean the cafeteria for a week for being late to class, she has made me do parking lot check once when I broke a pipette – accidentally on purpose. That was the worst punishment I had ever served. I had to arrive early to school and stand under the hot sun, supervising to see if everyone were parking their cars in the allotted space correctly and if they were not speeding. I mean the sun would scorch your back and the jerks that study in our school will park wrong, on purpose taking two parking space instead of one if they realized someone was serving parking duty punishment – just for the fun of it.

Matilda Helen was one of my mother's close friend since their childhood days. They had born as neighbors, went to the same day care, played with the same Barbie dolls, had tea parties together, studied or rather spent their childhood and teenage days going to the same school, double dated together. They were like sisters and from all the times that I had seen them together, I know they loved each other like they were really sisters.

When she was still around, my mother arranged play dates for hers and Matilda's children to play. The sad part about those play dates were, we, the Carter siblings, never got along with her children. To me, they always seemed like Satan's miniature. We fought with each other for almost everything. And we fought dirty. Our fights were never the normal kind, there was scratching till they bled and then there was hair pulling - both, my all-time favorites.

She had two sons. If I still remembered correctly, they were called Trevor and Zander. We actually never bothered with their names, usually called them Display piece I and Display piece II. Both the boys were elder to me. I think they were about Jay's age, but their mental age would put my little brothers to shame. For some reason, they hated me with a passion and always picked on me. My brothers used to defend me against those little monsters and it ended with a fight between them from time to time.

After trying very hard, our moms stopped with all the play dates crap eventually. I think they finally got the memo that we would never get along. This resulted in Matilda developing some kind of a resentment - that's a strong word, but still - over my brothers. To her, her sons were both angels - she never saw them actually picking on me. To her, my brothers were devils - she always saw them beating her sons up. She was a perfectly good Godmother to me though.

If I was being honest, Matilda was a nice woman. She was sweet. She was a great Principal. We used to get along really well. These days though, something has visibly changed between us – a courtesy to the number of times I got sent to her office the past year for being disobedient. I have been here a countless number of times, be it for back talking to the teacher or for sleeping in class. You could say that she got tired of seeing me walk into her room so many times.

I reached Matilda's office in no time and knocked on the door, waiting for a reply from the other side. Be polite and nice, at least she will think about not punishing you very drastically, the smart part of my brain said in a know it all voice and I obeyed silently. I know very well that I have to act smart to be out of punishments.

For a moment, I regretted wanting to get sent out of Mr. Andrews' class. On second thoughts, both his class and Matilda's punishments were on the equal level of torture scale, so it doesn't matter anyway.