Reece's Haven

1

She purses her lips before she sighs in exasperation, letting go of my ear.

"What am I going to do with you?" she whispers, shaking her head, defeated.

She then grabs my right hand in a tight grip and the three of us head back to the boarding school, where my punishment will be decided. During the walk, I hear an earful from Sister Mary.

***

My punishment is being discussed in the staffroom by a group of St Anne's Sisters. I am sitting on a wooden bench just outside of the room, listening in.

"She should not be allowed to eat dinner for at least one week!" says nun number 1.

No, don't deprive me of food again!

"How about we lock her up in the cellar for three days?" says nun number 2.

I snort. I'm a master at picking locks.

"With no dinner delivered to her," nun number 1 quickly adds.

NO!

"No no no. She always escapes the cellar." See? "She should be given cleaning duty for two weeks!" says nun number 3.

Yes, I can do that!

"And no dinner too," nun number 1 insists.

Oh Jesus freaking Christ!

"How about we get her grades capped?" says nun number 2.

"Oh just so we should put up with her during the holidays?" I hear my new victim, Sister Mary, huff.

"Sister Mary, you are new around here," says nun number 2. "You see, Dorothy has never left this boarding school to live with her family for the holidays, not even for Christmas. So it does not make any difference whether she fails or not; she will still stay during the holidays."

"Dear Lord," Sister Mary groans. "What do we do with this child?"

"Sister Mary, you should be aware that Dorothy is an unhappy child. We must take into account that this child is not at peace. Her parents have neglected her–"

Refusing to hear the rest of the conversation, I stand up from the wooden bench and walk along the long corridor towards the dormitory.

"Ignore them, Dorothy," I whisper to myself.

Whenever anyone talks about me, they always link my wild behaviour to my parents abandoning me in this school. I absolutely hate it because it is not true at all; I do these harmless pranks on them because it makes me feel alive. There isn't much to do around here.

St. Annes Boarding School is located in a rural area so I am isolated from the 'real' world. The school does not own a telephone and the only way we students can communicate to anyone is through mail. The nearest bus stop is like four miles away. All of this is super annoying; we are like three years away from the twenty first century for goodness sake!

When I enter the dormitory, I notice that the fifteen girls with whom I share this huge dormitory are staring at me. Some of them whisper to their friends, causing them to snigger at me. Ignoring them, I walk to my bed and sit on it.

"What a weirdo," I hear Charlotte say to her friend, Margaret.

Charlotte is one of the top students of my class, a tall, slim girl with curly dark hair that cascades down to her waist. She may be smart and very attractive, but my opinion of her is marred by her always picking on me. She has tripped me on purpose during P.E. countless times and spread disgusting rumours about me. Once, she spread a false rumour that I had lice in my hair when I was eleven and because of that, each and every single student in the school avoided me as if I were the plague. She is one of the reasons why I am labelled as the school's freak and why I have not made friends here.