holy grail

THIRTEEN

As my eyes followed each word she uttered, a swift knock at the door echoed throughout the classroom before the uninvited guest entered the room—which happened to be Jason.

Ms. Torres immediately lightened up once she saw him enter her room and everyone else turned around to face him, except me who only took a glance and pretended to be focused on something else. I felt his eyes on me though, they were burning a hole in my skin.

I hadn't seen him since our last encounter which ended on Sunday morning and it was now Wednesday. To be truthful, I was avoiding him because of the eerie feeling Headmaster James gave me. He was probably watching me closer than ever now and that genuinely frightened me.

"Pope Francis has successfully arrived and there's been a change to the schedule. Confession will begin in about nine minutes and the rest of the girls' classes will be cancelled for the day."

"Really, that's odd." Ms. Torres seemed disappointed, but plastered a fake smile on her orange-ish face anyway. "We'll be over shortly." She added.

"Good." Was all that was said before the slam of the door was heard and Ms. Torres and the rest of the girls were on their way towards the door. I got up as well, exiting the class afterwards, making up the end of the line full of clamoring teenage girls.

Penny and Cheryl soon joined me in the back and we all made small talk until we arrived the cathedral where we were split up by wooden benches and bibles. Cheryl being to my very far right on my bench and Penny to my left. Agnes and Zavrina were already in the cathedral as well, since the sophomores came before us.

After a few minutes of sweet silence, the rowdy boys from St. Mark's piled in as well and they sat on the opposite side of us. No matter how hard Ms. Torres tried to silence the group of boys, they just wouldn't shut up. . . until Julian walked in.

Things went silent, not even Ms. Torres said another word. Penny whispered something to me about it, but I wasn't paying attention so I ignored it while Cheryl kept her eyes on the floor. His face was still recovering from the bruises he received from Angelo almost a week ago, but nonetheless he was still winking and smirking at various girls.

According to Blake, who later told Cheryl—Julian missed four days of school due to the in school suspension he received from Headmaster Frank who bargained with him that if he sat in a special, disciplinary room for 96 hours his parents wouldn't be notified.

Once he sat down with the rest of his junior class, the ceremony began. Girls in the front confessed first, then the middle and then finally the ones in the back which consisted of Cheryl, Penny and I and also a few other girls. Cheryl and Penny went before I did for some odd reason, I was second to last to go.

As soon as I got up I received tons of stares, glares and even fictional knives in my back just because I was a well-known girl.

All the populars, jocks and even nerds knew who I was and it wasn't because of the incident with Julian, it was because I was the first girlfriend of his who ever dumped him and we were on and off all the time.

All the boys wanted to be him and all the girls only ever dreamed to be me. It was kind of like being on a reality tv show.

Private boarding school just wasn't your average high school jungle, it was a secret society. Secretive and hidden to the world, only the richest of the richest attended St. Mark's or St. Mary's and there were certain rules you had to follow.

And these rules weren't your usual school rules like "clean up after yourself" and "be kind to others" these codes were social status rules, for example: you had to be catholic or some weird atheist/agnostic hipster to fit in, homosexual relationships were highly frowned upon and everyone lived their life through a certain person or couple, but the most peculiar of them all was the claiming.