Cheryl has to be in control. For a Blossom, perfection is an obligation. One looks one's best. One achieves one's best, and one does it all without comment, objection or deviance.
She had learned from a young age the consequences of deviating from these strictly bound rules.
She and Jason had just turned six years old. It had been a bitterly cold December morning and the two siblings had been made to stand outside the grand mahogany doors of Thornhill dressed in complementary garb - too stiff and too expensive to ever truly be considered clothes suitable for children - to await the arrival of relatives for Christmas. Jason, in his infantile boredom, had strayed from the step to kick a chunk of gravel along the vast driveway, a defiant smile smudging his lips. Cheryl, never one to be bested, had taken this as an invitation to do the same, swinging her little leg behind her powerfully and belting another rock - a bigger rock, she might add - across the powdery stones and far beyond that of where Jason's had come to rest. She turned back to him with a triumphant grin only to see him staring down at her shoe, his face significantly pale even for their fair complexion.
Her eyes followed his and she looked down at her tiny, neat little red patent Mary Jane and saw, much to her horror, a scuff. Right on the tiny, shiny toe where she'd struck her winning missile.
A scuff.
Perfection is an obligation.
When her mother had stepped out to give them a familiarly regimented inspection with her stoic, judgmental eyes, she had spotted the scuff immediately and Cheryl hadn't fully regained her appetite for 2 weeks with the guilt and the fear and the shame that swam in her gut from Penelope's harshly worded penance.
"Control yourself, Cheryl."
As Cheryl grew older, she found herself acquiring another scuff. A bigger, far more serious, far more uncontrollable scuff and it had arrived onto the shiny, red patent perfection that was Cheryl's life, in the form of Heather. To Cheryl, who knew nothing of how to express her feelings properly, boys were pretty and girls were pretty, but, Heather was beautiful.
The Blossom family dealt in many things, most of which unsavoury and morally questionable, however, they never dealt in love. The only love Cheryl had ever felt was from her beloved JJ and the way she felt for Heather had been similar, but different. She knew she loved her and, when they had been huddled together beneath Cheryl's silk sheets late one night and the other girl had whispered into the darkness,
"I think I love you, Cheryl."
She knew she was loved in return.
Cheryl had wanted to kiss her, so she did, and finally, she had felt at peace. She felt in control.
However, much like the polish with which the nanny had salved Cheryl's little shoe, Penelope Blossom had eradicated this scuff too.
Permanently.
"Enough insolence. Enough rebellion. Enough deviance." She had hissed into Cheryl's 14 year old face.
"Control yourself, Cheryl."
So, here Cheryl sat her spine as rigid as her upbringing. One beautifully sculpted, long, pale leg draped gracefully over the other, brightly lacquered and neatly clipped nails strumming on her textbook idly.
She'd been staring for the better part of 20 minutes, the History lesson in which she sat completely forgotten, intelligent brown eyes taking in every detail as she raked them curiously over the body of a girl diagonally to her left. Toni Topaz. A serpent. A vixen. And, Cheryl thought with a dizzying elation she hadn't felt in years, a brand new scuff on her life.
Her face was the prettiest thing Cheryl had ever seen. Growing up as a member of one of the country's wealthiest families had provided Cheryl with many pretty things in her lifetime. But, as she gazed innocuously upon the pink-hair cascading in waves down a slender back and the gleaming eyes of a serpent peering up at her from the back of her jacket, nothing that she'd ever had, she pondered, was as pretty as this.
With a small, elegantly quiet sigh, a product of her breeding pedigree, she noted the strong lines of Toni's jaw. The smooth perfection of her darker skin, the light speckling of freckles across her face and nose like the shells of the delicious eggs Chef would serve for breakfast as a child. The thick fullness of her dark lashes which rested sumptuously against the girl's cheek as she blinked; a cheek that, Cheryl wondered with a well-hidden smile, would no doubt feel wonderfully soft beneath her own beautifully painted red lips. And, oh. The lips. The pretty curve of the girl's mouth, the soft smile caught at the edges as she doodled on her page. The slightly chapped texture of them that Cheryl spent odd moments of the day imagining was pressed against hers. The delicious plumpness of the lower. She wanted to touch it. Kiss it. Bite it. A small pink tongue darted out to wet it in concentration and Cheryl felt her blood pressure drop, her eyes honing in on it as she gripped the edge of her desk and clamped her own lower lip between her teeth.
"Control yourself, Cheryl." She heard her mother echo in her head. She ignored it.
Her childhood had been a museum of repression but her mind had always been free. Freer, even, than the canvas page on which she would let her creativity pour out with each immaculate drawing she produced. She could think whatever she wanted inside her own mind. And she wanted to think about Toni.
Perfection.
"For the third time, Miss Blossom. Cheryl."
Cheryl's head snapped forward to see her teacher, Mr Dullard - by name and nature - staring back at her expectantly. She was still gripping the desk with white knuckles and she found that her previously gracefully placed legs were squeezed together tightly. She blinked, her pupils no doubt fully dilated. Her incessant curiosity had got the better of her once again and she feared she looked as if she was experiencing a bout of painful gas or a menstrual cramp, rather than curious arousal.
She wasn't sure which was worse.
"The answer, please." Dullard prompted, motioning to the board. Cheryl's eyes follow his hand and she recovered herself instantly, thankful that she had completed this part of the syllabus already in her own private study time.
"Propaganda, Mr Dullard." She replied confidently, a prim smirk on her signature lips.
"And to what end, Miss Blossom?"
"To control the masses, of course." Cheryl snuck a quick glance at the object of her study, pink hair falling around the girl's face as she scribbled down the answer in her book. Yes. Control.